I see from the latest Focus that the OS has backed down in a small part of its "land-grab" attempt to copyright all mapping ever made in Britain - removing maps made from photogrammetric plots from its list of OS copyright material.
During their "negotiations" (which sounded like "sign this or else") with BOF they claimed the National Grid was OS copyright and that as a photogrammetric plot probably used 4 or 6 height points from an OS map it was theirs to claim copyright on - a map that probably had several million points of information contained in it.
My thoughts are - did their "negotiators" know these points were wrong or were they lying and hoping no one would notice and their grab of all mapping in Britain would be allowed to continue unchecked?
The OS are under pressure to make money - but the way they go about it by imposing unfair and plainly wrong licence agreements is morally wrong and possibly criminal. I for one hope someone, sometime has the time and guts to take them to court and check their greedy grasping tendencies.
Long live free map information - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/free-our-data
OS changes mind over copyright
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Following the original announcement of the new contact between British Orienteering and the OS I was concerned about about the future of RouteGadget in the UK (and club websites that show map examples). So I made enquiries to the OS directly to clarify the matter.
I managed to get an email from the OS that confirmed that they had no claim on maps produced from PG plots.
I sent a copy of this to Mike Hamilton to help in the battle to get better terms from the OS, so I'm pleased to see that that has now been clarified officially.
I also sent a document from "The British Cartographic Society" (Aug 1997). Which includes a Q&A with the OS. In which there is a specific statement from the OS, "The National Grid is copyright free".
There were some other interesting points of conflict that could have been written yesterday rather than 1997.
12 years later, and we seem to have made no real progress in opening up the use of OS data in orienteering maps without having to jump through hoops and pay unreasonable licence fees every single time a map is used or displayed.
All this at a time when maps are available on just about every website/phone/gps etc. and most of the time, FREE!
I managed to get an email from the OS that confirmed that they had no claim on maps produced from PG plots.
Ordnance Survey wrote:Thank you for your email, dated 16 June 2009, regarding your orienteering maps.
I can confirm that if these maps are not based on Ordnance Survey mapping or information then Ordnance Survey has no copyright claim on them so you would not require any kind of licence from us.
I hope this information is of use to you and I thank you for contacting Ordnance Survey.
I sent a copy of this to Mike Hamilton to help in the battle to get better terms from the OS, so I'm pleased to see that that has now been clarified officially.
I also sent a document from "The British Cartographic Society" (Aug 1997). Which includes a Q&A with the OS. In which there is a specific statement from the OS, "The National Grid is copyright free".
There were some other interesting points of conflict that could have been written yesterday rather than 1997.
12 years later, and we seem to have made no real progress in opening up the use of OS data in orienteering maps without having to jump through hoops and pay unreasonable licence fees every single time a map is used or displayed.
All this at a time when maps are available on just about every website/phone/gps etc. and most of the time, FREE!
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Disclaimer - This reply comes from a copyright/legal/financial perspective, without knowledge of the specific BOF/OS negotiations and not intended to say who is right or wrong.
My suspicion is that OS weren't claiming copyright in the national grid, but rather the actual grid references for specific locations. Copyright is highly unlikely to exist in the concept of the national grid (and so there can no ownership), but it almost certainly exist in actual data (e.g. the grid reference/altitude of a particular feature). Use of that data without permission would infringement the copyright in the data. A key question would be whether a 'substantial part' of the data had been copied (otherwise there is no infringement) - this is difficult to argue since the OS data contains a huge quantity of information, but for the area concerned the small part of the data taken is the only relevant part, so all of the relevant data is used. I expect this is the basis on which the negotiations were performed, but the detail got lost in the reporting as it's a horribly complex and hard-to-describe legal minefield.
The reason mapping is available free to uses on websites/phones/gps is because the provider of the service has paid the relavent licence fees and they make money by selling more advertising/charging more for the device than they have to pay out in licence fees.
At the end of the day, there is cost associated with the creation of the map data which has to be covered by someone, which may be by the OS selling their data to users, or by taxpayers funding the OS. If all of the OS data were made available for free to anyone how would maintenance of the data be funded?
My instinct is that the OSM project is the way forwards for orienteering events on relatively small areas.
Kev
My suspicion is that OS weren't claiming copyright in the national grid, but rather the actual grid references for specific locations. Copyright is highly unlikely to exist in the concept of the national grid (and so there can no ownership), but it almost certainly exist in actual data (e.g. the grid reference/altitude of a particular feature). Use of that data without permission would infringement the copyright in the data. A key question would be whether a 'substantial part' of the data had been copied (otherwise there is no infringement) - this is difficult to argue since the OS data contains a huge quantity of information, but for the area concerned the small part of the data taken is the only relevant part, so all of the relevant data is used. I expect this is the basis on which the negotiations were performed, but the detail got lost in the reporting as it's a horribly complex and hard-to-describe legal minefield.
The reason mapping is available free to uses on websites/phones/gps is because the provider of the service has paid the relavent licence fees and they make money by selling more advertising/charging more for the device than they have to pay out in licence fees.
At the end of the day, there is cost associated with the creation of the map data which has to be covered by someone, which may be by the OS selling their data to users, or by taxpayers funding the OS. If all of the OS data were made available for free to anyone how would maintenance of the data be funded?
My instinct is that the OSM project is the way forwards for orienteering events on relatively small areas.
Kev
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
kcordina wrote:If all of the OS data were made available for free to anyone how would maintenance of the data be funded?
This is a fair point, I'm happy to pay my £6:00 or whatever for an OS map because its worth it. If they have to rely on the chancellor/taxpayer to fund them, that's probably it for survey.
If I make a map from an OS base, then maybe I shouldn't distribute that. On the other hand, if I use the contours from the 1927 version from this site...
http://www.nls.uk/maps/os/popular_list.html
... then it's out of copyright.
Of course I wouldn't do that, 'cos the map would be crap, and I really wouldn't do that if it was a British Champs. Nope. Definitely not.
And if I used the National grid data from that out-of-copyright map to set up the PG plot...
My guess is that the OS are just chancing it - they'd have no hope of making it stick in court, but until someone challenges them they can claim what they like.
http://www.braidburnvalleypark.org.uk/orienteering/
So sue me...
Well, OK, I know the law's an ass and I can't afford a lawyer, so I'm only giving you one I made from a blank sheet of paper.
edit. FOCUS just arrived, Mike Hamilton says maps based on PG plot (i.e. most decent maps) can be freely used ... on a website.
Last edited by graeme on Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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graeme - god
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Perhaps the solution is to pay a one off fee to use an OS map as the base data for an orienteering map.
That way we all know where we stand and we don't need to maintain some complex logging of the amount of times a map is printed.
The trick will be finding an amount that is acceptable to us and the OS.
That way we all know where we stand and we don't need to maintain some complex logging of the amount of times a map is printed.
The trick will be finding an amount that is acceptable to us and the OS.
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
kcordina wrote:My suspicion is that OS weren't claiming copyright in the national grid, but rather the actual grid references for specific locations. Copyright is highly unlikely to exist in the concept of the national grid (and so there can no ownership), but it almost certainly exist in actual data (e.g. the grid reference/altitude of a particular feature). Use of that data without permission would infringement the copyright in the data.
Welcome to Nopesport, Kev.
You may well be right regarding that being how they were arguing - they may even have a case from a very strict legal standpoint. I can't see how there's any way at all for them to prove that GR/altitude for a particular feature comes from one of their maps though, given it's extremely straightforward to survey yourself with a GPS (which gives better accuracy than you could possibly get from any normal scale map). Certainly it would seem that's the way that surveying is usually done for OpenStreetMap, and I'm fairly sure OS aren't claiming any copyright infringement for that!
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Welcome to Nopesport, Kev.
Cheers, been lurking for a while, finally something I can contribute to!
can't see how there's any way at all for them to prove that GR/altitude for a particular feature comes from one of their maps though
Absolutely right. Companies producing copyrighted data of which it would be difficult to prove infringement (maps, tables of values) have included deliberate false information - if that appears in a copy then it's clear it's been copied. (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copy ... aster_Eggs)
given it's extremely straightforward to survey yourself with a GPS (which gives better accuracy than you could possibly get from any normal scale map). Certainly it would seem that's the way that surveying is usually done for OpenStreetMap, and I'm fairly sure OS aren't claiming any copyright infringement for that!
Any recreation of the data is perfectly fine - even if you come to precisely the same data set, provided it wasn't obtained from the OS data your fine. As you say, the OSM project uses surveys based on GPS tracks, and also satellite image photos which can be traced to form a map.
Kev
Kev
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Much of the data in OS maps is neither derived from OS survey nor all that accurate… True, the topographic mapping derives from historical OS survey (paid for by the taxpayer), though anyone who does enough hill-walking will have encountered areas where it appears the surveyors sat in the pub and made it up.. But the periodic revisions of surface detail on OS maps are generally derived from the incorporation of datasets shared by other government agencies – the OS doesn’t go out and resurvey new roads or houses, it uses information provided by developers as part of the planning process.
And this isn’t just urban – it affects tens of thousands of hectares of plantation forestry: if you are a landowner/manager and you want to plant a forest, you have to provide Forestry Commission Scotland with maps in order to comply with Environmental Impact Regulations and apply for woodland creation grants, and then the info gets passed on and incorporated into the next Landranger edition or whatever (regardless of whether the trees have grown or were even planted…).
I know, because there’s a couple thousand ha of woodland on OS maps which derives from maps I’ve drawn as part of the process above – and I certainly don’t remember signing away my copyright to the OS Of course this process throws up quality issues too: I’d like to think my mapping was pretty accurate, but there’s plenty of woodland blocks out there where the OS map is a best a rough indication of the location of the forest…and I know of one case where an FCS woodland officer testing out his new GPS discovered that a plantation was on the wrong hill…
And this isn’t just urban – it affects tens of thousands of hectares of plantation forestry: if you are a landowner/manager and you want to plant a forest, you have to provide Forestry Commission Scotland with maps in order to comply with Environmental Impact Regulations and apply for woodland creation grants, and then the info gets passed on and incorporated into the next Landranger edition or whatever (regardless of whether the trees have grown or were even planted…).
I know, because there’s a couple thousand ha of woodland on OS maps which derives from maps I’ve drawn as part of the process above – and I certainly don’t remember signing away my copyright to the OS Of course this process throws up quality issues too: I’d like to think my mapping was pretty accurate, but there’s plenty of woodland blocks out there where the OS map is a best a rough indication of the location of the forest…and I know of one case where an FCS woodland officer testing out his new GPS discovered that a plantation was on the wrong hill…
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
The thought that raises is whether OS actually has any valid copyright claim on any data in their maps. The original data is presumably old enough that the copyright has expired, whilst they don't own the copyright for most of the revisions!
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
When the Cairngorm National Park was established the board (or their staff) sent details of the boundary to the OS. The National Park were then charged for using any map that incorporated the boundary as it was OS copyright - fair?
The OS have a history of obtaining information, usually for free, from other organisations and then charging the same organisations for using this data.
The OS have a history of obtaining information, usually for free, from other organisations and then charging the same organisations for using this data.
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
greywolf wrote:But the periodic revisions of surface detail on OS maps are generally derived from the incorporation of datasets shared by other government agencies – the OS doesn’t go out and resurvey new roads or houses, it uses information provided by developers as part of the planning process.
Not quite sure where this information comes from or which scale maps you are talking about but, as an ex-OS surveyor I can say I spent 32 years adding masses of new houses, roads, industrial units and everything in between to OS maps. Unless my ex-colleagues are telling 'porkies' that's what they still do!
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
Redpossum, we've gone full circle here. I also have it on good authority that the OS receives and uses data from local councils and other organisations (though I don't know if this includes the FC in England) relating to recent building developments and land changes. So although your ex-colleagues may not be telling porkies, they may be using non-OS data as a base map instead of surveying from scratch and this is exactly what orienteers want to do with OS contours.
But the grasping OS want it both ways. I always wondered if there was a tit for tat arrangement whereby in exchange for data received from councils, the OS waive copyright fees for other maps that councils want to copy and use. From what else has been said here, that is almost certainly not the case.
Back to Big Jon's original point, it might be possible to take any OS threats seriously if their maps were accurate in the first place. This posting that I made here 3 years ago still applies.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7071&start=8
So the major tracks on the Cawthorne 1:25,000 map are now over 60 years out of date irrespective of whether it is in or out of copyright. But I'd be quite happy to let the OS use my o-map of Cawthorne to update them, and I'd do the same for other areas, as long as copyright fees are waived thereafter.
It looks like the OS have become as arrogant and hypocritical as other government agencies and it may come as no surprise to find that the current DG/Chief Executive is paid £200,000 a year and the other 6 directors average £125,000.
Considering that most times you go to a works photo-copier and you see in the uncollected documents somebody's Streetmap location on an OS map section plus the fact that most people who regularly travel any distance now have a satnav, it's difficult to see how the declining number of people who still buy OS maps (excluding orienteers of course) can sustain these salaries, let alone those of the other staff members.
Whether we agree with it or not, we should all once again be grateful that BOF deal with the OS licence arrangement outlined in Focus on our behalf. But what we orienteers and by implication the OS should be most concerned about are commercial organisations who want to make big money out of our most important assets, our maps.
As I may have said on here before, as SYO's mapping officer, I receive requests for maps from people from time to time for use in activities or 'events' that are never fully described but imply that there is the possiblity that it will bring in new members to SYO and other clubs. It usually takes time researching what they really mean, and whether they are taking into account things like insurance, permissions and copyright.
I can't name any names, and I'm not talking about corporate days organised by o-clubs, but it often transpires that this commercial activity is really just a Catch 22 for orienteering, i.e. is there really a potential for new members, or is it only a profit making exercise by the firm on the backs of volunteer mappers or professional o-mappers paid by an o-club?
But the grasping OS want it both ways. I always wondered if there was a tit for tat arrangement whereby in exchange for data received from councils, the OS waive copyright fees for other maps that councils want to copy and use. From what else has been said here, that is almost certainly not the case.
Back to Big Jon's original point, it might be possible to take any OS threats seriously if their maps were accurate in the first place. This posting that I made here 3 years ago still applies.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7071&start=8
So the major tracks on the Cawthorne 1:25,000 map are now over 60 years out of date irrespective of whether it is in or out of copyright. But I'd be quite happy to let the OS use my o-map of Cawthorne to update them, and I'd do the same for other areas, as long as copyright fees are waived thereafter.
It looks like the OS have become as arrogant and hypocritical as other government agencies and it may come as no surprise to find that the current DG/Chief Executive is paid £200,000 a year and the other 6 directors average £125,000.
Considering that most times you go to a works photo-copier and you see in the uncollected documents somebody's Streetmap location on an OS map section plus the fact that most people who regularly travel any distance now have a satnav, it's difficult to see how the declining number of people who still buy OS maps (excluding orienteers of course) can sustain these salaries, let alone those of the other staff members.
Whether we agree with it or not, we should all once again be grateful that BOF deal with the OS licence arrangement outlined in Focus on our behalf. But what we orienteers and by implication the OS should be most concerned about are commercial organisations who want to make big money out of our most important assets, our maps.
As I may have said on here before, as SYO's mapping officer, I receive requests for maps from people from time to time for use in activities or 'events' that are never fully described but imply that there is the possiblity that it will bring in new members to SYO and other clubs. It usually takes time researching what they really mean, and whether they are taking into account things like insurance, permissions and copyright.
I can't name any names, and I'm not talking about corporate days organised by o-clubs, but it often transpires that this commercial activity is really just a Catch 22 for orienteering, i.e. is there really a potential for new members, or is it only a profit making exercise by the firm on the backs of volunteer mappers or professional o-mappers paid by an o-club?
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
From my experience of council planing departments (included having worked in one) I'd be a little concerned if they were considered a prime source of updates to the OS database. In a lot of cases the officers do not have the skills to survey at the level required, nor is the main purpose of their map making that of updating the OS database so its not fair to expect a perfect job.
Of greater worry for me is when the Tories win the next election they will turn straight to the few items of family silver left to try and fill the massive whole in govt. budgets. The OS (and FC) could well be sold to the private sector. Then we will see what rapacious really means.
Of greater worry for me is when the Tories win the next election they will turn straight to the few items of family silver left to try and fill the massive whole in govt. budgets. The OS (and FC) could well be sold to the private sector. Then we will see what rapacious really means.
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
If any club lets it most valuable assets, its maps, go to an outside organisation I would expect some sort of due dilligence. Generally schools and othe clubs (esp RAFO/BAOC) don't really present a problem, especially if that means another event to attend.
Commercial organisations should be treated as such. Great care must be taken to ensure that they don't compromise use of an area and expect them to pay a goodly sum for the ue of the map (I'm talking 3 figures just for a licence). Expertise to run the event should also be charged at a decent rate (BOF suggest a minimum of £15 an hour). They don't expect their caterers to do a very special rate - so neither should we. If you are lucky you may get new converts via this route, if not at least generate a bit of cash for clubs to fund their own methods of increasing participation.
Commercial organisations should be treated as such. Great care must be taken to ensure that they don't compromise use of an area and expect them to pay a goodly sum for the ue of the map (I'm talking 3 figures just for a licence). Expertise to run the event should also be charged at a decent rate (BOF suggest a minimum of £15 an hour). They don't expect their caterers to do a very special rate - so neither should we. If you are lucky you may get new converts via this route, if not at least generate a bit of cash for clubs to fund their own methods of increasing participation.
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Re: OS changes mind over copyright
[/quote]
. . as an ex-OS surveyor I can say I spent 32 years adding masses of new houses, roads, industrial units and everything in between to OS maps. [/quote]
As an ex-OS Data Collection directorate employee, I can back-up Redpossum's statement. The OS have their own specification for detail survey which is fundamentally different to at least one major developer which makes data sharing challenging, to say the least. The OS certainly surveyed their own data in the 1990s. Perhaps things have changed significantly in the last 10 years, but I would doubt it.
. . as an ex-OS surveyor I can say I spent 32 years adding masses of new houses, roads, industrial units and everything in between to OS maps. [/quote]
As an ex-OS Data Collection directorate employee, I can back-up Redpossum's statement. The OS have their own specification for detail survey which is fundamentally different to at least one major developer which makes data sharing challenging, to say the least. The OS certainly surveyed their own data in the 1990s. Perhaps things have changed significantly in the last 10 years, but I would doubt it.
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