[OSM-talk] "Limitations on mapping private information" - wiki page

Christoph Hormann osm at imagico.de
Wed Sep 16 11:26:29 UTC 2020


On Wednesday 16 September 2020, Mateusz Konieczny via talk wrote:
>
> But if they manage to create a path as result of taking the same
> route repeatedly it becomes a mappable feature.
>
> I feel that "permanent physical manifestations of those" includes far
> too many things that are actually mappable.

That is why i wrote "are not *as such* part of the verifiable 
geography".

Practically an established (as opposed to constructed) path is usually 
the result of the collective activities of many individuals which does 
not fall under the criterion of activities of individual humans as 
such.

To give you another example (one without any physical manifestation):  
If the driver of a bus routinely stops at a certain place between 
regular stops to let on/off a specific individual that is not a bus 
stop to be mapped in OSM.  If however that irregular stop starts 
getting used by other people as well it becomes a mappable bus stop.

> What about buildings? Many of them are also "physical manifestations
> of those" and not visible from public land. I would still consider
> them as mappable and verifiable - we can do this using aerial images
> and so on.

Land ownership is not a meaningful criterion - otherwise huge parts of 
the map would need to stay empty.

Houses serving as private homes are subject to interaction with society 
in general on a larger scale for example:

* by serving as an orientation point for navigation
* by being the target of mail and package delivery
* by being the target of door-to-door salespeople
* by being the target of trick-or-treating
* by being a place to walk up to and ring to ask for directions if you 
are lost or for help in case of an emergency.

> I would say that if someone has a private island it is still
> perfectly fine to map buildings, driveways*, garden areas there -
> even if sole source of map data is an aerial image.
>
> *leading from private palace to a private dock, not connected to
> any public road.

Practically such places are usually subject to quite significant 
interaction with society in general - like for example staff, 
craftspeople, construction workers etc.  As a whole and in its larger 
structures like you mentioned i do not see how this would typically 
qualify as physical manifestations of activities of *individual* 
humans.  Just because an individual pays for larger scale activities 
does not necessarily make these activities those of that individual.

The private island case is limited simply by basic practical 
verifiability.  What you can see on imagery taken from outside is 
verifiable, everything else is not.  Actual privacy issue (like someone 
doing detailed indoor mapping with the help of a telescope) is probably 
less an issue here than for an individual house.

Or in other words:  Rich people cannot claim a larger scope of privacy 
just because they can own and fence in a larger area of land.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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