[OSM-talk] Fw: [Geowanking] China policy on Mapping Data

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

Mikel Maron wrote:
> Any current or planned OSM activity in China?

What's China's policy on copyright of official maps? I think if OSM can
import official maps, we wouldn't need to survey China - the idea of OSM
is to get a useful map of the world, not to uncover military secrets /
censorship etc. If the Chinese government don't want us to put their
military bases or whatever in the map, that's fine, just like we don't
put Area 51 in the map in the USA. It wasn't long ago that OS didn't put
UK military bases on it's maps.

Maybe mapping Chinese nuclear bases, Area 51 and other secret places is
a worthy aim, but I don't think it should be ours - we've got enough
other problems to worry about.

Perhaps we should just ask the Chinese Embassy what roads we are allowed
to include under the new law, and see what they say. I think we should
try to work with them to get their data, so that we can encourage other
governments to share data as well, rather than work against them,
risking all sorts of dangers to get data that is probably less useful in
the end.

Robert (Jamie) Munro

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