[OSM-talk] Licence of Soviet military topographic maps

[Apollinaris Schoell]

just checked one of these maps. and interestingly it contains data which is most likely copied from official maps which are not in PD. So it is nearly impossible that these maps are PD.
the russian copyright holder may have bought the source data but very unlikely they have a license for distribution and release to PD.




On 23 Jun 2010, at 23:48 , Kirill Bestoujev wrote:

> Did they show you any documents confirming that that do really have
> ANY rights to sell those maps? I\m sure they did not...
> 
> K.
> 
> 2010/6/24 jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com>:
>> We purchased them from this site :
>> http://mapstor.com/
>> 
>> Here the same data is available from a usaid sponsored project :
>> http://www.bunkertrails.org/maps.php
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Eugene Iline <evgeniy at ily.in> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Have you really officially purchased them from Russian government, its
>>> military divisions or perhaps from Roskartografiya?
>>> 
>>> 2010/6/24 jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com>
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Kirill Bestoujev <bestoujev at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> No, they are not out of copyright. All the rights of USSR were
>>>>> transfered to Russian Federation. Neither USSR, nor Russian Federation
>>>>> ever transferred those maps to public domain or in any other way
>>>>> allowed free use of them. Most of that maps were stolen from exUSSR
>>>>> military bases in republics, which separated from USSR in 90-s.
>>>>> 
>>>>> In Russia disclosing of such maps (not 100k, they were openly
>>>>> publiched, but 50k) is still a crime - treason. There was such a case
>>>>> a month ago.
>>>>> 
>>>>> SO: old USSR military maps are not allowed to be used in OSM.
>>>> 
>>>> Oh really?
>>>> I read that they were sold.
>>>> We had purchased them and were using them, also for osm.
>>>> The consensus was that they are public domain.
>>>> lets straighten this out.
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.mail-archive.com/talk@openstreetmap.org/msg27951.html
>>>> mike
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Best regards,
>>> Eugene Iline
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> James Michael DuPont
>> Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org
>> flossal.org
>> 
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>> 
> 
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