On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 18:15, cleary <o...@97k.com> wrote: > > My knowledge is limited to NSW as that is the state in which I have > previously made enquiries. Verbal descriptions of administrative boundaries > have not been used in recent years. Boundaries are now defined > geospatially, with the NSW Department of Community Services being > responsible for producing the official maps. It is my understanding that > the DCS NSW maps are as authoritative as can be obtained (except for the > surveyors' charts from which the DCS maps are derived). I think the > government pays a royalty to surveyors in order to be able to use the > surveyors' data in government maps and licence others to use these maps. > DCS NSW certainly does not snap the boundaries to nearby features. > > I'm not necessarily disputing this, but there are so many anecdotes and opinions being expressed on this topic. Could I ask if we have any source or citation for this? I mean the Department of Community Services doesn't even exist any longer, and doesn't sound like it should have been producing authoritative maps even when it did? I don't even know what "as authoritative as can be obtained", even means. Is there legislation, regulation, gazette? And the government paying a royalty to "surveyors", just sounds odd. Wouldn't a government normally engage surveyors in the normal way, rather than paying royalties?
> I'm uncertain about the terms of use of the government data but, > generally, when reproducing another person or organisation's resources > (images, text etc) with permission, one is required not to distort that > resource so as to not embarrass the donor. Where a source such as the NSW > Government has given permission to use its data in OSM, I feel we have an > obligation to use it correctly. It would be wrong to show inaccurate > boundaries and attribute them to the Government source. As the person who > initiated obtaining access to the NSW data a few years ago, I feel > particularly embarrassed that we might mis-use it. > > Clearly, if you change the location, you should update the source. It's an issue, but OSM does track that changes have been made and by who and why. Our licence allows us to do this - and I'd argue it's the specific purpose for the existence of OSM - that is you can change the data. Nothing is immutable. All you need is a source, or ground-truth. The only reason I can see for snapping administrative boundaries to nearby natural features is for convenience - but I see it as convenience at the expense of accuracy. > > I don't agree. I think in many cases, for all practical purposes, the boundary is the feature. And the law has traditionally allowed for accretions and erosion. But if there is some legislative instrument that defines the boundary by a particular accurate geospatial set that we have access to, regardless of the feature, then I could be convinced to change my mind. And to my mind, if you committed an offence on national park land above the high water mark, and tried to argue you were outside the park, because of some geospatial alignment, I reckon you're cooked unless you could find a legislative instrument to support that being the hard and fast line. Ian.
_______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
