[Gdal-dev] Google Earth Data retrieval

[Ben Discoe]

Nikolai,

Just so you know, scraping imagery from Google Earth is illegal in any
country which is treaty to copyright.  Those (c) copyright notices are
displayed in the GE window for a reason; any use of the imagery other than
for running GE is prohibited, and the act of removing those copyright
notices is a big no-no.  Keyhole/Google paid millions to license that data,
and they don't have the right to give it to you even if they wanted - they'd
have to go back and renogotiate a more liberal license or (like Microsoft
did recently with Vexcel) just buy a data vendor outright (which is not
Google's modus - they usually "organize the world's information", not
produce it or own it.)

That said, much like other copyrighted media, if you are using the extracted
images strictly for private, unpublished, noncommercial uses, you probably
won't get prosecuted.  It's still technically illegal, of course.  Perhaps
you could share what use you had in mind for the 'retrieved' images.

-Ben

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nikolai Vladychevski
> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:32 AM
> To: gdal-dev at lists.maptools.org
> 
> Hi,
> I would like to know if someone here (or knows
> someone) who made any tool to retrieve satelite pictures from 
> Google Earth into georeferenced images (geotiff or such) ??? 
> 
> Slightly off but interesting topic. 
> I will appriciate any comments