Comments on: Are the Show Us A Better Way winners safe from Ordnance Survey?

By: The Ordnance Survey For Sale?

The Ordnance Survey For Sale? — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:16:46 +0000

[...] had to change, that point we all came around to agree on. The Sunday Times suggests tomorrow that the Ordnance Survey along with other state owned [...]

By: Yep Sport » Blog Archive » iFreeThePostcode

Yep Sport » Blog Archive » iFreeThePostcode — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:04:03 +0000

[...] way geographic and demographic research in the UK can be effectively disseminated to the public. Worries about viability of some of the bright ideas in Show Us A Better Way is a case in [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:27:08 +0000

@Peter: I think you’re falling into the trap of equating “tracing a map” (copying points/lines/areas of interest marked on the map) with a *licenced* use of OS mapping as a reference tool to find the grid co-ordinates of a point already known to the user. One is derivation of OS-copyright data, the other is not. The OS can’t change that just by issuing public statements.

The Internet doesn’t change this fundamentally, as David’s examples demonstrate. If anything it makes it easier for the OS to play hunt-the-infringement, as they can simply surf the Web looking for maps.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:57:01 +0000

@OS without going on and on about issues: to me your main problem is you image and the perceived attitude that the OS are the ‘party poopers’. You need to make clear guidance, stop the legal talk, and show us good examples that you fully support and how that came about, please. Then change your rules…
@Charles – great feature in today’s paper, some it up nicely.
@Andy and David – tracing a map or making your our version based from OS information, even just using it to locate thing, always invoked copyrights which the OS team would look at and approve. All publication are covered by this, the problem now is with the Internet the publishing world rules don’t exist or are impossible to police.

By: David Earl

David Earl — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:25:54 +0000

In their letter, Ordnance survey says “if you capture a polygon or a point or any other feature using any Ordnance Survey data, either in its data form or as a background context to the polygon/point/other feature capture, this would constitute derived data.”

So the tens of thousands of books, magazines and so on that have published grid references over the last hundred years as a means of identifying where photos were taken or in describing rambles etc. are infringing OS copyright.

Don’t you have to defend copyright, though, in order for it to be valid. OS hasn’t sued everyone (anyone?) who has geolocated a photo or a walk or whatever in print, has it?

By: Richard Fairhurst

Richard Fairhurst — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:41:55 +0000

Incidentally, OS now appears to have admitted that they have no rights over the National Grid to/from lat/long conversion, as they’ve released a JavaScript library to do that – under the uber-permissive BSD licence.

By: TP

TP — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:00:35 +0000

@Ordnance Survey: Not exactly sure what you have cleared up with your last post, but sounds like you need to change your business model!

By: Ordnance Survey move raises political stakes » Faceblog.CN - New Concept Blog in Web2.0 Times

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:42:55 +0000

[...] council, Surrey Heath, has already started: one employee, James Rutter, commented on the Free Our Data blog that: “OpenStreetmap provides us with a very flexible platform to put ’stuff’ on [...]

By: ippimail.com » Blog Archive » Ordnance Survey move raises political stakes

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:34:46 +0000

By: Ordnance Survey move raises political stakes | Technology | The Guardian

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:34:14 +0000

[...] avoid OS.Still not happyOne council, Surrey Heath, has already started: one employee, James Rutter, commented on the Free Our Data blog that: “OpenStreetmap provides us with a very flexible platform to put ’stuff’ on to that we are [...]

By: OrdnanceSurvey

OrdnanceSurvey — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:41:04 +0000

Just to clear up any misunderstandings…

Any Police Force can display our data on the web to show crime information within the terms of their current licenses. Many are already successfully doing so and we will continue to support them. We are also supportive of the opportunities offered by platforms like Google Maps. We believe that geographic information in any form is a useful tool to aid communication with the public.

However, the current Google Maps licence grants Google the right to reproduce, modify, publish and distribute royalty-free, any data displayed in conjunction with their mapping.

Ordnance Survey operates primarily though our business partners in this area and it is important that we provide equivalent terms to each of them so they can continue to maintain vibrant businesses. Providing unconstrained rights would be seriously detrimental to the work they do.

Ordnance Survey’s business model allows us to maintain a highly accurate and up-to-date mapping infrastructure but this is not compatible with the granting of in-perpetuity royalty free license terms.

We are in ongoing dialogue with Google and are aware that they did recently revise their terms. However, these changes have not significantly addressed the problem and the rights granted to them. We have given feedback to Google and we are working hard to find a resolution that satisfies the needs of all the parties involved.

In relation to the “Show us a Better Way” competition, Ordnance Survey is very committed to supporting the winning entries and developing their proposals. We are working with the organisers of the competition and are offering extensive support to all the competition winners.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:00:12 +0000

@James again: The link you gave is to a closed user group – and they won’t let me join! Could you summarise?

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:34:00 +0000

@James – as Richard says, while the OS may have claimed to own the Grid, they’ve never successfully made that stick in court. As I understand it the counter-argument is two-pronged:

(1) The Grid is an idea – a formula for creating a grid covering the UK, not a copyrightable work as such. In theory they could have *patented* it, but they didn’t. Even if they had, the patent would have expired many years ago, and anyway they didn’t come up with the formula themselves, they got it from a friendly academic.

(2) Even *if* it were accepted that the Grid was copyrightable, it’s appeared on published maps since the 1930s (complete coverage by the 1950s) so the copyright would have expired by now.

Interestingly, if you look around the OS website you will find plenty of copyright notices about the maps, but none for the National Grid.

By: Richard Fairhurst

Richard Fairhurst — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:24:40 +0000

There is no way that OS owns rights to the National Grid (though yes, they have claimed to!). It was introduced in the 1930s. Ordnance Survey copyright expires after 50 years, as we have used to good effect at npemap.org.uk.

By: James Rutter

James Rutter — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:17:25 +0000

@Andy – what you’ve said about OS not owning the rights to the georeferencing system is contrary to what I’ve just read here…

http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/186214/forum/thread.do?id=1028368

OS claims it does own the national grid and any coordinate transformation algorithms….they just don’t charge licence fees for them….yet!