Maemo Mapper Basemaps - Should I provide / host them?
May 31, 2006 on 10:19 am | In maemo, nokia770 |I have been playing with the maemo mapper application (without a GPS) and have found it to be useful. Google maps has done a really impressive job of providing a 2^16 level of detail for at least a few parts of the globe. I am really looking forward to the time when it is truly global, and includes roads and cities on all the continents, not just parts of north america (currently there is no real detail below USA) and most of europe, japan. Missing are any detail in South america, africa, australia, asia, the former USSR countries, and the middle east.
My quandary is that on one hand the content is owned, licensed, distributed, and all rights reserved, etc on the map content (and the corresponding map tiles) by Google. Simply stated, i don’t believe that it is legal for me to download and host these files, no matter how much I acknowledge and proclaim that Google owns them. However, on the other hand, i know that bandwidth and hosting costs. Everytime we download the same set of map tiles, Google pays for the cost of hosting and delivering the respective files. Out of respect for Google, I also feel we should do what we can to minimize this resource burden on Google.
Perhaps this is a bit of peeking into Pandora’s box, but I have written a script to download and correctly structure the Google map tile files for Maemo Mapper. I currently have several of the high levels in nice tar.gz files suitable for loading on the 770 as a basemap for Maemo Mapper. I even went so far as to write another script to prune out the completely monochrome files (representative of a featureless part of some ocean - 301 bytes), and then package up the remainder.
The question that I throw out is this - Should I provide these base map files to the community? I do not believe that i should provide the scripts, since then we would be abusing the ownership rights and the resource rights (by providing the means for thousands of people to download wholesale from the map tile server).
I look forward to some comments / opinions.
thank you
ubergEEk
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Firstly, Australia does now have road maps of all the major cities and even some (although not as detailed in the countryside).
I wouldn’t be hosting the maps for Maemo Mapper due to legal reasons, also google has huge infrastructure so I don’t think the usage of maemo mapper will really amount to much compared to the rest of the traffic they see.
Comment by Peter — May 31, 2006 #
Don’t. All of that material is copyright by someone. That someone is mostly not Google, but a company whose main business is selling rights to map data. Even if Google doesn’t have the will to sue you, those companies do…
Comment by Jussi Kukkonen — May 31, 2006 #
I would agree with you if we were talking about a small or no-profit service provider. Google is making money basically “selling” _your_ (as well as mine, and everyone’s) information. Being credited as the right’s owner is enough from my point of view. Of course I’m not sure if that’s enough from a legal perspective.
For sure hosting such images would expose you, as well as any potential mirror, to some legal trouble. So, basically, my answer is: man, don’t even think about hosting those images.
Also, I agree with Peter, when he says Google infrastructure is big enough to suppoort a some more requests.
I’m more concerned about supporting Maemo Mapper development.
What I guess would be great to have, are those download/convert scripts you were talking about. I would be happy to give ‘em a try!
Comment by William Maddler — May 31, 2006 #
the scripts! the scripts! give us the scripts! that what will really make Maemo Mapper great!
Comment by William Maddler — June 1, 2006 #
Perhaps making your own bash scripts is like crafting your own lightsaber.
Comment by Junior — June 1, 2006 #