Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Kevin Kenny]

On 07/27/2017 12:23 AM, Brian May wrote:
As for legal use and permissions, always look to the state statutes 
that specifies handling of public records requests. That is always 
going to override anything at the county / local level. For example, 
in Florida, the state statute says no agency within Florida can ask 
for the reason of the request or even who is requesting the data 
(although it has to be sent somewhere!). No agency can exert 
copyright, etc. Any exceptions are spelled out in the statutes.


What would be great is a breakdown of each state listing any potential 
restrictions spelled out in state statutes. The big restriction is 
usually a state allowing a local agency (i.e. county) to exert 
copyright over specific data. Some states have specifically targeted 
GIS data as copyrightable by local agencies in an attempt at "cost 
recovery" for GIS data. If there are no restrictions on data, then you 
are wasting time asking for permission, etc at the local level.

And most states need a lawyer to interpret what the law means,
which may remain highly uncertain even after the interpretation.

In my case, the governing statute is https://www.dos.ny.gov/coog/foil2.html

Many GIS records, it turns out, are prepared under contract, and 87 2. (d)
specifically excludes records that are "submitted to an agency by a 
commercial
enterprise or derived from information obtained from a commercial 
enterprise
and which if disclosed would cause substantial injury to the competitive 
position
of the subject enterprise". (The intention of the law was to protect 
competitive

bidders for state contracts from having their proposals revealed to their
competitors prior to the close of bidding, and to protect trade secrets
disclosed to state regulatory agencies. That's not how it's worked out.)

Some state and county agencies have also tried to apply 87 2(f), which
excepts records that "if disclosed could endanger the life and safety of
any person". Post-9/11, that idea actually went somewhere - people
were convinced that if, for instance, New York City's enormous reservoirs
were mapped, the terrorists would poison them. (As if anyone with
a pair of eyeballs couldn't see where they are!) Railroads, power lines,
pipelines, and similar infrastructure were similarly defended.

Moreover, counties have, despite the statute, claimed that they are 
compliant

with the state law when they merely permit records to be inspected and
single copies made, while claiming that copies that do not originate from
them are unlawful.

This has actually been tested in court, in County of Suffolk v
First American Real Estate Solutions.
https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/court-rules-copyright-maps-does-not-offend-open-records-law
is a summary.

Subsequent to that decision, the New York State Committee on Open
Government issued an opinion that the GIS records were required to be
open. https://docs.dos.ny.gov/coog/ftext/f15695.htm

As as result, the New York State GIS Clearinghouse began asking counties
for their cadastral records. To date, only seven counties (plus New York
City's five boroughs) have complied. Most of the others point to the fact
that the Committee on Open Government is not a court and cannot
render a final decision as to what is or is not acceptable compliance with
the Freedom of Information Law. The committee's opinion is merely
advising the county of the legal position that the State of New York
Department of State would adopt.

Given the murky nature of the law, I don't touch NYSGIS records
in general. An exception has been for the boundaries of public lands,
where the State extracted these from county GIS records and
republished them as a whole, asserting that the counties could not
restrict its notifying the public about the boundaries of its own lands.
Otherwise, I think that caution demands getting explicit permission
(with the letter requesting the permission reminding the official
of the requirements of the Freedom of Information Law and the
2005 opinion of the Committee).

Even that approach is not entirely free from risk. There's always
the possibility that the official who grants the permission lacks the
authority to do so. Given the amount of infighting that appears to
be taking place at all levels of government, who's to say?

Nevertheless, I think that if permission has been obtained,
our exposure is fairly minimal. We'd surely have a credible defense
of 'innocent infringement' if we can provide documentary evidence
that clearance was sought and obtained from an agency that we
had a good-faith belief was the owner of the data.

Without permission, at least in my area, we're subject to the shifting
winds of legal interpretation. Contrary to what programmers often
believe, the legal code very often means something other than
what it appears to say. The black-letter law says that government
agencies must make their records available at the cost of copying
(with a few reasonable exceptions made 

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Brian May]

On 7/26/2017 4:05 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Bryan Housel  wrote:

2. contact state GIS agencies for permission, if the website does not make
license clear

I have contact information, which I'm not going to share here.
A template for the letter requesting permission would be very helpful,
since it's not immediately clear how to describe the intended use to
an agency. It would be even more helpful to be able to have contact
information for a resource person to answer any legal questions that
the agency might have. Surely someone's done this before, for the
specific case of a state's orthoimagery with this being the intended
use!


As for legal use and permissions, always look to the state statutes that 
specifies handling of public records requests. That is always going to 
override anything at the county / local level. For example, in Florida, 
the state statute says no agency within Florida can ask for the reason 
of the request or even who is requesting the data (although it has to be 
sent somewhere!). No agency can exert copyright, etc. Any exceptions are 
spelled out in the statutes.


What would be great is a breakdown of each state listing any potential 
restrictions spelled out in state statutes. The big restriction is 
usually a state allowing a local agency (i.e. county) to exert copyright 
over specific data. Some states have specifically targeted GIS data as 
copyrightable by local agencies in an attempt at "cost recovery" for GIS 
data. If there are no restrictions on data, then you are wasting time 
asking for permission, etc at the local level.


Brian


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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Kevin Kenny]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 4:18 PM, Ian Dees  wrote:

> I'm really glad that Bryan brought this up and that you responded asking for
> less technical instructions. I think that finding local imagery sources like
> this is a really great use of people's time and is something that can be
> made really approachable for non-technical folks. We're working on exactly
> this for OpenAddresses right now – currently we ask that people file GitHub
> pull requests to add data sources and want to make it so that anyone with
> knowledge of an address source can easily submit data.

Another, less techincal (or, I should say, less software-y) concern
that I have is that presenting an orthophoto layer in iD or JOSM is
quite different from doing an import; rather than pouring data into
our own database and stamping 'ODBL' on it, it's making the
photography available for people to trace over, use to tidy GPS
tracks, use to verify the existence of features, and so on - and it's
just this sort of difference that the lawyers really *care* about. For
this reason, none of the sample clearance requests that I've found
(for example, on the Wiki) really fit this use of data.

I'm sure that some sort of clearance was obtained to use Bing and
DigitalGlobe imagery in this fashion, and probably for other states'
orthophotos as well. (I know that the Federal ones are 'born in the
public domain' as US Government Works.) There has to be some sort of
contact on our legal team who can address concerns around a request to
use orthophotos, and there has to be some history about how the
initial requests were phrased and what concerns other data providers
had. Knowing some of that context would really help in drafting the
initial letter to NYSGIS.

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Ian Dees]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 4:05 PM, Kevin Kenny 
wrote:
>
> The CONTRIBUTING.md file presumes familiarity with GeoJSON, with the
> specific schema in use to describe the map layers, and with a lot of
> subtleties that may be obvious to someone accustomed to maintaining
> the software stack, but surely are not obvious to the average
> mapper. When I look at it, I wind up mentally saying, "yeah, maybe one
> of these days I'll have time to tool up with all this stuff."
>
> I suspect it might be a more profitable use of everyone's time to have
> mappers like me run interference with the GIS agencies (with the help
> of someone who can speak for the project to answer legal questions),
> and to separate the tasks of finding out information such as what I've
> presented here from the technical details of encoding it in GeoJSON
> and testing with the various data consumers.
>
> I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh here. I really would like to see this
> move forward. Help me to help you!
>

I'm really glad that Bryan brought this up and that you responded asking
for less technical instructions. I think that finding local imagery sources
like this is a really great use of people's time and is something that *can* be
made really approachable for non-technical folks. We're working on exactly
this for OpenAddresses right now – currently we ask that people file GitHub
pull requests to add data sources and want to make it so that anyone with
knowledge of an address source can easily submit data.

Collecting imagery sources in a similar way was my original thought for the
editor-layer-index, and we definitely need a more approachable path for
people like you who are interested in contributing.

I have a back-burner project to make it easier to ingest and Esri-based
imagery layers for use in iD and JOSM. I'd like to add instructions and
remove assumptions so that contributing that sort of imagery can more done
easily. I'll let you know when it's ready to try out.
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Kevin Kenny]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Bryan Housel  wrote:
> What can you do to help?
>
> We collect this imagery data here:
> https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index
>
> Once it is added to the editor layer index, it will be available in iD and
> other editors.

This plea appears to assume that volunteers will be at your level of
sophistication.

> There is lots of public imagery out there, but we need volunteers to:
>
> 1. find it in the first place

I know where it is for my state:
http://gis.ny.gov/gateway/mg/index.html

> 2. contact state GIS agencies for permission, if the website does not make
> license clear

I have contact information, which I'm not going to share here.
A template for the letter requesting permission would be very helpful,
since it's not immediately clear how to describe the intended use to
an agency. It would be even more helpful to be able to have contact
information for a resource person to answer any legal questions that
the agency might have. Surely someone's done this before, for the
specific case of a state's orthoimagery with this being the intended
use!

> 3. figure out whether the WMS server can serve the imagery (some serve
> TMS/WTMS tiles that can be consumed directly in iD, others serve WMS which
> can sometimes be proxied)

This question seems to be asking for technical details about which I'm
rather ignorant - and I'm dealing with this from the standpoint of a
person who has set up a TMS server and who has at least
given the metadata about external map servers to programs such as JOSM
and QGIS. I have no idea what iD, say, requires at the back end, or
whether the information provided in
http://gis.ny.gov/gateway/mg/webserv/webserv.html
is useful to you (or what else is needed beyond that).

> 4. add the source to editor-layer-index, along with a boundary polygon where
> the imagery is valid.

The CONTRIBUTING.md file presumes familiarity with GeoJSON, with the
specific schema in use to describe the map layers, and with a lot of
subtleties that may be obvious to someone accustomed to maintaining
the software stack, but surely are not obvious to the average
mapper. When I look at it, I wind up mentally saying, "yeah, maybe one
of these days I'll have time to tool up with all this stuff."

I suspect it might be a more profitable use of everyone's time to have
mappers like me run interference with the GIS agencies (with the help
of someone who can speak for the project to answer legal questions),
and to separate the tasks of finding out information such as what I've
presented here from the technical details of encoding it in GeoJSON
and testing with the various data consumers.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh here. I really would like to see this
move forward. Help me to help you!

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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Bryan Housel  wrote:

> Hey this is a topic that I care about - It turns out, you are already
> chipping in some money for high resolution orthoimagery!
>
> OK state Geographic Information Council
> http://okmaps.onenet.net/index.html
>
> OK state GIS Portal:
> https://okmaps.org/OGI/search.aspx
>
> The NAIP 2015 layer "provides 1 meter GSD ortho imagery rectified within
> +/- 6 meters to true ground at a 95% confidence level. “
>
>
I'm aware of the 2015 imagery, however, most of the changes associated with
the Tulsa and small town renaissance happened more recently than that
imagery, with the bonus points of the older imagery being easier to discern
details like lane markings, building footprints and signpost positions (and
in the case of stop and yield signs, the sign shape from the shadow as
well).
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Decline in accuracy of capture date metadata in Bing imagery

[Bryan Housel]

Hey this is a topic that I care about - It turns out, you are already chipping 
in some money for high resolution orthoimagery!

OK state Geographic Information Council
http://okmaps.onenet.net/index.html 

OK state GIS Portal:
https://okmaps.org/OGI/search.aspx 

The NAIP 2015 layer "provides 1 meter GSD ortho imagery rectified within +/- 6 
meters to true ground at a 95% confidence level. “ 

This is not spectacular resolution, but it is good enough for rough tracing in 
editors, and would at least give you a more recent alternative to Bing.

---

What aerial imagery exists?

Here is some info about high resolution orthoimagery in the United States.  The 
following statements are mostly true:

- States collect imagery every few years.
- They are supposed to do this to support the NAIP (National Aerial Imagery 
Program), a USDA program
- The imagery is 1meter/pixel or better. 
- It’s getting better all the time.  Some is even 6” or 3” in urban areas.
- Every state has a government GIS portal / WMS server where you can look for 
this information
- You might have to dig through government websites to find what you’re looking 
for, it’s not simple
- It’s generally public, but you might have to contact someone to get explicit 
permission to use it for OSM
- It was all supposed to be combined onto the USGS National Map, but this 
program is being shut down / defunded.

---

What can you do to help?

We collect this imagery data here:
https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index 


Once it is added to the editor layer index, it will be available in iD and 
other editors.

There is lots of public imagery out there, but we need volunteers to:

1. find it in the first place
2. contact state GIS agencies for permission, if the website does not make 
license clear
3. figure out whether the WMS server can serve the imagery (some serve TMS/WTMS 
tiles that can be consumed directly in iD, others serve WMS which can sometimes 
be proxied)
4. add the source to editor-layer-index, along with a boundary polygon where 
the imagery is valid.

In conclusion, please follow the editor-layer-index project, and help add the 
public imagery (that you are already paying for) to the OSM editors!

Thanks, Bryan



> On Jul 26, 2017, at 6:10 AM, Paul Johnson  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 5:48 PM, Clifford Snow  > wrote:
> A contact in Microsoft said that the Bing imagery is made up of multiple 
> images which results in the date range. 
> 
> The imagery we are getting has improved over time, although it seems at a 
> snails pace. I'm sure if we were paying for imagery we would have different 
> requirements. Bing probably wants nice looking - with lots of green 
> vegetation. Our needs would be better served by leaf off imagery. So if 
> someone wants to start fund raising, we could have imagery that better fits 
> our needs. 
> 
> I would be willing to chip in some money to get updated high resolution 
> imagery for metro Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma.  Latest imagery available for 
> the area's already in Bing and it's 2011-2013 vintage stock at this point.  
> Between the renaissance of Tulsa and many small towns in the region, 1 new 
> town built and incorporated, and 3 or 4 towns that went bust and are in the 
> process of being torn down and recycled for materials, that imagery's not far 
> from being unusably old.
> ___
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> t...@openstreetmap.org
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