[OSM-talk] good news: shapefile usage of ramsar sites for openstreetmap.org

[Jason Cunningham]

2009/9/22 Morten Kjeldgaard <mok at bioxray.au.dk>

> I am sorry, but I don't understand. Roman references an email from the
> communications officer of Ramsar, and you are worried? You say the sites in
> U.K. have "probably" been mapped by BOS? What kind of authority do you
> represent to convince us that your concerns should be ours as well?
>

I dont know how to answer this "authority" question, it does not seem
relevant to openstreetmap, or the point I raised. No one in the in the
OpenStreetMap community has "authority".

My interest in OSM is not mapping of streets, its the mapping of wildlife
sites and habitat, which includes Ramsar sites. In the UK we have very
limited access to maps of wildlife sites. Google is only interested in
streets. Maps we do have are owned by Ordnance Survey which restricts use.
Local Groups that commonly manage wildlife sites in the UK usually can not
afford to pay Ordnance Survey.

UK authorities use Ordnance Survey for preparing maps of their Nature
Conservation data, and I know that use of this data is restricted by
copyright. The data for the UK Ramsar sites will have come from JNCC, and
its clear from looking at the JNCC site (which holds data in the UK) that
the mapping data is derived from OS maps. In fact you can directly download
the data prepared for European Bodies from the website, but with
restrictions due to it being derived from OS maps.

I am hoping that JNCC has had to enter into a contract with OS to allow them
to submit the data to various European bodies without copyright
restrictions. If so this is an important set of data for UK users, we have
access to up-to-date OS data without copyright restrictions.

But I, and I assume a lot of UK users of OSM would be surprised if the data
had been supplied to the European bodies without some form of restriction.
This is not based on "Authority" as you put it, but on years of experience
of how OS works. In fact OpenStreetMap was created, in large part, as a
response to the copyright attitude of OS.

I would counter that the British government -- if they indeed stood for the
> measurements of the data -- has "probably" signed copyright over to the
> Ramsar organization.
>
> The British Government (or JNCC) would have to buy the 'copyright' for this
data. This British Government has little interest in wildlife in the UK, it
definitely has no 'measurable' interest in supporting European Bodies
involved with wildlife. They are constantly loosing court cases in Europe
and I wouldn't be surprised if they had handed over the data with
restrictions, despite having an agreement to provide the data with no
restrictions.

To repeat, I am not saying the data must not be used, I am simply raising an
issue because I think there may be a problem. I don't trust the British
Government and OS. I would genuinely surprised (and pleased) if JNCC had
paid OS to remove copyright. I also look forward to seeing Ramsar sites
added.

Jason
user:jamicu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20090923/a6a5283a/attachment.html>