[OSM-talk] Applications systematically consuming Bing Aerial tiles

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 03/29/2012 04:53 PM, Peteris Krisjanis wrote:
> First of all, there's not enough proof of copyright violation. There's
> no proof that assumed deravative work is generated using our work

That was my position initially as well but it has meanwhile been proven 
beyond reasonable doubt, and publicly admitted by a senior Bing guy on 
IRC. Details are, mostly in German, on 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing/2012_Germany_Military_Blurring. 
People have painstakingly compared the blurring boundaries and OSM data 
and found an overwhelming number of exact matches, and since these areas 
were not imported but hand-traced/mapped by many different mappers, it 
is near impossible that any other data source should have these polygons 
like that.

I can't comment on the *scale* of the copyright violation. I am however 
slightly unhappy about two *style* issues:

1. Six weeks ago, Bing said they'd rework the blurring to not use our 
data, but this seems not to have happened yet. If they knew it takes so 
long, they could at least have added our attribution in the mean time.

2. We never got an apology - neither for the fact that they used and are 
still using our data without attribution, nor for the fact that they 
initially denied having used our data and it took them ten days to 
confess. Had they, like others in similar situations, said "we'd like to 
apologize for the cock-up and we promise to fix it", then nobody would 
have said anything. But all we got from them is "We understand this is 
objectionable to some members of the OSM community but based on our very 
good relationship we hope and thank you for your understanding and 
patience." - read it slowly: "We understand this is objectionable to 
some" sounds like "we see no reason to apologize just because a few 
pedants make a fuss".

Frankly, I would have expected more from someone who believes that they 
have a "very good relationship" with the OSM community.

> And even if there is violation, one thing for sure - as several people
> in this tread already said, this doesn't make Bing photos automatically
> CC-BY-SA, no matter how someone would like this.

Probably right.

> Also in this case not all photos are
> impacted, only those with blured bits.

The photos from which the tiles are cut are quite large ;)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"