[OSM-talk] Data copied from Google Maps

[Lester Caine]

Jérome Armau wrote:
> Basically, even if the data itself is public domain, the database that contains
> it may be protected under EU law - this is to protect the amount of work that
> went into the data collection. The whole issue is the definition of a
> "substantial part" of the database. Are street names a substantial part of the
> street view data?

Since the information displayed in an image has not been 'collected into a 
database' what is the problem? It is just raw material that still needs to be 
processed and in many cases it does not even tie up with even googles own search 
results. So providing an alternative database of information which corrects that 
information is simply common sense. And I don't accept that the fact that google 
have 'geo-referenced' the images comes into it since I normally have to scroll 
through several locations before finding the appropriate data, just as I scroll 
through several pages of results or browse several folders of pictures to get 
the right material. At some point it would be nice if we could link to alternate 
data sources direct from the map, but providing that via an alternate database 
such as nominatim just reinforces the fact that we ARE building an alternate 
database ...

Of cause in the UK once the street gazetteer is made open access the problem of 
street names becomes academic, and hopefully that will not be long coming as 
well. At which time the NLPG data may also be available, and we can start 
feeding corrections back into that!

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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