23 replies to this topic

[Deborah]

Just out of curiousity - for what purpose are you looking for this map?

Hi

A client of mine, a charity, wanted to use the map on their website www.freresdeshommes.lu. I'm not entirely sure why this particular projection was important, they contacted Oxford Cartographers (previously mentioned in this thread) but they want to charge £400 for the licence for one year and a further £225 for the supply of the map in the required format (I'm still waiting to hear exactly what process they were formatting the map to that would justify £225).

Now looking to see if there are alternatives.

Thanks
Deborah

[natcase]

A client of mine, a charity, wanted to use the map on their website www.freresdeshommes.lu. I'm not entirely sure why this particular projection was important, they contacted Oxford Cartographers (previously mentioned in this thread) but they want to charge £400 for the licence for one year and a further £225 for the supply of the map in the required format (I'm still waiting to hear exactly what process they were formatting the map to that would justify £225).

Now looking to see if there are alternatives.

As others have noted, you have an easy alternative. Anyone can project country outline data to the Gall/Peters/Stereographic/wet laundry projection, certainly to the resolution intended. As long as you do not copy the look and feel of the Oxford artwork (i.e. the continents in their separate hue, with tint differences amongst nations), you should be fine (caveat: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, please don't sue me if Oxford throws a fit). Oxford can copyright their unique design of the map (i.e. the combination of color, type, arrangement of elements on the page etc.) so you can't just copy the artwork and resell it. And they could also base a claim on infringement of "trade dress" (i.e. a third party making a map that others think is theirs, thereby hurting sales of their item), or at least they could in the USA. But the projection (and all projections) are public domain.

Heck, if I could get MaPublisher to work right (insert a separate complaint here about MP7's projection software which to my mind is a step backwards), I'd do it and post an AI file here!

[Dennis McClendon]

a competitor buys the map, scans the map, digitizes my points and then adds his/her own attributes and starts selling their own version of the map that looks nothing like my map. Have they broken any copyright laws?

They have not.

The 1991 Feist case reinforced that facts are not the subject matter of copyright protection in the US. The expression of those facts--the typeface, color, exact arrangement, or selection of facts--might be subject to copyright, but the underlying facts (even if false, put there to trap competitors) are not.

I gave a session about this at NACIS 1995, which I keep thinking I should update and present again.

[ELeFevre]

a competitor buys the map, scans the map, digitizes my points and then adds his/her own attributes and starts selling their own version of the map that looks nothing like my map. Have they broken any copyright laws?

They have not.

The 1991 Feist case reinforced that facts are not the subject matter of copyright protection in the US. The expression of those facts--the typeface, color, exact arrangement, or selection of facts--might be subject to copyright, but the underlying facts (even if false, put there to trap competitors) are not.

I gave a session about this at NACIS 1995, which I keep thinking I should update and present again.

Dennis,
Thanks for the clarification and link. You should update that presentation for next years NACIS meeting. Are you aware of any major changes in copyright law since 1995?

[Dennis McClendon]

Are you aware of any major changes in copyright law since 1995?

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act was pretty significant for computer software and digital content, but doesn't change much related to maps made and published (even online) in the traditional manner.

[pghardy]

a competitor buys the map, scans the map, ...snip ... Have they broken any copyright laws?

They have not. ...

That sounds a rather definite but dubious pronouncement. IANAL, but is it not the case that they have broken the copyright in the original map they bought, by scanning it to create a digital copy, regardless of what they do with that digital copy?

[Sky Schemer]

That sounds a rather definite but dubious pronouncement. IANAL, but is it not the case that they have broken the copyright in the original map they bought, by scanning it to create a digital copy, regardless of what they do with that digital copy?

This becomes an issue of "fair use" in US Copyright Law. Just because you make a complete copy of a copyrighted work, that does not mean you've infringed on the copyright. It all depends on what you use the material for and how.

We talk about copying maps to obtain factual information from them as if it were fundamentally different than researching material in other books for the purpose of writing a new book. It's really not.

[pghardy]

We talk about copying maps to obtain factual information from them as if it were fundamentally different than researching material in other books for the purpose of writing a new book. It's really not.

I agree that books and maps are pretty equivalent for copyright purposes in the matter of reading them to extract information from them. However you wouldn't usually scan into raster image a whole book in order to research it, so the situation doesn't apply so much.

It may well be a difference between copyright laws (and legal interpretations) between the US and here in Europe, but the map librarians at the University Library in Cambridge (one of the five UK copyright libraries that have one copy of everything published) certainly have rules that wouldn't let me copy more than a small fraction (10%?) of any map which is still in copyright, for research purposes. I think they would apply the same principle if I asked to scan such a map.

Certainly the Ordnance Survey rules on Crown Copyright in their OS poster on copyright says:

Ordnance Survey maps which are less than 50 years old are subject to Crown Copyright.
This means that copying an Ordnance Survey map (for example, photocopying, scanning, tracing or printing electronic data) is likely to be an infringement of Crown Copyright unless such copying falls within the exceptions permitted by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (‘the Act’).
Very limited copying is permitted by the Act for the purposes of: Private study; or Non-commercial research, criticism, review and news reporting,

and scanning for commercial research to produce a rival product doesn't look to be an exception.

I must make it clear that this post (in particularly) is me indulging in an interesting discussion in my area of personal interest and isn't in any way an official pronouncement by my employer!

[Sky Schemer]

I agree that books and maps are pretty equivalent for copyright purposes in the matter of reading them to extract information from them. However you wouldn't usually scan into raster image a whole book in order to research it, so the situation doesn't apply so much.

It may well be a difference between copyright laws (and legal interpretations) between the US and here in Europe, but the map librarians at the University Library in Cambridge (one of the five UK copyright libraries that have one copy of everything published) certainly have rules that wouldn't let me copy more than a small fraction (10%?) of any map which is still in copyright, for research purposes. I think they would apply the same principle if I asked to scan such a map.

If you're scanning something obtained from a library, you haven't paid for the source material. The matter becomes one of illegal duplication of the content, not extraction of information from the source.