[OSGeodata] FOIA and VMAP1 anyone?

[Putler, Dan]

Hi All,

It strikes me that the issues of ESRI's copyrighted material in VMAP0  
is similar to the issues concerning the world country border layer  
that is presented by Schuyler in Mapping Hacks, and is available from  
the mappinghacks.com site.  There are some differences between the  
detail of the layers (with VMAP0's 1:100000 resolution appearing to  
be somewhat more detailed), but the basic nature of the content is  
fairly similar. Was ESRI contacted to gain approval for the use of  
the layer prior to the publication of Mapping Hacks (which seems to  
constitute a commercial use)? If yes, it would seem logical to  
contact the same folks at ESRI concerning their content in VMAP0.

Dan

On 10-Jul-06, at 8:36 AM, Jo Walsh wrote:

> dear Ned,
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 09:14:18AM -0400, Ned Horning wrote:
>> I forgot to ask about the VMAP0 copyright issue. What exactly is the
>> question? The license agreement is in the readme file. If there are
>> questions about what can be done with these data isn't it an issue of
>> interpretation of the license? Wouldn't a lawyer be a better place  
>> to start?
>
> K, the question here is the extent to which datasets derived from
> bits of VMap0, possibly combined with other more 'open' (in terms of
> rights to freely re-use and redistribute) datasets, are subject to
> 'infection' in license terms by non-commercial use clause such as
> ESRI dictates for its 'intellectual property' within VMap0.
>
> I agree this is partly a question for a lawyer; OpenStreetmap are also
> grappling with the general question of 'derived works'. But this is
> also a specific question for NGA because -
>
> * Markus mentioned in the last meeting he has seen some wording
> associated with VMap0 that suggested license restrictions did not
> apply. I think this may have been a missing-context problem - for
> us.mil 'Limited distribution' means something specific re. geodata -
> but it makes sense to check.
>
> * The VMap0 readmes are at once very specific and very vague about
> exactly what is copyright ESRI in VMap0:
>
> [[ These features are the Boundaries Coverage (bnd) edge features
>  representing administrative unit boundaries that have an FACC code
>  (f_code) of FA000 and an attribute value of 26 in
>  the USE field - First Order Administrative Division features.  Also
>  included are Boundary face features with an FACC code (f_code) of  
> FA001
>  and an  administrative unit name present in the NAM field.  Within  
> the
>  Reference  Library (rference) the Library Reference (libref),  
> Place Name
>  (placenam), and Political Boundary (polbnd) Coverages also contain  
> intellectual
>  property of ESRI. ]]
>
> That political boundaries 'contain intellectual property of ESRI' is
> a broad answer for a lot of data, which in the worst case OSGeo would
> be unable to redistribute if we wanted to maintain a "truly open" data
> policy guaranteeing rights to reuse and redistribution without  
> hindrance.
>
> Maybe it's logic chopping to push it this far. Asking ESRI is an
> interesting idea! I am curious now as to what their response would be.
>
>> I'm no expert on these maters so maybe I'm missing the point?
>
> Me neither! Perhaps formalised expertise is overestimated. Emphasis on
> open license as guarantee of or constraint on freedom, is legally  
> untested.
> An effort such as http://freedomdefined.org/Definition takes a
> tangential approach. Like the Free Software Definition it very
> specifically includes a clause "it *must not* limit commercial use of
> the work" that must appply to free/open data.
>
> I don't know how others feel about including non-commercial use
> licensed data in an "open" geodata repository. I don't necessarily
> want to spend a lot of time talking about it! (For personal preference
> / IANAL reasons, not dictatorial reasons ;) ) And that's the main
> reason I would like to know, from NGA or ESRI, *exactly* what, not
> just generally what, ESRI claims copyright on inside VMap0, so it
> could if necessary be removed / replaced with other more 'open'  
> sources.
>
> cheers,
>
>
> jo

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