On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
A good counter example is the use of OpenStreetMap after the Haiti disaster.. it is based on the same kinds of data that is put into doubt in a different context.
That was done only after OSM received explicit permission to use that data.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Imagery_and_data_source...
We did not receive this permission for the flooding in Albania that I am working on, if we could use the images then that would make our work much simpler. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/AlbanianFloodingCrisisCamp
Just because it is good publicity for a company to donate data to a high profile disaster does not mean that you can use other data for other smaller disasters.
How would these companies be in business if you could just extract all the vector data from the sat photos as you wish? If that was so, I could also extract the street data from the google earth using a contour program, or extract certain colors and create and compare streets based on that.
That is against against OSM policy.
A friend of mine has created a bullet point list of the major issues here, I will include it for further discussion:
* Using data from google maps is a contract law issue, not a copyright issue ** Anyone mass publishing google derived data could be in breach of Google's T&C's ** Anyone using the information afterwards isn't in breach of contract ** Re-use is dependent on the jurisdiction and copyright the information is released under.
* Wikipedia has strong policy on accepting images only freely usable ** The same can't be said for data, wikipedia has data from dubious sources ** Data uploaded from google services may be in breach of google's terms on mass distribution
* While facts aren't protected under copyright under some jurisdictions ** Databases of facts can be protected under EU law and wikipedia operates in various EU jurisdictions ** By not having a strong policy on all content wikipedia may open themselves up to being liable
mike