[OSM-talk] Sourcing street names - what's the policy, and why?

John Smith deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 2 12:18:24 GMT 2010


2010/1/2 Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>:
> Traditionally, mapping streets in OSM has relied on physically visiting the
> streets to get a GPS trace, and noting the names of streets while you're at
> it. But now with the advent of high quality aerial photography that we can
> trace from (I'm thinking of nearmap, in australia), you don't have to visit
> the street to get the shape.

And before nearmap people were armchair mapping with Yahoo, this isn't
a new issue.

> But...where do you get the street name from? I think there's a general
> policy that you can't copy it off other maps...but why, exactly? How can a
> piece of information like the name of the street be copyright? Whose
> copyright law are we dealing with, anyway?

Copyright issues aside, how do you know the commercial map is accurate?

> Also, what if you look up 3 other maps, and they all show the same name, is
> it ok to copy then?

That's assuming they don't all come from the same source, most
commercial information is usually sourced in Australia from
mapds.com.au




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