[OSM-talk] Canadian (Gov't supplied) vector data

[Putler, Dan]

It turns out that there are two publicly available Canadian road  
network files. The one cited earlier is made available from Natural  
Resources Canada, and relies on data they have compiled from  
municipal governments, provincial and territorial governments, and  
Natural Resources Canada itself. The problem with this file, as it is  
now constituted, at least the last time I looked at it, is that it  
has very little useful attribute information (it doesn't have street  
names and address ranges). As a result, ignoring the license issues  
for the moment, the value to effort ratio isn't high. The last time I  
grabbed data from Geobase, they threw in a questionnaire as part of  
the download process asking what were priority items, and of the  
choices on that list was adding civic address attributes to the road  
network layer.

The second Canadian road network file is published by Statistics  
Canada, and can be obtained from

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss/2006Dissemination/Data/FRR_RNF_e.cfm

The vector data in this file was collected by a combination of  
Statistics Canada (in more populated areas) and Elections Canada (in  
less populated areas). There is a lot more relevant attribute data in  
the Statistics Canada RNF (e.g., it does have address range data in  
more populated areas), but it could stand more (e.g., local area  
identifiers such as municipality or the first three digits of the  
local postal code). In addition, the two different road network  
layers do not "line up", they are close (with Statistics Canada  
rubber sheeting their layer to the extent possible to match the  
Natural Resources Canada layer, which Statistics Canada appears to  
believe is more spatially accurate then their own layer). The  
Statistics Canada layer has an EULA (yes, it is an EULA, as is  
Natural Resources Canada's agreement, but a very flexible one that  
allows for the creation of derivative works that can be commercially  
marketed) that is very close, but not 100% identical, to the one for  
the Natural Resources Canada Layer. The other thing is that a revised  
version of this layer is scheduled to be released by Statistics  
Canada in September.

I thought about adding one of these layers to OSM, but didn't think  
the EULA was compatible with OSM's CC Share Alike licensing based on  
my reading of the two, but I'm not a lawyer either. The other thing  
that held me back is that there is a fair amount of flux in the  
structure of this data at the moment with a new layer about to be  
made available from Statistics Canada and the possibility of Natural  
Resources Canada releasing better attribute information. Moreover, I  
have this sneaking suspicion that at some point Statistics Canada and  
Natural Resources Canada will jointly release a single road network  
layer rather than the Canadian government maintaining two different  
road layers.

Dan

On 3-Aug-06, at 8:39 AM, Emil wrote:

> On 8/3/06, Dan Karran <dan at karran.net> wrote:
>> On 8/3/06, Interlug <interlug at weait.net> wrote:
>> > Canadian road data (and more) is available at http:// 
>> geobase.ca/  Their
>> > license appears (to this non-lawyer) to be compatible with the OSM
>> > licence.  http://geobase.ca/geobase/en/licence.jsp
>> >
>> > Is this a worthy uploading and conversion project for OSM?
>>
>> IANAL but it seems like it's compatible. It looks like we can use it
>> pretty much freely and base derivatives upon it. However...
>
> I'm not sure it does.... They say it can be revoked at any time, and
> in any case is only valid for 1 year....
>
> I'm not sure a court would accept that their revoking would trigger a
> copyright infringement, but still....
>
> Also the whole thing is quite dodgy, referring to "Intellectual
> property rights", whatever they are, rather than copyrights, etc. It
> reads more like an EULA. I think they're confused.
>
> Emil
>
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