Dear all, On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 03:18:14PM +0300, Albertas Agejevas wrote: > I hope this is the right place for these matters. > > I have found evidence that user Pranas seems to have uploaded lots of > Google Maps/TeleAtlas data into OSM.
So, almost 6 months have passed since my alert about the obvious data transfer from TeleAtlas to OSM. Since then we have exchanged a dozen of emails with Andy Robinson. However, nothing appears to have been done in terms of removing even the most obviously copied data out of the database. As far as I know, the original offender has responded to Andy's requests, but failed to provide GPS tracks for most areas he has mapped. Andy informed me that after the Pranas account has been suspended, around 50 accounts were registed in a short amount of time. Copies of TeleAtlas data continued to appear in OSM, with 2 - 3 users working on each town, more in larger towns. Now most Lithuanian towns and cities have been copied. When I contacted him, the user who started the upload did not claim he has a permission to upload the data, later to Andy he ostencibly claimed that he has the tracks he made with the friend. None of the later sock puppet accounts ever responded to my messages. In my original email, I provided a planned network of streets that is not yet there on the ground, although has made it to the TeleAtlas data already, and got copied into OSM: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&ie=UTF8&ll=56.00042,21.08855&spn=0.017158,0.040641&t=h&z=15 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=56.00042&lon=21.08855&zoom=15&layers=B00FTF I have verified with people who go there often that these streets are not there yet. The area looks the same as captured on the Google satellite imagery. There are some more houses along the existing streets, but the new streets have not yet been built. There's one more very obviously copied place in Kanunas: http://www.maps.lt/map/query.aspx?action=showobject&objID=simple%24x5b213221f85f6bfa http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=54.923282,23.942063&spn=0.004452,0.010418&t=h&z=17 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=54.923&lon=23.9422&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF The satellite photos and GIS-Centras (state mapping company) data demonstrate that a part of the park has been converted to residential housing at least several years ago, However user gediminast1 mapped paths that match those in Google Maps data and going right through houses built in the area! Here are some of the user names that have been used to upload the suspect data: kazlauskas gediminast1 janina1 musi_ke fonasgraoz darinabod lazzymoon btnb4683 povilas lordesvona vejuvejas gorygary johtmoris When I last checked, none of these had anything on their user page, and have uploaded no traces. Grep for them in the Lithuania excerpt (http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/europe/lithuania.osm.bz2): each of them has been used just for two-three times to upload several tens or hundereds of ways. I am bringing this up in the public forum again as our correspondence with the OSMF secretary Andy Robinson appears to have no results. On 7 October 2008 Andy informed me that OSMF was going to ask these 50-ish suspect users to provide proof that they are legitimate contributors and delete their data if no satisfactory response had been received in 7 days. However, as you can see from my examples above, 4 months past the copied data is still in the database. I'm afraid that this can damage the whole project, or at the very least the Lithuanian dataset I'm working on. If you are not, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony#Song_credits http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs#OS_vs_AA Best regards, Albertas _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk