[OSM-talk] Good routing vs legal routing

[Anthony]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> (This is of course bordering on the philosophical since I believe that one
> could say that we actively encourage the Chinese to break their laws; at
> least we have numerous web pages suggesting you should take a GPS, map
> roads, and upload traces to our server! Now... is that against the law where
> you live? Would it be against the law if it were not China but a friendly
> western nation?)

If I lived somewhere as repressive as China, I'd likely be going about
OSM completely different.  I pretty much make no attempt here to hide
who I am and where I live.  And I'm somewhat of a stickler about
following the law.  (Again, if I lived in China, I wouldn't be.  If I
lived in China, I'd be trying to find a way to get out, legally or
illegally.)

But as far as I know, and that's not all that far (so someone please
correct me if I'm wrong), it's not against the law of Florida or the
United States to advocate breaking a law in another country if there
is not an analogous law in Florida or the United States.

The difficulty is where to draw the line, as a project, between which
users we are going to allow to contribute without breaking the law,
and which users we aren't going to allow to contribute without
breaking the law.  I don't know the answer to that.  I hope the
project won't force me to break the law by contributing, though.  If
it did so, I'd have to choose to stop contributing.

>> But beyond that, I don't know.  If you can do it in a way that
>> neutrally maps reality "surface=X, grade=X, etc." I guess I don't
>> mind.
>
> Yes. It makes a huge difference if something is "not accessible" because
> there is a sign that says you mustn't or if it is "not accessible" due to a
> concrete wall ;-)

If you want to put a way somewhere that it is possible, but illegal,
to travel, I don't see a problem with it.  I'm personally not going to
map them, because I'm personally not interested in them.  But as long
as your tags describe reality, go for it (*).

I might even join in if the way seems especially useful in emergency
situations.  A "police cars only" exit off a highway strikes me as a
useful thing to map - with access=no (or whatever the tag is to
indicate "police cars only"), of course.

(*) Within reason, anyway.  If you're violating people's privacy (not
sure exactly how you'd do that), or mapping the location of top secret
government bunkers, maybe I might have a problem.