[OSM-talk] Google Street View copyright question

[Dan Karran]

Noticed in the archives[1] that my mail was chopped off, so resending
with some different characters around Ed's email:

[1] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-September/041753.html

2009/9/9 Dan Karran <dan at karran.net>:
> 2009/9/9 Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com>:
>
>> Back in March, Ed Parsons pointed out [0] that since StreetView images are
>> Google-owned, if someone asked nicely-enough we could get them to give us a
>> license to explicitly map based on the streetview images (similar to the
>> explicit license we have with Yahoo).
>
> I'm not sure if anybody took this further with Ed or with Google back
> around the time of that tweet, but I sent him a quick email earlier to
> see what the status was here, and what we would be allowed to use
> Street View images for, if anything.
>
> His response was basically that it's fine to check our existing facts
> using the imagery from Street View, but it's not allowed - due to
> their license - to do any mass data extraction from the images that
> would then be republished.
>
> This is what Ed said:
> --
> This remains a grey area of ip law, if it is the case of checking from
> the photography itself facts such as the name of a building, that
> would be ok.. there are some key points in the Terms of Service which
> are useful..
>
> "..you may not use Google Maps in a manner which gives you or any
> other person access to mass downloads or bulk feeds of numerical
> latitude and longitude co-ordinates."
>
> This is really saying you are not allowed to do mass tracing of
> features that are then made available to third parties.
> --
>
> I came across a situation the other day where I was adding the address
> details of a pub[1] to the map and noticed that the street name (Edis
> St, from their website) didn't match up with the name of the street in
> OSM[2] (Edith St).
>
> From what Ed's suggested, Street View could probably have been used to
> confirm the local name[3] (ignore the armed police [4] ;) - to see
> whether the pub had a typo on their site, or we had a typo in our
> database - without having to go out and re-survey.
>
>
> [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/265649578
> [2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/8400167
> [3] http://tr.im/yfAo
> [4] http://tr.im/yfAU
>
>
> Cheers,
> Dan
> ps - I'm not a lawyer :)


-- 
Dan Karran
dan at karran.net
www.dankarran.com