Google has a really enlightened guy called the "Data Liberation Front". His role is to make it easy for people to get their data out of Google - rather than it being locked in.
Usually, people are locked in by the lack of an export feature, or an obscure file format. In mapping, people are locked in by licences. In Google Maps' case, you can create your own work by tracing over aerial imagery. But you can't use this work elsewhere, because of the licences and terms of use. (The phrase "derived work" usually crops up around now.) Google could fix this by saying that tracing from their imagery is ok - just like Yahoo have done. As some of you will know, I've looked into the legalities of this and don't believe there's anything in law stopping them from doing so. It's entirely their decision. - - - - - - - So: * Please "vote up" this suggestion for Google's Data Liberation Front: http://moderator.appspot.com/#8/e=43649 * Please encourage your friends to do so, too! Blog, use Twitter, post to national mailing lists, etc. etc. cheers Richard _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk