[Foundation-l] Copyrighted maps and Derived works from copyrighted sources.

[jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> In a message dated 4/1/2010 12:24:31 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com writes:
>
>
>> As I said, the selection of these coordinates is a work, and if you
>> dont have any image available you cannot do so.
>> What is the contract between you and google to use this data? Are you
>> sure that you are allowed to just take the points and relicense them
>> under the CC-SA?
>>
>> The sat images are not 100% facts, they are just one point of view.
>> and just using one single source of information is not  a good idea.
>> Even one point may not be a problem, but if you select all the
>> interesting points then you run into issues of collections and
>> databases.
>>
>> I think the argument "points are facts" is too simple, we need to
>> understand where these points come from.
>>
>> mike >
>
> _-----------------------------
>
> Mike your argument rambles about.

Yes that is true. There are many issues to cover here. We should take
our time and go through the issues.

> Citing a fact is not creating nor denying a copyright claim at all, and I
> do not need anyone's permission to cite their work.  Zero.

And to gain access to this work? What about the contract that binds
your usage of that work? It can go above and beyond copyright.

> And whatever license they think they have with me is not applicable to me
> citing their work as a source for something.

So you can sign an NDA to gain access to some data and then go about citing it?

You can just take any map data you have any access to at all and copy
points out of it for wikipedia? I think no.

The point is that there are no publicly available and reliable sources
of free sat data. All useful ones are bound by strong contracts that
prohibit may usages.

For the openstreetmap project this is a big issue.

> Citing is not copying.

We are not citing here, is there any citation for the location
information in WP?
I dont see that people are citing their map sources, if they did we
could at least check then. The location tag has no information on
where the data came from and there is not any check on that.

Citing a large portion of a database is also no longer a citation. At
what point does it become a copy? Where is the boundry? I think it is
not clear at all.

> The images *might* be copyright, and I say might because I don't know from
> where they got them.

I have shown you how you can see the source of images in GE, and all
the highres sat photos are copyrighted. There are no other sources
unless you go out there and collect the data yourself.
I have been working with umapped areas of the world, and I know how
hard it is to get data for that.
If we could just take the googleearth data and just trace over it, it
would make our lives so much easier.
So that is why I am pushing this issue here.

> If their own source to an image is a U.S. government satellite image or
> some other PD-released image, then they cannot copyright it.
And again, the highres photos where you can see the individual
buildings and items are not available, if they were, we would not even
be having this dicussion.

> The location points in the image, are not the image.  The points
> themselves, the lat/long points of some object like a bridge or whatever you're doing,
> are not copyrightable items.

But the access to the google database of points and the images are
restricted by a terms of usage take away more rights than just plain
copyright law.  By using the service you agree to the terms of
service.
first you need to get access to the image, then it needs to be placed
on the map, then you need to identify and name the features. All of
these things require creative human effort, and all of them are
subjective and can be wrong. None of those things are "facts" they are
interpretations of things and need to be treated with a degree of
error. You cannot bet your life on the locations in google earth.

> Copyright implies an artistic creation of
> something, not a slavish compilation of facts no matter in what form.

The human effort here is to find the location from a sat image, it
cannot be done by a computer very well.
These are not slavish compilations of facts, but require higher brain
functions. The collection of all the points on the map also create a
collection that has protection. We are not talking about individual
points, but what amounts to a mass export of data from google.

Why does googemapmaker require that you grant them rights to your work
if they can just take them anyway?

> So please address one issue at a time.
> You do not need to know where a point comes from, in order to use it free
> of copyright restrictions.

And what about 100k points that are all extracted from high resolution
google maps?
What if these points are all off by a certain degree?
How can you say that a single source of data is correct?

>You might *want* to know in order to *cite* your
> source, but you can do that without the need to care about copyright
> restrictions anyway.
Again, we are talking about the contract between the user of the
online map service to begin with. It is stronger than copyright law.

> We constantly cite copyrighted sources in Wikipedia.  We do not ask for
> permission to do so.  We do not *copy* those sources, we cite them.
> Large difference there.

Yes, I understand. But I don't see any citations for the map points or
any verifiability for them.

mike