[OSM-talk] Google Street View copyright question

[Eric Wolf]

In general, using anything Google to generate information for OSM violates
Google's copyrights and possibly other copyrights that Google doesn't hold.
Google Street View images are geocoded information and definitely
copyrighted as such. They have special value in their geocoding. Using
images from Flickr is, perhaps, a little looser because any geocoding isn't
necessary part of the "information" conveyed in the art form of the
photograph - but that may be argued by the copyright owner.
Further, you should only be using satellite imagery to generate OSM data if
the copyright has been released for that purpose (like Yahoo's imagery in
the US) or if the imagery is provided without restriction (like USGS
imagery).

-Eric

-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Eric B. Wolf                    New! 720-334-7734
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography



On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:

> Is it okay to use Google Street View to confirm turning restrictions,
> street names, etc?  This seems like an obvious "yes" to me, but then, I
> would have said the same thing about tracing from a satellite photo, so I'm
> not going to try to guess international copyright law.
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
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>
>
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