[OSM-talk] Data copied from Google Maps

[Andrew MacKinnon]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Steve Doerr <doerr.stephen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/11/2012 21:31, Andrew MacKinnon wrote:
>
>> I am pretty sure that in most of these cases, users are copying from
>> Google Maps or Google Street View and the data should be deleted. In many
>> cases, the infringing data is something like a road name.
>
>
> I'm pretty sure that Google have actually said that's it's OK for us to use
> Street View images to check the occasional street-name, but not to do that
> on a mass scale.

Unless Google has actually formally given OpenStreetMap a license to
copy Street View for specific purposes, clearly stating the limits on
what is or isn't allowed to be copied, we should not be copying Google
Street View at all. We do not want any legally dubious data in the
database.

For the same reason, I think that deleting any data that has
source=Google (except the Haiti data) would be prudent. Most of this
data was obviously copied from Google Maps by new users who didn't
know that this was not allowed. A small amount of the data could have
conceivably been copied from some website that was found via Google
Search, but I suspect most POIs with "source=Google" were simply
lifted from Google Maps (not allowed). We are better off deleting a
small amount of possibly infringing data, than being sued.