FREEMAP: free mapping for walkers/cyclists + a couple of questions - Page 3

Russ wrote on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 23:46:14 -0000....
> Why do we need a web based mapping system showing UK
> rightsof way and landscape features available free when
> we've got www.multimap.co.uk - admitedly you can't use
> their maps on a web site but it does cover the whole of
> the UK at full 1:50,000 scale.

You can't use their maps on a website of your own, but you
can link to an appropriate map on Multimap's site (or
Streetmap's).

--
Tim Jackson news@winterbourne.freeserve.invalid (Change
'.invalid' to '.co.uk' to reply direct) Absurd patents:
visit http://www.patent.freeserve.co.uk

"PJD" <pjd@trygonianospam.com> wrote in message
news:404e7546$0$22387$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
>
> > However if you're the sort of person who illegally
> > copies all their software and downloads all their music
> > for free then I could see how you'd feel it was
> > extortionate monopolistic pricing.
>
>
> And if you're the sort of person who makes malicious
> inferences about someone you do not know, you're not
> worthy of a debate. Please retract.

OK that was over the top and I apologise but given what you
get how on earth do you feel that the digital OS data is
extortionate monopolistic pricing, any cheaper and it'd be
free in comparison with other software or similar products.

Russ

"Russ" <russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ua43i1-s0m.ln1@mercury.vispa.net.uk...
>
> "PJD" <pjd@trygonianospam.com> wrote in message news:404e7546$0$22387$cc9e4d1f@news-
> text.dial.pipex.com...
> >
> > > However if you're the sort of person who illegally
> > > copies all their software and downloads all their
> > > music for free then I could see how you'd feel it was
> > > extortionate monopolistic pricing.
> >
> >
> > And if you're the sort of person who makes malicious
> > inferences about someone you do not know, you're not
> > worthy of a debate. Please retract.
>
> OK that was over the top and I apologise but given what
> you get how on
earth
> do you feel that the digital OS data is extortionate
> monopolistic pricing, any cheaper and it'd be free in
> comparison with other software or similar products.

Arguably the pricing is extortionate, as we the British
taxpayer paid for the surveying in the first place, for the
numerous government agencies that need it. There's an
argument that it should be available for free, as, I
believe, is the case in the US.

"Russ" <russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message
news:q722i1-c6d.ln1@mercury.vispa.net.uk...
>
> "Tim Jackson" <news@winterbourne.freeserve.invalid> wrote
> in message
> news:MPG.1ab8256b150d1b5f98a1b3@news.freeserve.net...
> > Nick Hopton wrote on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 15:53:28 +0000....
> > > You'll see that this isn't an entirely serious
> > > contribution to this thread, but consider this.
> > >
> > > I've just bought Fugawi UK (South), which has a
> > > feature that allows
you
> > > to draw a track on an OS map and then send it as track
> > > points to a
GPS.
> > > As I walk this track the original track points are
> > > gobbled up and replaced by new ones generated by the
> > > GPS.
> > >
> > > So, the question is, at the end of this walk, who
> > > holds the copyright
to
> > > the new track? And how is this different in copyright
> > > terms from a
track
> > > derived directly by drawing it on the Fugawi OS map?
> >
> > In both cases, you own any copyright in the track. The
> > track wasn't on the map before you started, and it was
> > you that produced it, not the OS or Fugawi.
> >
> > The only problem would be if you also wanted to
> > reproduce stuff derived from the map, *in addition* to
> > your track.
>
> AIUI you're wrong - the first track is derived directly
> from the OS data
on
> the map (by tracing over mapped RoW's) and you may only
> use this for your own personal use - ie navigating the
> route you've traced.
>
> However when navigating the route you are also surveying
> it and would discover any of the 'deliberate' mistakes OS
> include in their data to spot such things (they won a
> court case based on this some time ago) and you
then
> own the data and the copyright in it on your new
> surveyed track.

The actual case (assuming you mean the OS vs. The AA) was
based on the way the data was presented rather than any
inaccuracies in the data, which the OS strongly claimed it
kept exactly accurate, watermarking the cartography instead.

> Would be a lot easier and quicker to scan in and then trace over out of
> copyright maps like they've done at http://www.roughrides.co.uk

Where do I get out of copyright maps from though? Also,
they would have to be stored as an image file -
significantly less efficient than the vector-based database
approach I am taking/

> Why do we need a web based mapping system showing UK
> rightsof way and landscape features available free when
> we've got www.multimap.co.uk - admitedly you can't use
> their maps on a web site but it does cover the whole of
> the UK at full 1:50,000 scale.

You said it - licencing restrictions. multimap,
streetmap and the rest have restrictive terms and
conditions - not good.

> Your line maps will never be good enough to navigate by -
> people will still need an OS map or a tracklog downloaded
> to their GPS so I still can't see what you're providing
> that will make it worthwhile people contributing and using
> - by all means enjoy yourself developing it but I still
> feel that your premise (that there's a demand for this) is
> flawed but I do wish you well and hope it takes off.

If people want to look up (+ print off) maps of a given
area, or even use them to illustrate their own walks, it
will I feel be very useful. The maps will be accurate enough
for people to see "where they are going" - and - if people
have local knowledge - "issues" such as blocked paths,
difficult fields etc could be annotated.

Nick

in message <qp12i1-2fb.ln1@mercury.vispa.net.uk>, Russ
('russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk') wrote:

> Given the surveying time and expense that goes into it and
> the fact that I can buy full digital 3D mapping at
> 1:50,000 scale including full height data, full GPS
> support, route planning facilities and more besides
> covering half the country (Thats UK not England) from
> Anquet for £120 quid or the whole of england from
> tracklogs for £125 or a very large local region (16
> regions cover GB) for £40 (cheaper than most chart
> playstation games) then I reckon cheap and OS data do
> belong in the same sentence.

I think there's actually a point of principle here.

It relates to a long fight that I've been peripherally
involved in regarding tidal data. Brief summary: there is an
excellent program I've used for many years called 'XTide'
which calculates tide times, based on tidal harmonics which
have been calculated from data collected over the last two
hundred years by a wide range of bodies. XTide was, in the
old UN*X tradition long before Linux came along, software
which was distributed for free as one person's contribution
to the common weal. Then, about five years ago, the UK
Hydrographic Office claimed to own all tidal harmonic data
for the UK, and threatened to sue the author. Consequently,
for several years it you couldn't get UK harmonics for
XTide. Now, however, volunteers have recalculated the
harmonics from the base data, and once more you can.

What the OS is essentially trying to do is privatise part of
the information commons. They are trying to say that
geographic data about the UK belongs to them, and they have
a right to charge for it. I reject this absolutely.
Geographics data about the place we live is a commons,
something we all have a right to use. If we need to set up a
volunteer effort to remap our own country, in order to take
back the commons from the peopel who are trying to privatise
it, that is a very valuable thing to do - but it's only a
valuable thing to do if the people who collate it make it
completely clear that the collected data is open and free
for everyone to use.

> However if you're the sort of person who illegally copies
> all their software

If you're the sort of person who illegally copies software
then you'll illegally copy the Anquet program and the OS
data. It's the sort of person who _does_ _not_ illegally
copy software who cares about recreating the data set from
original data.

--
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke)
http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

'graveyards are full of indispensable people'

"Ambrose Nankivell" <$FirstnameInitialofSurname$@onetel.net.uk> wrote in
message news:c2mr0n$1v5kqh$1@ID-93953.news.uni-berlin.de...
>
> "Russ" <russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in
> message news:ua43i1-s0m.ln1@mercury.vispa.net.uk...
> >
> > "PJD" <pjd@trygonianospam.com> wrote in message news:404e7546$0$22387$cc9e4d1f@news-
> > text.dial.pipex.com...
> > >
> > > > However if you're the sort of person who illegally
> > > > copies all their software and downloads all their
> > > > music for free then I could see how you'd feel it
> > > > was extortionate monopolistic pricing.
> > >
> > >
> > > And if you're the sort of person who makes malicious
> > > inferences about someone you do not know, you're not
> > > worthy of a debate. Please
retract.
> >
> > OK that was over the top and I apologise but given what
> > you get how on
> earth
> > do you feel that the digital OS data is extortionate
> > monopolistic
pricing,
> > any cheaper and it'd be free in comparison with other
> > software or
similar
> > products.
>
> Arguably the pricing is extortionate, as we the British
> taxpayer paid for the surveying in the first place, for
> the numerous government agencies
that
> need it. There's an argument that it should be available
> for free, as, I believe, is the case in the US.
>

I've heard this argument a lot before and while I have some
sympathy with it I wonder how far you'd take this - should
WH Smith be giving the OS maps away for free in their high
street stores? should the tax payer *continue* to finance
the OS so that the few who want its products can benefit at
the expense of the many who don't need them? It's apolitical
argument, personally I like to choose where I spend my money
rather than have it forcibly taken away from me and have a
politician choose where it's spent, others may differ but
digital mapping is hardly a necessity like say education or
the health service.

Personally, given that the OS licence of the software
products available is a tiny fraction of the cost of the
cost of the software which gives huge added value as well I
don't have a problem with paying the equivalent of a coupe
of tanks of petrol for mapping of the whole of the South of
GB (most of England) or the cost of a playstation game for
my locality covering
1/16th of GB.

Russ

"Tim Jackson" <news@winterbourne.freeserve.invalid> wrote in message
news:MPG.1ab88bda6459038298a1b6@news.freeserve.net...
> Russ wrote on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 23:53:11 -0000....
> > AIUI you're wrong - the first track is derived directly
> > from the OS data
on
> > the map (by tracing over mapped RoW's) and you may only
> > use this for
your
> > own personal use - ie navigating the route you've
> > traced.
>
> OK, having thought some more about it, I think you're
> right in that situation, but it would depend what exactly
> you're doing. Let's take a few slightly different
> situations to illustrate what I mean.
>
> 1. First let's take the situation you pose. Suppose you
> choose a footpath shown on the on-screen map, which
> the OS had surveyed. You deliberately click points
> along that footpath at intervals corresponding to
> every 25 metres on the ground, aiming to capture the
> route it takes. Then you join up the dots and publish
> the result.
>
> Now you've got a drawing the form of which is derived
> from what you see on the map. There might perhaps be a
> legal issue as to whether the footpath you've copied
> amounts to what copyright law calls a "substantial
> part" of the original map. But I agree it's likely
> that it would, and that you are therefore infringing
> the OS copyright.
>
> 2. Next, suppose you do the same as in 1. But as well as
> your joined-up dots, the document you publish also
> takes other features from the underlying map, to show
> the context of the route. I think the more features
> you include, the clearer it is that you are taking a
> "substantial part" of the map, removing any slight
> doubts there might have been about infringement. (If
> you add embellishments of your own as well, then you
> will also have a separate, new copyright of your own,
> but that doesn't change the position as regards the OS
> copyright.)
>
> 3. Now take a different (but admittedly artifical)
> situation. Suppose you choose an area of open country
> on the map, and just click a series of points *at
> random*. Then you publish a page which shows just the
> points in the positions you clicked, perhaps with
> lines joining them, but with no data derived from the
> map itself. Then what you've got is an abstract
> drawing which you yourself drew in its entirety. You
> would own the copyright in that, and since it doesn't
> correspond to anything in the underlying map it
> wouldn't infringe OS copyright.
>
> 4. Taking point 3 a bit further, suppose you click a
> number of points in the area of open country, but this
> time not at random. You are making up a route of your
> own across the area. It doesn't correspond to any path
> shown on the map. You join up the dots and publish the
> resulting track. Does that infringe OS copyright? I
> don't believe it does, for the same reason as in point
> 3. It doesn't correspond to anything you see on the
> map. And you yourself will own the new copyright which
> will probably exist in the track. This is the
> situation I really really had in mind in my previous
> post.
>
> 5. Next suppose that instead of clicking on a footpath or
> open country, you click on the positions of a
> significant number of features shown on the map, such
> as hilltops, buildings, villages, etc. You label each
> point appropriately and publish the result. I think
> that would infringe the OS copyright: you've made a
> simplified copy of the map.
>
> 6. Now take the situation in 5, but you only click on two
> points, corresponding to a car park and a hilltop,
> say. Does the resulting drawing infringe OS copyright?
> I don't think it does. All you've got is two unrelated
> points on a page. Since there's no surrounding
> contextual information, they could be anything.
> There's nothing of substance derived from the map. And
> I think the position would be the same even if you
> added labels to the points, giving the names of the
> hilltop and the car park. Two points with no
> surrounding context to relate them to each other don't
> make a "substantial part" of a map, in my view.
>
> 7. Finally, what if we combine the non-infringing
> situations of points 4 and 6 above? You produce a
> track, made up by you yourself and not copied from any
> path on the map. The start and end points are the car
> park and the hilltop, and perhaps you label them
> accordingly. Does that infringe OS copyright? No, I
> don't think so, since you've still not done anything
> that amounts to reproducing a substantial part of the
> original map. Who owns the copyright in this new
> track? You
> do.
>
> It seems to me that the track produced in point 7 only
> becomes an infringment of OS copyright if you start
> adding other features taken from the map. Maybe that
> would be necessary to make the result useful in
> practice, but it wasn't part of the hypothetical
> situation posed in Nick Hopton's previous post.

You're not doing much more than using grid refs to transfer
to a graphical representation and as such there can be no
argument that you are (not) in contrvention of copyright,
but it's a fairly useless exercise in terms of rights of way
and therefore a mute point.

I think the original situation was based on rights of way
(or at least paths on maps)

Anyway I think we've covered that now and are in agreement

Russ

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:17:41 -0000, Russ
<russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

>
> "Ambrose Nankivell"
> <$FirstnameInitialofSurname$@onetel.net.uk> wrote in
> message news:c2mr0n$1v5kqh$1@ID-93953.news.uni-
> berlin.de...

>> Arguably the pricing is extortionate, as we the British
>> taxpayer paid for the surveying in the first place, for
>> the numerous government agencies
> that
>> need it. There's an argument that it should be available
>> for free, as, I believe, is the case in the US.
>>
>
> I've heard this argument a lot before and while I have
> some sympathy with it I wonder how far you'd take this -
> should WH Smith be giving the OS maps away for free in
> their high street stores?

Clearly not. It is the *data* that should be free not every
hardcopy representation of it. There is added value in
having a well-printed map for which many would be prepared
to pay. It is also possible to licence the commercial
reproduction of the data without restricting the right of
access to the data for personal use.

> should the tax payer *continue* to finance the OS so that
> the few who want its products can benefit at the expense
> of the many who don't need them? It's apolitical argument,
> personally I like to choose where I spend my money rather
> than have it forcibly taken away from me and have a
> politician choose where it's spent, others may differ but
> digital mapping is hardly a necessity like say education
> or the health service.

I would suggest that digital mapping data is vital, these
days, in the building of new hospitals and schools and in
the building and maintaining the infrastructure to
support them.

Colin
--

Nick Hopton <hopton@dsl.pipex.com> wrote in message news:<J0foBEH4heTAFwgb@local.mail>...

> I've just bought Fugawi UK (South), which has a feature
> that allows you to draw a track on an OS map and then send
> it as track points to a GPS.

I don't know how good the software is, but for a mapping
company the name is inspired. :-)

--
Dave...

In a recent message
<57db8bde.0403100402.4ce56e71@posting.google.com>, Dave Kahn
<dkahn400@yahoo.co.uk> wrote.

>> I've just bought Fugawi UK (South), which has a feature
>> that allows you to draw a track on an OS map and then
>> send it as track points to a GPS.
>
>I don't know how good the software is, but for a mapping
>company the name is inspired. :-)

That is, I'm told, exactly where the name came from!

Regards, Nick.

--
Nick Hopton and Anne Hopton Caversham, Reading, England
<hopton@dsl.pipex.com

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 02:26:41 -0000, Tim Jackson wrote:

>Russ wrote on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 23:46:14 -0000....
>> Why do we need a web based mapping system showing UK
>> rightsof way and landscape features available free when
>> we've got www.multimap.co.uk - admitedly you can't use
>> their maps on a web site but it does cover the whole of
>> the UK at full 1:50,000 scale.
>
>You can't use their maps on a website of your own, but you
>can link to an appropriate map on Multimap's site (or
>Streetmap's).

Which is what I've done on my site. I used to use streetmap
for 1:50k but they made it awkward to link to that scale
(problems with the OS licence) and so I now use multimap.
However there are occasions when I would like a bigger 1:50k
than 4x5km. I would also like to overlay my route onto a map
and there isn't a way of doing that for all browsers. There
is a way of doing it for Netscape, but not IE :-( - unless
anybody knows differently of course.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the
"Westminster Gasworks"

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 02:26:41 -0000, Tim Jackson wrote:

>Russ wrote on Tue, 9 Mar 2004 23:46:14 -0000....
>> Why do we need a web based mapping system showing UK
>> rightsof way and landscape features available free when
>> we've got www.multimap.co.uk - admitedly you can't use
>> their maps on a web site but it does cover the whole of
>> the UK at full 1:50,000 scale.
>
>You can't use their maps on a website of your own, but you
>can link to an appropriate map on Multimap's site (or
>Streetmap's).

Which is what I've done on my site. I used to use streetmap
for 1:50k but they made it awkward to link to that scale
(problems with the OS licence) and so I now use multimap.
However there are occasions when I would like a bigger 1:50k
than 4x5km. I would also like to overlay my route onto a map
and there isn't a way of doing that for all browsers. There
is a way of doing it for Netscape, but not IE :-( - unless
anybody knows differently of course.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the
"Westminster Gasworks"

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:16:55 -0000, "Russ"
<russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote (more or less):

>You're not doing much more than using grid refs to transfer
>to a graphical representation and as such there can be no
>argument that you are (not) in contrvention of copyright,
>but it's a fairly useless exercise in terms of rights of
>way and therefore a mute point.

Aaaargh!! /MOOT/ point! /MOOT/ point!

<pant, pant>

Okay, venting rant over. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Cheers, Euan Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122 Smalltalk
links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk)
http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:16:55 -0000, "Russ"
<russellspamjunknothanks@tiscali.co.uk> wrote (more or less):

>You're not doing much more than using grid refs to transfer
>to a graphical representation and as such there can be no
>argument that you are (not) in contrvention of copyright,
>but it's a fairly useless exercise in terms of rights of
>way and therefore a mute point.

Aaaargh!! /MOOT/ point! /MOOT/ point!

<pant, pant>

Okay, venting rant over. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Cheers, Euan Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122 Smalltalk
links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk)
http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk