[OSM-talk] Data copied from Google Maps

[Christopher Woods (IWD)]

On 04/11/2012 16:48, Andrew MacKinnon wrote:
> In my opinion, copying from Google Street View is still a legally
> dubious thing to do. There is no formal licensing agreement with
> Google that I know of. It is perfectly fine to capture data by taking
> pictures yourself, but relying on Google Street View cars to take
> those pictures is legally dubious. Google Street View is often
> outdated anyway. Copying from Google Maps is clearly not allowed.
>
> I realize that we don't want to alienate users, but I think that OSM
> still needs to be strict about deleting contributions from legally
> dubious sources. Many new users simply don't realize that copying from
> Google is not allowed, and may have made many other contributions from
> legal sources (which will not be deleted). In other cases, users don't
> realize that there are sources that OSM is legitimately allowed to
> copy from - e.g. I have had to explain to users in Canada that copying
> road names from Google is not OK, but copying from Geobase and Canvec
> is perfectly acceptable.
This is an interesting discussion about where to draw the line. To use 
one example: I could walk to the end of my street right now and look at 
the street sign; I could then do the same for all neighbouring roads in 
my locality. However, I could go to Google Street View and do the same 
thing.

For simple pieces of factual data like that, obviously in the public 
domain before Google began to compile their own imagery, my gut feeling 
is that this is arguably OK to do in a pinch. Whilst not preferred, and 
'trumpable' by another user submitting empirical observations, it's not 
a clear infringement of Google's cache of data as they never had 
exclusive access to the information prior to their own compilation efforts.

You can obtain lists of street names from Royal Mail - heck, you can 
scrape them from PD mapping sources. The road network hasn't changed 
that dramatically in 100 years, save for trunk roads and infill in 
increasingly urban areas (IMO).

However, 1:1 copying of complete topographical or road network 
information is far past the mark and also both a clear infringement of 
copyrighted materials and the licence under which access to said data is 
granted by the owner(s).

If you copied Street View information wholesale, it's also a similarly 
clear infringement of licensed, copyrighted materials. Just the street 
names, however, isn't (on its own) a capital offence nor an obvious 
infringement of copyright. That all said, it shouldn't be encouraged as 
the sole source of information when compiling OSM maps - all it then 
does is further encourage laziness.

What's absolutely clear as unallowable behaviour is for contributors to 
only rely upon road names from trad line-drawn maps, simply copying 
verbatim. Trap roads abound...