The format with which they appear on the net makes them hard/very hard to copy. Contacting may be only option

I'm not sure what the legal issues would be with taking them straight off the net, anyway. It looks like the BBC means free as in beer, not speech. While the copyright on a 16th century map has almost certainly expired, the scanned version of it might be copyrighted (I'm no expert, but I'm sure someone here can tell me whether or not scanned images are copyrightable). The site doesn't seem to say what the copyright status is.

It's probably best to contact them directly.

Do you have a url?

Nina

On 1/11/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

On 1/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

...

...

The format with which they appear on the net makes them hard/very hard to copy. Contacting may be only option

I'm not sure what the legal issues would be with taking them straight off the net, anyway. It looks like the BBC means free as in beer, not speech.

I doubt the BBC has even considered it.

...

While the copyright on a 16th century map has almost certainly expired, the scanned version of it might be copyrighted (I'm no expert, but I'm sure someone here can tell me whether or not scanned images are copyrightable).

The case under US law we generaly cite is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_Ltd._v._Corel_Corporation

scanned images have not been found to be copyrightable underUS law.

...

It's probably best to contact them directly.

Since getting them off the website would involve rather a lot of work yes. However it would probably be better if someone in the US did it. -- geni

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On 1/11/07, Nina Stratton ninaeliza@gmail.com wrote:

Do you have a url?

Nina

Da it is included in the BBC article.

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/mapsofafrica/

If no one else does it, I'll try to get on this tonight.

Nina

On 1/11/07, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:

Actually, I was shown this last night and it is possible to get the full resolution images at full size, you just have to mess around with the url a bit (basically, zoom in all the way, and at some point it says fullimage=false, and you just change it to fullimage=true). The images are huge and beautiful.

One might argue, however, that since the edges of the paper are shown, they are images of three dimensional objects; however if someone is really worried about that they could just cut off the margins, although that decreases the value of the images somewhat.

I think this /is/ something that it's conceivable the foundation could get sued over (IANAL), however in this case I think we'd be in the right, previous case law has gone with our side, and I think it's worth it to assert the larger communities right to freely see and use works which have entered the public domain. Also, can you just imagine how many images this would affect if the Foundation decided to get rid of all images which are similar to this (high quality images of closely held public domain two dimensional works)? We might as well shut down commons if that's the decision.

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geni <geniice@...> wrote:

...

"A collection of rare maps of Africa, dating from 1530 to 1915, has been made available for free on the internet by Northwestern University in the US. " Is this something we should be storing too? I think we should at least make an effort to contact them about it...

The format with which they appear on the net makes them hard/very hard to copy. Contacting may be only option

Actually, they are not hidden at all and copying couldn't be much easier. Links to high resolution TIFF files of the maps are readily available on the information page of each map, after clicking on "More information". There are 113 maps, some of them on multiple sheets (files). I tried to download one and got a 8000x7000 TIFF of 100MB with a decent speed. I can't imagine why such archive files would be given if not for reuse.

-- para

On 12/01/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

What I do wonder about is the ethical question around wholesale copying of another site filled with free material. They have a role too in whatever niche they find. They are already in compliance with our mission to keep such information free. They have a role in the open access market. There can be valid reasons for the wholesale copying.of these databases; preservation redundancy could be one. Still, just because an act is legal does not mean that that same act is ethical.

Has anyone, uh, called them up, said "hi" and asked for anything important we would need to know to mirror the maps on Commons? I would be very surprised if we didn't have a pile of contributors and supporters at any university of decent size ...

Of course, attribution as reasonably desired would be polite to detail on the image page - "thank you" costs very little and goes a long way.

- d.

My point was not about permissions. It even assumes that we will receive all the permissions we want. It's about why we are better suited to carry this material than Northwestern U. It's about the ethics of a Borg-ism that indiscriminately vacuums up all the material it can find.

Ec

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

I think Nina Stratton was going to ask, but I could've misunderstood what she was talking about. Perhaps it would help to ask someone with more press experience to talk to them, so they may have heard about the Wikipedian: David?

On 1/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

On 12/01/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

What I do wonder about is the ethical question around wholesale copying of another site filled with free material. They have a role too in whatever niche they find. They are already in compliance with our mission to keep such information free. They have a role in the open access market. There can be valid reasons for the wholesale copying.of these databases; preservation redundancy could be one. Still, just because an act is legal does not mean that that same act is ethical.

Has anyone, uh, called them up, said "hi" and asked for anything important we would need to know to mirror the maps on Commons? I would be very surprised if we didn't have a pile of contributors and supporters at any university of decent size ...

Of course, attribution as reasonably desired would be polite to detail on the image page - "thank you" costs very little and goes a long way.

Matthew Brown wrote:

On 1/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

My point was not about permissions. It even assumes that we will receive all the permissions we want. It's about why we are better suited to carry this material than Northwestern U. It's about the ethics of a Borg-ism that indiscriminately vacuums up all the material it can find.

I'm not sure that this is a matter of us thinking we're a better host than Northwestern U for anyone else. It's us thinking that for our own use, we're a better host than them, because having a local copy is good. Because they might move their stuff in future or even take it down. Lots of reasons that for our own purposes, taking our own copy is useful.

Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on an item by item basis. Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire corpus of maps when we only have use for a few? Even the argument that something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and not base it on unfounded speculation. There are some sites, not major universities, where this would be a worry. A site where there has been no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.

We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its industry. We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred to as W*******a because of our dominance. I think that it's important to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free access to information. That requires maintaining the respect of other members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their efforts. The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are put in a position where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.

Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own actions. Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they imposed through fear of arbitrary ounishment. Ethics involves a willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.

Ec

gwern branwen wrote:

On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on an item by item basis. Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire corpus of maps when we only have use for a few? Even the argument that something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and not base it on unfounded speculation. There are some sites, not major universities, where this would be a worry. A site where there has been no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.

Licenses and technical details can change at any time. We aren't really hurting for disk space, and why shouldn't Commons host all sorts of Free media suitable for reference works like Wikipedia, even if they aren't being used at that exact moment? Hosting them means further exposure and archival - Wikipedians may see the maps who would never have visited the university map, backups of Commons will also entail backups of their content (and dumps of Commons are much more common than dumps of that site), etc. And it's not like it's all that difference - a wget or curl, and then one of the mass upload tools, or something like pywikipedia's imageharvest.py.

Further, how does our mirroring their content *hurt* them? They are not a commercial enterprise; ostensibly they are devoted to the development and spreading of knowledge and information. Leaving out entirely the issue of them being a university (even though they are private, they are still subsidized through tax breaks and funding and that sort of thing) and thus the American tax-payers on this list having a right to the material, our mirroring would seem to only further their mission.

...

We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its industry. We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred to as W*******a because of our dominance. I think that it's important to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free access to information. That requires maintaining the respect of other members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their efforts. The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are put in a position where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.

People hate Microsoft for many reasons, but mostly because of what it did to achieve that dominance and what it does (or doesn't do) with all the money and power that position entails. They hate the crappy software, the lack of security and usability, the high fees, the overreaching DRM and legalities, the illegal business practices, the standards it destroys and monetizes for its own gain, the lack of innovation, and so on and so forth. I don't think the actual dominance itself is the issue. It makes all the reasons I listed much more pressing than the equivalent criticisms which could be leveled against, say, Apple, but it is not itself the reason. Wikimedia foundation projects dominating could be bad if we *abuse* it. But if Wikimedia foundation projects are dominant because the infrastructure is stable and capable of achieving what is asked of it, if they are dominant because they have so much content already, if there is a good community already there, if various network effects reward contributing to foundation projects, etc. then why is it a bad thing?

...

Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own actions. Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they imposed through fear of arbitrary punishment. Ethics involves a willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.

Ec

--Gwern

What's amazing is that you should go through a long response without once referring to ethics, while ethics was the single most important point in my comments.

The list of specific enumerated sins of Microsoft may indeed be a factor, but underlying this is a much broader disconnection from ethics. This litany of wrongdoing has not harmed Microsoft sales. Your projection of a self-centered and self-righteousWikimedia You say, 'Wikimedia foundation projects dominating could be bad if we *abuse* it.' That's fine. But how will you know when that abuse is happening? How will you recognize when that domionance will have been transformed into bullying?

The argument based on the rights of the American taxpayer smacks of cultural infantilism. I don't for a second deny that the United States Constitution provides such rights, but please forgive those of us outside of that country when we choose to consider other values to be more important than personal rights.

Ec

Aude wrote:

We should think about how the maps would be useful for us. Simply mirroring the content doesn't add value. How can we add value to them, by combining maps and other information (maybe into a map/timeline for particular places that we have articles for)? For example, we could show how the political/colonial boundaries changed over time for the continent as a whole or for regions. It might be a useful supplement to articles to develop some form of online, historical atlas about places.

It may be possible to georeference some of them, so that they can be viewed in a GIS/web mapping service, to work with them on adding value integrating different sources of information, and begin to synthesize information into a digital atlas format. We could combine maps available from Northwestern, with other sources (e.g. Library of Congress, other map libraries). The University of Texas and Penn State map libraries come to mind as other places with treasure trove of materials that are not online yet.

The value-added concept should be a most important one for us. Simply copying a map file doesn't do this.

I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling disturbed by the vast number of younger people who now sit before their computers seeking information there without ever looking elsewhere. When they see huge icebergs they ignore the fact that an even bigger part of that giant is submerged.

Ec

geni wrote:

On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on an item by item basis. Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire corpus of maps when we only have use for a few?

There are very few things we need to do. In this case the reason is why not?

IOW you support indiscriminate inclusio. The action of The Borg is justifiec because it is gentler than that of The Daleks.

...

We all love to hate M*******t,

partly because it dominates its industry.

Plently of other industries have been dominated to the same degree without the same level of disslike.

Perhaps I should be asking for examples. Then I can probably find evidence that contradicts those examples. Such a process would be of little value because that would be _other_ industries. Ethics cannot be guided by weighing the actions of others to see haw many are roght and how many are wrong.

...

We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred to as W*******a because of our dominance.

Nah people will find plently of other reasons to disslike us. They already do.

You want them to have more?

...

I think that it's important to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free access to information. That requires maintaining the respect of other members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their efforts.

How many flicker images do we have these days anyway. One of the common values of provideing free stuff is seeing it reused.

That's true enough, but we aren't copying the entire corpus of flickr material. We use it when there is a reason to use it.

...

The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are put in a position where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.

Why would they need to do that? What do people lose by haveing their material on wikimedia projects?

You see a key part of the vission of free material is that others will use it. There are probably near 1000 sites that use large chunks of wikimedia material.

Some do so ethically, and some don't. Whether any of them are acting legally would be a different question. The loss that the original host may suffer is an intangible one. We strip them of their competitiveness. When they produce material, and we scoop it all we are telling them that their effort is not important. We care only about their end result. This strikes me as a powerful disincentive to further efforts on their part. A major university is more likely to take that in stride than an individual who has poured his heart into his efforts.

One common practice that I have observed in the software industry (and others as well) is the tendency to let the little guy expend the risk capital needed to bring an idea into reality. If the idea fails it's his loss. If the idea succeeds Big Co. can pay handsomely for the results to insure that it does not have to deal with this innovator as a competitor. This process saves Big Co. the need to fund risky ventures.

We are not offering payouts. But we need the little collaborator as much as he needs us. His survival is an integral part of our mission. Following a policy of taking just because the law says that we have that right is not the way to build a collaborative environment.

...

Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own actions. Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they imposed through fear of arbitrary punishment. Ethics involves a willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.

That would really rather depend on the system of ethics. Calling your morality an ethical system does not make it so.

You confuse morality and ethics. Circumscribing ethics into a "system" imposes an undue restriction on them.

Ec

geni wrote:

On 1/14/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

...

geni wrote: IOW you support indiscriminate inclusio.

Not exactly. I don't support say radom party photos. However scans of historic documents are worth includeing.

Agreed. For a better explanation, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope

...

The action of The Borg is justifiec because it is gentler than that of The Daleks.

Daleks don't appear in star treck.

The better comparison would be between the Daleks and the Cybermen...

On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:

My point was not about permissions. It even assumes that we will receive all the permissions we want. It's about why we are better suited to carry this material than Northwestern U.

Since we are not stopping them from carrying it it is irrelivant.

On 1/11/07, SPUI drspui@gmail.com wrote:

geni wrote:

...

On 1/11/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:

...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6250225.stm

"A collection of rare maps of Africa, dating from 1530 to 1915, has been made available for free on the internet by Northwestern University in the US. " Is this something we should be storing too? I think we should at least make an effort to contact them about it...

Mgm

The format with which they appear on the net makes them hard/very hard to copy. Contacting may be only option

I've had some success with hacking the URL, but it likes to break randomly:

http://ansel.library.northwestern.edu/ImageServer/index.jsp?action=&res=...

It may also be possible to get at the stored jpeg2.

$ wget -r http://fedora.library.northwestern.edu/inu-afrmaps/

This would seem to work. You simply have to follow the proxy server's redirect to find the original directory, which is fortunately publicly viewable. I however do not have the spare disk space to check that this would download them all - the 148 files would eat up a distressing amount of space.

--Gwern