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.