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

[Shaun McDonald]

On 2 Jan 2010, at 11:49, Steve Bennett wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 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?

You still need to go and visit the streets. With the London mapping parties last year after most of London was traced from the Yahoo imagery, what was found was:
* Many places the imagery was out of date, and the road layout had changed.
* There were lots of POIs on the ground that still needed to be collected due to be being able to be seen from above.
* Tree cover, overhanging or tall buildings obscured some things that needed to be captured, thus needing the on the ground survey.

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

That copying, they may have all got it from the same wrong source, or it may have changed since they last surveyed.

Shaun

> 
> Thanks,
> Steve
> 
> 
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