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

[Steve Bennett]

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Shaun McDonald
<shaun at shaunmcdonald.me.uk>wrote:

> 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 * Many places the imagery was out of date, and the road layout had changed.
>

The nearmap images are very fresh - a few months at worst.


> * There were lots of POIs on the ground that still needed to be collected
> due to be being able to be seen from above.
>

Sure, but that's a whole separate piece of work. First priority is surely to
get streets mapped, then their names, then other POIs...


> * Tree cover, overhanging or tall buildings obscured some things that
> needed to be captured, thus needing the on the ground survey.
>

Yep, these are additional benefits to visiting the street. But if I was
going to be doing ground surveys, there are lots of places I'd rather visit
than these new outer suburban housing developments.


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


But from a copyright point of view, is it acceptable? (Let's not do the
"what would you do if you had infinite time" debate again. I don't have
infinite time. Can I copy the street names off Google Maps/Melway/Yahoo/...
or not?

Steve
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