[OSM-talk] #AttributionIsNotOptional experiment on OSM France tile servers

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Wed Mar 11 16:15:57 UTC 2020


Well the other bit that I wrote was:

"Enforcing attribution for services that you are providing directly (aka
tiles in some form) only has a small overlap with the goals of the
attribution guideline, and the avenues open to you depend on your ToUs /
contracts with your users and the legal situation in the countries you
are providing the service in.

I would be very very wary of doing anything that deliberately defaces a
web site without consulting with a local (to the country the web site is
in) lawyer, particularly if the message implies wrong doing."

As I am not a lawyer in any country that a website could be displayed
in, I'm really the wrong person to ask. Things vary widely by country,
that is in particular: inclination and costs to sue and protection
afforded to buisiness undertakings. But it is clear that using a neutral
message and clear ToUs, is definitely less risky than an aggressive
message without ToUs.

Things that need to be considered:

- any message you display will be shown to customers / users of the site
in question and needs to toned down enough so that you don't cause
unwarranted damage to the reputation of the sites operators. It is
likely that if you get sued that the range of options for action
available to you will be considered, you will need to show that what you
did was appropriate.

- everybody makes mistakes, so you -will- miss existing attribution.
Anything you do needs to be able to be undone with a simple "sorry it
was a mistake", except if you have deep pockets.

I'm very aware that getting peoples attention is sometimes difficult,
from experience things that work: sending a fax, registered mail, phone
calls,worst case publicly messaging on social media.

Simon


Am 11.03.2020 um 16:17 schrieb joost schouppe:
> Hi Simon,
>
> In a volunteer community, fun things are more likely to happen at all.
> So I do think the idea is worth exploring, even if the current
> implementation might be risky to OSMfr or to OSMF if implemented
> without much further thought.
>
> I would personally be interested in a more in depth analysis from you.
> I personally don't see how a more neutral message ("This map is based
> on OpenStreetMap data. Please add the required attribution to your
> website. Contact us at X if you need help.") would be more defacing or
> likely to lead to a liability claim than just a blacked out map, but I
> would not mind at all to be enlightened.
>
> Joost
>
> Op wo 11 mrt. 2020 om 15:39 schreef Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch
> <mailto:simon at poole.ch>>:
>
>     As I wrote (conveniently ignored in the noise of the vigilante
>     rampage): "The safe, I admit also the less fun, option, is to
>     simply block access after giving any required notice."
>
>     Simon
>
>     Am 11.03.2020 um 14:49 schrieb joost schouppe:
>>     Simon,
>>
>>     I guess with small overlap you mean it's only about people who
>>     use osm.org <http://osm.org> tiles, not people who use other
>>     services?
>>     While that is true, the double whammy of both heavily using
>>     resources and also not attributing does seem like a good subgroup
>>     to start with some measures.
>>
>>     In the case of the OSM.org tiles, I suppose this is regulated by
>>     https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use . At first
>>     glance I didn't see anything providing people who do not respect
>>     those terms. Am I missing something, or is this a naive approach
>>     to the problem?
>>     Even if the ToU's could be lacking in detail, couldn't we simply
>>     change them? The final section talks about changes, which we seem
>>     to be able to just do when we want to.
>>
>>     I would think the biggest challenge on OSMF side would be the
>>     workload for OWG/sysadmins.
>>
>>     Best,
>>     Joost
>>
>>     Op zo 8 mrt. 2020 om 12:18 schreef Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch
>>     <mailto:simon at poole.ch>>:
>>
>>         Just for the record:
>>
>>         Enforcing attribution for services that you are providing
>>         directly (aka tiles in some form) only has a small overlap
>>         with the goals of the attribution guideline, and the avenues
>>         open to you depend on your ToUs / contracts with your users
>>         and the legal situation in the countries you are providing
>>         the service in.
>>
>>         I would be very very wary of doing anything that deliberately
>>         defaces a web site without consulting with a local (to the
>>         country the web site is in) lawyer, particularly if the
>>         message implies wrong doing. The safe, I admit also the less
>>         fun, option, is to simply block access after giving any
>>         required notice.
>>
>>         Simon 
>>
>>         Am 08.03.2020 um 11:04 schrieb Yves:
>>>         This looks at first as a nuisance that could be perceived as
>>>         a bad move, but the feedback you're receiving rather prove
>>>         the contrary.
>>>         Well done!
>>>         Ps: would you share your nginx partial redirect, I may
>>>         consider it for Opensnowmap tiles policy?
>>>
>>>         Le 8 mars 2020 10:14:58 GMT+01:00, Christian Quest
>>>         <cquest at openstreetmap.fr> <mailto:cquest at openstreetmap.fr> a
>>>         écrit :
>>>
>>>             Here is a hort report on this experiment...
>>>
>>>             I started a week ago by searching OSM France tile server
>>>             logs for referer and checked manually if the map on the
>>>             refering page was correctly attributed.
>>>
>>>             This allowed me to create a short list of 20 entries of
>>>             sites using the french styled tiles and the humanitarian
>>>             tiles (yes, it is made by OSM France).
>>>
>>>
>>>             I then modified our nginx based proxy_cache
>>>             configuration, to redirect some tiles to an "attribution
>>>             tile" only for the domain in the list.
>>>
>>>             For two of them, I tweeted about it... the most visible
>>>             one is the moroco yellow page service, generating a
>>>             little less than a million daily tile requests on our
>>>             servers.
>>>
>>>             https://twitter.com/cq94/status/1234516075695525888
>>>
>>>             In less than 24 hours, the attribution appeared and I
>>>             removed them from the list.
>>>
>>>             https://twitter.com/cq94/status/1234779931537739776
>>>
>>>
>>>             Then I included an email address in the attribution
>>>             reminder tile... and got emails back within a few hours.
>>>
>>>             Some were asking how to do the attribution, others
>>>             telling me the attribution was now ok and asking how to
>>>             remove the reminder tiles.
>>>
>>>             In my answers, I also remind that our tile service made
>>>             by volunteers on donated hardware is not unlimited and
>>>             inviting them to have a look at switch2osm to setup
>>>             their own tile server or use a commercial provider.
>>>
>>>             Up to now, nobody complained :)
>>>
>>>
>>>             Yesterday, I've started automating attribution checking
>>>             using selenium. For each referer, a python script loads
>>>             the page, searches for tiles, then looks for attribution
>>>             text or link. The result is stored in a postgresql
>>>             database which allows to group referers by url, hostname
>>>             and ip.
>>>
>>>             The attribution percentage I currently see is around
>>>             70-80% which is not that bad.
>>>
>>>             My next major step is to use the same technique to
>>>             remind about tile usage policy...
>>>
>>>
>>>             To do something similar on osm.org <http://osm.org>, a
>>>             first step is to extract referers from the cache logs,
>>>             then use the automated attribution check to evaluate the
>>>             situation.
>>>
>>>
>>>             Le 08/03/2020 à 01:52, Nuno Caldeira a écrit :
>>>>             That would be a good option for those that use third
>>>>             party providers of OSM. But to be honest, from my
>>>>             experience I highly doubt that even corporate members
>>>>             of OSMF, like Mapbox would do it, when their client
>>>>             Facebook (also corporate member of OSMF) after one year
>>>>             and half, still has maps with lack of attribution or
>>>>             attributed to HERE, when it's clearly OSM. 
>>>>
>>>>             On Sun, 8 Mar 2020, 00:46 Phil Wyatt,
>>>>             <phil at wyatt-family.com <mailto:phil at wyatt-family.com>>
>>>>             wrote:
>>>>
>>>>                 I am sure others may have seen this 'blacklist'
>>>>                 implementation for showing a reminder about
>>>>                 attribution.
>>>>
>>>>                 https://twitter.com/cq94/status/1234528717604577282
>>>>
>>>>                 Worthy of consideration for openstreetmap.org
>>>>                 <http://openstreetmap.org>?
>>>>
>>>>                 Cheers - Phil
>>>>
>>>             -- 
>>>             Christian Quest - OpenStreetMap France
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Joost Schouppe
>>     OpenStreetMap
>>     <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/joost%20schouppe/> | Twitter
>>     <https://twitter.com/joostjakob> | LinkedIn
>>     <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joost-schouppe/48/939/603> | Meetup
>>     <http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Belgium/members/97979802/>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Joost Schouppe
> OpenStreetMap
> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/joost%20schouppe/> | Twitter
> <https://twitter.com/joostjakob> | LinkedIn
> <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joost-schouppe/48/939/603> | Meetup
> <http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Belgium/members/97979802/>
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