os maps on your blog
Tue, Nov 27, 2007
I’ve been keeping up with Alan Sloman’s tussle with the OS regarding digital map extracts on his blog. I think he’s doing a great job taking them on. What he wants to do is entirely reasonable. If someone wants to print out their map snippets and use them for navigation to save some money, then ends up over a cliff, that’s their problem! That’s the only reason I can think of why the OS currently ban direct digital extracts from appearing on personal web sites. A more reasonable approach would be a nominal fee, if at all and a size restriction, to stop you publishing entire sheets on your site.
The OS allow scanned paper maps to be published, just not digital ones that have never been on paper and the reason for that is they prolly don’t have a digital licensing scheme. They have the Paper Map Copying License. They don’t seem to have an equivalent license for digital products. I suppose paper map copying is self-restricting. You’re not going to scan in a whole 1:50,000 sheet! But with a digital map, you could publish the whole UK DVD on your site. Not that’s what Alan would do. He’s simply using his digital maps to illustrate his charity walk achievement. But I suppose the OS have to take into account the nutters of this world who would do just that. I could imagine there could be quite a black market to be had, napster style, exchanging digital map extracts on the ’net.