[Openstreetmap] London locations

[Mike Ryan]

All

Have a look at this thread in the google maps newsgroup
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thread/7999f7ebd4cb8694/79ebbb83878c0fc3?q=uk&rnum=5#79ebbb83878c0fc3

The second last post from "evilc" suggested he has submitted a Freedom or
Information request to get the data regarding the county boundaries, which is
along the lines of where this thread seems to be going

Rgds

Mike

Quoting Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:

> Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
>> TeleAtlas (who provide the relevant Google mapping), and
>> potentially _their_ suppliers (which most probably means
>> Ordnance Survey), have database right in the gazetteer used to
>> draw placenames on the Google map. This is the big database
>> table which contains information like your Glasgow lat/long for
>> every single town and village in the country, and OS sell this
>> as a commercial product.
>
> Ah, yes, now you are talking database rights.  That kind of
> protection is valid if I copy a larger number of facts, but not if
> I copy a single piece of information (a single coordinate).
> Furthermore, I must copy the information, at least down to a few
> decimal places.  If I just look at the map and estimate the
> coordinates, I'm not copying the informations in the database.
>
> If you can provide me with a U.K. court case where database rights
> have been claimed and *upheld* in a broader sense than this, I'd
> be interested.
>
> Furthermore, database rights expire sooner than the life+70 years
> term that is valid for copyright.  I think they expire 15 years
> after publication in Sweden, but I'm not sure how it can vary
> between countries.
>
>> "A person infringes database right in a database if, without the
>> consent of the owner of the right, he extracts or re-utilises
>> all or a substantial part of the contents of the database."
>
> "All or substantial part" and "extracts or re-utilises" are
> important phrases here.  They do not apply if I *estimate* one or
> a few coordinates, which is what we're talking about here.
>
> The really interesting case, that will prove if "database rights"
> lawyers can out-think the Internet generation, or if it is the
> other way around, is this: If I copy just a few facts from some
> database, and you copy just a few other facts from the same
> database, and thousands of us come together at a fact swap-fest,
> will the resulting smorgasbord of facts constitute an infringement
> of the database rights?  We should call this test ... "Wikipedia".
>
>> Daniel's point about electoral boundaries is a useful one. Those
>> electoral boundaries are derived works, too. They've mostly been
>> obtained by drawing lines on an Ordnance Survey map, which is
>> copyrighted. For the local council, there's absolutely no
>> problem in this, because they get their OS mapping free through
>> the Pan-Governmental Agreement. It just hobbles any of the rest
>> of us wanting to do good works with it.
>
> So are there any U.K. court cases where the O.S. has defended
> their claims of copyright to electoral boundaries?
>
> Electoral boundaries are just a list (database) of coordinates, so
> they cannot be covered by traditional copyright, but they can be
> subject to database rights.  Do electoral boundaries change more
> often than database rights expire?  (Say, 15 years.)
>
>
> --
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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>



Regards

Mike Ryan

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