[OSM-talk] Licence of Soviet military topographic maps

[Kirill Bestoujev]

Purchasing stolen maps does not make them public domain...

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
>