Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Regards Arjuna
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc@gmail.comwrote:
Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data inherits google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog mentions the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal.
It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig a little more. -Arun
Regards Arjuna
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I would assume that the "data" they are referring to is the user-generated content on their website. They cannot license the maps themselves under CC BY-SA since those are licensed to them by Google.
See below:
Terms of Service:
[...]
F. All User Submissions of all users and all Wikimapia Data are freely available for commercial and non-commercial use under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future WikiMapia services. G. Public use of Wikimapia Data and it's derivatives requires special conditions: a. Link to Wikimapia data original url, if viewed from any web browser b. Mention of "Wikimapia.org" (with a link to http://wikimapia.org, if viewed from any web browser)
Extracted from their terms of service:
http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc@gmail.com wrote:
Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data inherits google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog mentions the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal.
It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig a little more. -Arun
Regards Arjuna
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-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
I would assume that the "data" they are referring to is the
user-generated content on their website. They cannot license the maps
themselves under CC BY-SA since those are licensed to them by Google.
So this would be placemark text descriptions and not the geographical coordinate data. that would make sense. In any case, its a very misleading announcement of no real value to wikipedia.
And the text itself has been added from various sources and cannot be considered clean. In many instances you will find text and images from wikipedia articles in there. So they were actually holding cc-by-sa content i their database under a cc-by-nc all this while. The map data will continue to be copyright as far as I see it.
See below:
Terms of Service:
[...]
F. All User Submissions of all users and all Wikimapia Data are freely available for commercial and non-commercial use under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future WikiMapia services. G. Public use of Wikimapia Data and it's derivatives requires special conditions: a. Link to Wikimapia data original url, if viewed from any web browser b. Mention of "Wikimapia.org" (with a link to http://wikimapia.org, if viewed from any web browser)
Extracted from their terms of service:
http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala <
arjunaraoc@gmail.com>
wrote:
Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data
inherits
google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog
mentions
the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal.
It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig a little more. -Arun
Regards Arjuna
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-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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Just so that everyone here is on the same page, Wikimapia is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, the US-based non-profit which operates Wikipedia and other sister projects.
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
I would assume that the "data" they are referring to is the
user-generated content on their website. They cannot license the maps themselves under CC BY-SA since those are licensed to them by Google.
So this would be placemark text descriptions and not the geographical coordinate data. that would make sense. In any case, its a very misleading announcement of no real value to wikipedia.
And the text itself has been added from various sources and cannot be considered clean. In many instances you will find text and images from wikipedia articles in there. So they were actually holding cc-by-sa content i their database under a cc-by-nc all this while. The map data will continue to be copyright as far as I see it.
See below:
Terms of Service:
[...]
F. All User Submissions of all users and all Wikimapia Data are freely available for commercial and non-commercial use under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future WikiMapia services. G. Public use of Wikimapia Data and it's derivatives requires special conditions: a. Link to Wikimapia data original url, if viewed from any web browser b. Mention of "Wikimapia.org" (with a link to http://wikimapia.org, if viewed from any web browser)
Extracted from their terms of service:
http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc@gmail.com wrote:
Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data inherits google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog mentions the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal.
It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig a little more. -Arun
Regards Arjuna
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-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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Last time I checked, wikimapia was a 2-D vector drawing drawn collaboratively on top of a map layer. And in wikimapia you can choose to use a map layer other than Google. OpenStreetMap is there in the options. Even on selecting that, the "Google" icon stays in the bottom left next to the scale, but that doesn'y mean anything - clicking on it simply takes one to the same location on google maps.
I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google. They do not belong to any private entity. Longitudes and latitudes have been used as a universal commons for centuries now, and even Google uses them, without paying any royalty to anybody, to position the right tile at the right place. They are used by all GPS enabled devices as well. The aeronautical industries, shipping industries, as well as all militaries used them as essentials without paying any royalty. On wikimapia, i guess they form the x,y co-ordinates using which 2-D drawings are drawn.
So Duh, of course the lat-long co-ordinates of the vectors drawn will stay with the vector drawings. It's common sense. So the CC-BY-SA license then has merit. And if there's any hurdle that blocks this from happening, then, duh again, the hurdle needs to be fought and removed. Latitude and longitude are universal commons - they are as much anyone's private property as planet Earth is.
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India http://www.nikhilsheth.tk http://www.facebook.com/nikjs
On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:59 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
Just so that everyone here is on the same page, Wikimapia is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, the US-based non-profit which operates Wikipedia and other sister projects.
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com
wrote:
I would assume that the "data" they are referring to is the
user-generated content on their website. They cannot license the maps themselves under CC BY-SA since those are licensed to them by Google.
So this would be placemark text descriptions and not the geographical coordinate data. that would make sense. In any case, its a very
misleading
announcement of no real value to wikipedia.
And the text itself has been added from various sources and cannot be considered clean. In many instances you will find text and images from wikipedia articles in there. So they were actually holding cc-by-sa
content
i their database under a cc-by-nc all this while. The map data will
continue
to be copyright as far as I see it.
See below:
Terms of Service:
[...]
F. All User Submissions of all users and all Wikimapia Data are freely available for commercial and non-commercial use under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future WikiMapia services. G. Public use of Wikimapia Data and it's derivatives requires special conditions: a. Link to Wikimapia data original url, if viewed from any web browser b. Mention of "Wikimapia.org" (with a link to http://wikimapia.org, if viewed from any web browser)
Extracted from their terms of service:
http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc@gmail.com wrote:
Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=9878#p194763
A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects.
Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data inherits google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog mentions the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal.
It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig
a
little more. -Arun
Regards Arjuna
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-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google.
Wikimapia is a tool for geocoding - allowing someone to derive coordinate values from some source, in this case, copyright satellite imagery or maps . So along with imagery rectification and map mistakes, you will also inherit license restrictions with any derivative work.
All the content on wikimapia will continue to remain on wikimapia with no option to download or export the data. That will violate the google maps service policy on which it was built..
10.1.3 Restrictions against Data Export or Copying.
(a) No Unauthorized Copying, Modification, Creation of Derivative Works, or
Display of the Content. You must not copy, translate, modify, or create a derivative work (including creating or contributing to a database) of, or publicly display any Content or any part thereof except as explicitly permitted under these Terms
https://developers.google.com/maps/terms
With even OSM map layer being available, who's to tell from where were the vectors derived? What if one knew, through use of handheld GPS device, the exact latitude-longitude co-ordinates of the 4 corners of one's school campus and used that to map one's school on wikimapia? How can Google convincingly prove then that each and every single spot is derived only and only from google map imagery and nothing else? What if the google map layer was only THERE by default but the user didn't give it a crap while mapping the location? There's quite a lot of google maps's own vectors that are placed wrong you know... I've corrected a few myself.
Anyways, I don't think this is something worthy of debating. Such short-sighted rules even if legit by some convoluted logic are quite worthy of being flushed down the toilet. What's next, will Google say I'm not allowed to ask travel directions to a place to a roadside paanwaala because it can claim that each and every direction to any place in the world is derived from google maps only and so I should consult google maps only to get to where I want to go? Will it ban me from sharing the location details of my son's birthday party venue over a event on FB unless I share them exclusively in the form of a google map link? (Btw, google does not pay royalty to any of the landmarks it mentions in its directions app... ohh, major lawsuit!!)
Developed world and our pseudo intellectuals can continue getting cowed down by fear, but I don't think the developing world is going to give a damn. If a rule goes against common sense, would you ditch the rule or ditch your common sense?
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India http://www.nikhilsheth.tk http://www.facebook.com/nikjs
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.planemad@gmail.comwrote:
I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates
of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google.
Wikimapia is a tool for geocoding - allowing someone to derive coordinate values from some source, in this case, copyright satellite imagery or maps . So along with imagery rectification and map mistakes, you will also inherit license restrictions with any derivative work.
All the content on wikimapia will continue to remain on wikimapia with no option to download or export the data. That will violate the google maps service policy on which it was built..
10.1.3 Restrictions against Data Export or Copying.
(a) No Unauthorized Copying, Modification, Creation of Derivative Works,
or Display of the Content. You must not copy, translate, modify, or create a derivative work (including creating or contributing to a database) of, or publicly display any Content or any part thereof except as explicitly permitted under these Terms
https://developers.google.com/maps/terms
-- j.mp/ArunGanesh
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The short reply is, if you dont like google and their terms of service, dont use it! Its a little unfair to use someone's service and then call them villain if you did not read or like the fine print.
The primary issue with wikimapia is that google derived data is mixed with direct user contributions that are copyright free. Because there is no way to separate the two, the whole database is a mess of free and non free data of varying accuracy.
Coordinates based on google maps has already made its way into wikipedia articles thanks to the geocoding tool[1]. There is now no way to check for accuracy or authenticity of this data. What was the source of these coordinates? A field survey or user knowledge, or blatant copying from a copyright map? One will never know, nor is there anyway to easily fix the mess.
[1] http://tools.freeside.sk/geolocator/geolocator.html
Arun, is it necessary that I have to use Google map for finding the coordinates? The last few times, I added coordinates to Wikipedia, I got the coordinates which were present on OSM and Twitter for BlackBerry, nether of which rely on Google
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan < parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
Arun, is it necessary that I have to use Google map for finding the coordinates? The last few times, I added coordinates to Wikipedia, I got the coordinates which were present on OSM and Twitter for BlackBerry, nether of which rely on Google
Umm no, you could get coordinates however you want, but from what i've seen people tend to rely blindly on google because its the least effort.
Ultimately, users contributing coordinates need to make sure that the coords they are adding is accurate. The assumption that google maps is a trusted map source is highly problematic. I just randomly checked the coords for an article - Puzhal [1], a suburb of Chennai. The coordinates in the article exactly match the the location in gmaps. How did that happen?
Anyone trying to verify the accuracy of coordinates in wikipedia will find that gmaps shows the exact same position. Its a feedback loop which validates errors thrown into it. Not good.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzhal
-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
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What are the odds that the Google coordinates on Wiki are complety out of place? I know that quite often it is incorrect, but I trust Wikipedians to have a sense me judgement that tells them what is actually correct.
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:12 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan < parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
What are the odds that the Google coordinates on Wiki are complety out of place? I know that quite often it is incorrect, but I trust Wikipedians to have a sense me judgement that tells them what is actually correct.
I can talk from personal experience. I was one of the first people to start adding coordinates to articles of Indian places, sometime around 2007/8 when wikiproject geographical coordinates started picking up steam. There were lot of villages in Tamil Nadu, where I blindly picked the location shown on google maps (as there really was no other source at that time). After an initial mapping spree, I gave up on the task because it was too tedious at that time. This is roughly the same time I discovered the openstreetmap project and realized my mistake with copying blindly from existing maps.
The coordinates I had added may have possibly been incorrect (I really dont know and there was no way for me to verify them). But by now the error has already gone back into google maps and the position stands validated because its the same coords on wikipedia.
Imagine the irony if map services with the correct position is now seen as being inaccurate because wikipedia states otherwise. Just like article citations, even coordinates must have some indication of the source. The current system is just faulty.
-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
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As far as Indian places are concerned, can't coordinates be sourced from Census data?
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