First Google Maps Hack Takedown

An anonymous reader writes "Despite "users accelerating innovation" with Google Maps the 'hacks' are not immune from Google's legal team, who have taken down "Google Wallpapers for violating the terms of agreement. From a quick skim through the terms it would seem that most sites using the Google Maps data are in violation. Are Chicago Crime and Google Sightseeing next to go?" It may be a shame to shut down Google Maps offshoots, but that has to be the nicest take-down note I've ever seen; it's polite, friendly and reasonable. Update: 06/08 21:22 GMT by T : Below, a few more of the current uses for Google Maps.

An anonymous reader submits "The AP is running a story about the multiple uses for Google Maps. Among the uses, Tracking sexual predators in Florida, Guiding travelers to the cheapest gas nationwide, Pinpointing $1,500 studio apartments for rent in Manhattan, and Finding crime in Chicago. It'll be interesting to see if Google allows these sites to remain online or not."

Getting Google Takedowns with Google...

Funny, you can still get to the python script that generates the wallpapers from the cached pages of http://gmerge.2ni.net/ [2ni.net] on Google itself:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:lNdeCgLHUdwJ:le vinux.org/~2ni/gmerge/+google+maps+wallpaper&hl=en [66.102.7.104]

Get it while its still there! :)

Re:Getting Google Takedowns with Google...

How about a cache of their cache [nyud.net] just to be paranoid?

This is what I get:

The Google Maps team recently noticed your Google Maps tile "stitcher"
to see developers interested in our products and we commend you on the
service. That said, we would appreciate it if you voluntarily remove
your service and stop using Google Maps on your web site. The service
violates the Maps Terms of Service available at
http://www.google.com/help/terms_local.html [google.com], and jeopardizes our
ability to make Google Maps available to the public because it
encourages non-personal use of Google Maps.

If you have any questions or concerns, or if we have contacted the
wrong people, please feel free to contact me directly. Otherwise,
amueltc please let us know as soon as possible when the service has been
removed.

Thanks,

Bret Taylor
Product Manager, Google Maps

Re:This is what I get:

I find it somewhat ironic that a company that makes a significant portion of it's revenue by deep-linking to sites is sending takedown notices to people who deep-link their site.

Re:Getting Google Takedowns with Google...

Okay, here's a mirror, but it only has 2000MB of bandwidth. It could also get taken down, but I doubt it, considering that the file is GPL'd.

http://mars.walagata.com/w/gmerge/gMerge-win32.zip [walagata.com]

Nicest Shut down?

So if RIAA sent you a bouquet of flowers with a cute, humorous, handwritten greeting card personally signed by the PR manager informing your court appearance date, it wouldn't be so bad?

I don't think there is anything wrong for a listed company to protect its interest, control its IPs and maximize its profit, but the fanboy twist is totally unnecessary.

Re:Nicest Shut down?

I think a C&D letter written in L337 speak would be hillarious.

Would said letter start somthing like

d00d u r n trbl...

Oh spare me.

So if RIAA sent you a bouquet of flowers with a cute, humorous, handwritten greeting card personally signed by the PR manager informing your court appearance date, it wouldn't be so bad?

Well, if I was serving up MP3's of $.50's latest album, yeah, it wouldn't be as bad. But your question is apples/oranges anyway. Yours is a piracy issue whereas Gogglemaps is a Terms of Use violation. Me and a friend were discussing just this very thing. In spite of what some Google employees might say about how they like to foster innovation and so on, if the terms of use say you can't do it you can pretty well expect that you will probably run afoul of Google. Without getting into the legality argument of certain Terms of Use, let me limit this to just an analysis of likelihood of getting on the wrong side of a lawyer. Caveat Scriptor. You are asking for trouble if:

• You take someone elses content and pass it off as yours (even if you say "gee thanks google")
• Violate a Terms of Use agreement. Even if it's the ToU is hopelessly vague you can bet that you'll get a call as soon as your site gets popular enough
• You rush headlong into making a beta API the centerpiece of your website. Yeah, do it because it's neat, but don't whine when it breaks unless you want people to say "what the hell were you even thinking?". Even if it's Google's endless beta phase, if you rely on behaviour of a beta app, and then your site/app breaks... tough noogies.

The gyst is that Google is a company that makes a product and wants to make money and has investors blah blah blah..., just like Microsoft or Wallmart. You can argue tell your blue in the face about right/wrong, nice/not nice, good/evil, but the simple fact is that if you do something that legalize says you shouldn't do, and you get burned... don't be surprised. Google is going to oversee what people are doing with the googemaps... if they like it, they'll take the idea and incorporate it into their business model, if they don't like it (don't like == taxes resources or threatens revenue), the lawyers come knocking.

Paging the fanboys...

AOL Instant Messenger's Terms of Use forbid use of third party clients from connecting to the network. How come whenever AOL tries to lock out third party clients it is evil, but when Google does it, it's okay? Both are terms of service violations.

Grandparent hit it head on: enough fawning over Google.

Actually, yes

I have to say that sending a polite, could you not do this, e-mail is very cool of google. For a time, I ran a radio station off of my server. Not many people listened to it, but anyhow, I got a letter from ASCAP asking me to not do it.

There's letter was much more legalese ridden, etc, ultimately, they had the decency to send me a warning notice before they sicked a pack of lawyers onto me. After it was clear to me that they were serious about it, I stopped.

If I was swapping songs and the RIAA sent me a letter saying, "hey could you please stop?", I probably would. Instead, they'd probably just sue me, and charge me a lot of money I don't have.

So yeah, there's something to be said for how you say things.

If you must be evil...

...at least be nice about it?

Re:If you must be evil...

I think Winston Churchill said it best:

"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it."

Cheers,

Morel

Noooooooooo!

i hope my favorite mashup, google housing, that uses the craigslist rental pages won't get taken down!!

http://www.housingmaps.com/ [housingmaps.com]

Re:Noooooooooo!

I don't think they will take down the craigslist-googlemaps mashup since they themselves praised it as a featured project on Google Code.

There is a reason why this particular project got the takedown notice:
1. The satellite/air imagery is probably not owned by Google - they must have licensed it from AirphotoUSA or whoever else is the supplier.
2. The wallpaper site simply takes the images and stitches them together as a wallpaper - which means that are not simply incorporating a google product, but appropriating the images therein. Google's terms of use with their provider would necessisate the takedown.

That is friendly,

No...

1. Lawyers
2. Due Dates
3. Use of the word "compliance"
4. Use of the word "further action"
5. Nice invitation to a developers conference.

I'll take that over the .*AA any day.

Re:That is friendly,

AND they said PLEASE! Please of all things! Its wonderful.

Re:That is friendly,

(I'm the Greg mentioned on the page)

Actually, we were expecting to go to Where 2.0 before the shutdown - the part about the conference on the page (as it was prior to the slashdotting) was not from the Google spokesperson.

Interesting wording

It sounds like Google Maps had to sign an agreement not to let the image data be used for commercial purposes. I wonder if they got a letter telling them to take down the offending site or be sued?

Tough call

I love google, and google maps is wonderful to play with. I had actually considered building something like the Chicago Crime page, but given the terms of service, thought I'd better not. I can see Google's point. They are providing a free service for individuals. Haveing another person/group/company use that freedom to build a new service and possibly profit off of it at the expense of the individuals it was created for is rough.

That being said, I think there is a lot of potential for other uses of Google Maps, and hopefully at some point, Google will allow some sort of licenses for use other than personal.

Re:Tough call

Making such a site would not be a problem if you simply ask Google for the proper permissions. Who knows, if you are lucky then you might get a deal. And if you don't, at least you have tried, all they can do is say No. IP and Copyright does not need to be a problem if you are willing to talk and explain your intentions. Takedown notices generally come when you violate Copyright without even trying to get a permission deal.

Re:Tough call

As someone who has tried to get a number of permission deals from various industries, I'll let you know right now that RIAA and MPAA related companies tend to completely ignore you, even when you've emailed, faxed and sent snail mail (there's no way to get to a real person in charge of such things at the phone numbers I've tried).

Software publishers (I've never tried to contact a BSA publisher) and other independent media publishers are usually delighted to make a deal; often, even for free, or with a small percentage kickback if you're doing something for-profit.

I'm glad Google has decided to side with the independents instead of the corporate behemoths on their treatment of individuals in this case, and actually acknowledge that corporations share the world with individual human beings.

Re:Tough call

Here are two pieces of evidence that Google does *not* disapprove of Google Maps hacks:

1. A post to the official Google blog: http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/2005/04/m apscraigslist-mashup.html [blogspot.com]

"While we have no official API for Maps yet, work like this really is amazing and deserves recognition."

2. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/05/google_m aps_hac.html [oreilly.com]

"They responded that they had every intention to not shut them down as long as their licenses permit it, and one of the engineers insinuated that they might be working on a Google Maps API or a similar way to build on top of Maps (he actually said, "to make them not hacks," by which I think he meant not unauthorized)."

Disclaimer: I'm the guy that did chicagocrime.org, so I'm biased in favor of openness.

Go Google!

I must say... they really are, "not being evil".

I've recieved a DMCA takedown notice before. Most aren't pretty. Personally, I never understood why most DMCA takedown notices were taken directly to ISP level, without even a word to the webmaster.

In this case, Google sent a nice letter, requesting they take it down, and even explaining why. This is far superious to any other company takedown letter I've ever seen.

Clearly Derivative

OK, so it's pretty clear that the script is creating derivative works by stitching together the sat-maps. But how is Chicagocrime violating the terms?

Google starts the takedown....

...and then we finish the job with a Slashdotting. Nice.

Down..

Are Chicago Crime and Google Sightseeing next to go?

Unfortunately yes, but that's because of us, not their violation of terms with Google.

There should be a new /. section called 'google'..

too much google fetish for me

Google Sightseeing?

I am not sure how Google Sightseeing could be in trouble, except for trademark violation. They do not seem to be using the maps, but rather the satellite photos, which cannot be copyrighted.

The gMail invite spooler's been shut down, too

Google's been shutting down the gMail invite spooler , too, but according to the creator and owner of the site (http://isnoop.net/gmail/ [isnoop.net]) his legal notification from the legal team was quite friendly, it's pretty cool that google isn't the kind of company that keeps rabid lawyers around to sue people. See thread on Somethingawful.com for more: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=1580408 [somethingawful.com]

montage-a-google

Montage-a-Google http://www.kiffer.at/m-a-g [kiffer.at] seems not be gettin problems. they are als listed on wikipedia.

I'm surprised Google let others leech like this

I'm actually surprised Google let others leech on their bandwidth like this without paying them or anything. Same with e.g. GoogleFS and other hacks. Either this is a sign of more things to come, or it's just one of few sites they didn't like even with their highly relaxed stance about others leeching on their services.

Google Maps are awfully distorted anyway

Google Maps uses a fixed longitude/latitude distance ratio of ~0.772, while the true ratio depends on latitude (the ratio should be cos(latitude)). So Google Map is optimized for 39.5 of latitude (N or S), and the maps are increasingly distorted as you go toward the poles or the equator.

For example, Anchorage is stretched horizontally by a factor of 1.60 [google.com] (yup those should be right angles).

MapQuest is similarly distorted, but Yahoo Maps is not.

One day...

"but that has to be the nicest take-down note I've ever seen; it's polite, friendly and reasonable."

Many years from now, we will see a similar Slashdot post when Google becomes the New World Order:

Dear Bill,

The GoogleOS team recently noticed that you guys have had your asses handed to you, by us. We commend you on your many years of somehow staying at the top, despite the fact that you sorely neglected securing your software. Sorry we had to break your record; but your evil violated the official Evil Google TOS, listed on our home page.

Lots of love and warm tapioca,
Larry and Sergei

google cache?

Anyone have the google cache to their site? it seems slow...

Waste of effort...

They might as well just post the offending URL here. Down quicker than you can say "Service Unavailable".

Google maps are inaccurate.....still like MapQuest

I used Google maps once, and I got SO lost in downtown Seattle. Their service is nice and full of features, but I prefer simple accuracy over fancy graphics anyday, especially when it means getting lost in the maze of one-way streets and idiot drivers that is downtown of any major city.

No, Google is good at a lot of things, but right now, maps is NOT one of those things.

Intergalactic Search Battle

Be there for the fantabulous extravaganza!

It's Google Wallpapers versus Google, Google versus Google Sightseeing, and Google Sightseeing versus Your Mother!

It's INSTUPITUOUS!

Takedowns....

First takedown, courtesy of Google...
Second takedown, courtesy of Slashdot...

Anybody got a copy of the note?

Why wallpaper is bad and not housing...

Google isn't threatened by people creating new services out of maps. If it was up to Google, you could probably do anything you wanted.

However, Google has suppliers. They are very interested in protecting their copyrighted data. They are, as yet, willing to allow modification of the Maps service for things like the housing map, etc. I'm not even sure that their agreement permits them to complain, as it is still Google serving the images.

Creating derivative works of the actual map photos crossed a line with the suppliers.

They violated the TOS

By stitching and thus changing the images. It is a really neat thing... what would be better is for them to release it as a tool that home users can use for free which would avoid the TOS violation as far as I can tell.

Full Text of Take Down

The site looked like it was about to die a slow and painful death, so here's the notice in full:

"The Google Maps team recently noticed your Google Maps tile "stitcher" to see developers interested in our products and we commend you on the service. That said, we would appreciate it if you voluntarily remove your service and stop using Google Maps on your web site. The service violates the Maps Terms of Service available at http://www.google.com/help/terms_local.html [google.com], and jeopardizes our ability to make Google Maps available to the public because it encourages non-personal use of Google Maps.

If you have any questions or concerns, or if we have contacted the wrong people, please feel free to contact me directly. Otherwise, amueltc please let us know as soon as possible when the service has been
removed.

Thanks,

Bret Taylor
Product Manager, Google Maps

"

Theme day

Shouldn't this headline be: "World's First Google Maps Hack Takedown"

Google's Merits

I don't see anyone arguing the merits of Google's action, so I will. From what I can see from the Google cache [66.102.7.104] of the web site, I see that following:

1. They perform automated queries on Google to get the map pieces in order to produce composite images. (Terms of Service violation)
2. They produced composite images from Copyrighted material. (Copyright violation)
3. They hosted (distributed) the composite images made from Copyrighted material. (Copyright violation)

This gives Google good reason to shut down "Google Wallpapers" as it stands. I don't think it Google has any claims against the python script itself, just its users (which includes "Google Wallpapers").

This differs from "Google Sightseeing" and "Chicago Crime" (as far as I know, since I can't verify util the sites are back up), which only link to maps on Google, which means

1. There are no automated queries. The user must click on the link to view the image.
2. No derivative product is made. They only provide a link to Google.
3. No distribution is made. The maps are solely on Google's server.

Google moving to the dark side?

Frankly, I've been increasingly suspicious of Google since they decided it was such a neat idea to keep other people's email. That's something with serious opportunities for abuse--and there's no good reason these days. Everyone (who counts) has GBs of disk space and powerful CPUs, and there's no reason that the email couldn't be stored, indexed, and searched on your local machine. Why do they need *MY* email on *THEIR* machines? Something is wrong there.

This new event is something different. It doesn't matter how polite they are about it. They are flexing their muscles, and putting on my historian's hat, power always gets abused. They talk about empowering the little guys and doing good, but when push comes to shove, look who got shoved.

Anyone else see a pattern?

Google has website shut down, asserting their intelelctual property rights = reasonable

MPAA has website shut down, asserting their intellectual property rights = Gestapo

Google maps for the UK is shite

On two occasions in the last few weeks I've tried to use the point-to-point directions based on post codes.

The information is utterly incorrect and extremely ambiguous.

Take note, fellow UK /.ers, it's an alpha release for us.

In other Google news...

Google is releasing a new beta project called Google Posters. With it, you will be able to have large poster sized satellite maps of any point of interest.

Does anyone have a mirror?

They appearantly posted a windows executable version, does anyone have a mirror of this?

Re:Does anyone have a mirror?

Yes. Google does, in fact.

The cache for the page, Linked here [64.233.161.104], has a link to the executable. The link still works. Get it while it's hot.

In fact, I think every person that makes a google utility should make an executable version for this very reason. It would save you bandwidth, it would save me loading time. Release it GPL and someone can make a multi-utility. Sounds great. Get to it, programmers!

So all you buggers know what "amueltc " is?

So what is it?

Or you could go with (gasp) Microsoft...

TerraServer [microsoft.com], which has been around much longer than Google Maps, has a documented SOAP API [microsoft.com] for grabbing image data.

What the hell...

does 'amueltc' mean?!

server side vs. client side...

so hosting a site could be a problem, but how about something like greasemonkey [mozdev.org] on firefox to do it locally? would that get around the restriction?

Do Some Evil

"It may be a shame to shut down Google Maps offshoots, but that has to be the nicest take-down note I've ever seen."

Instead of "Do no evil" maybe the motto should be "Do evil with a smile"? These guys are no different than any other company. It may not have been their intention when they started, and the people at Google may not be evil, but by the very nature of being a publicly-owned company they have a LEGAL OBLIGATION to "protect their interests" which ultimately means stopping outside innovation like this. It's a shame, but that's what happens when $300 million isn't enough...

Enforcing Personal Use

With web services becoming all the rage, what are Best Practices for enforcing personal use? If you're releasing source, what manners are there to keep someone from using your script for abuse?

Frankly I think the obligation lies in the hand of the service provider and the person using your code. The whole point of web services is to be able to extend and automate other people's systems. We're simply tool providers, building new systems. If I build a pencil and john goes out and commits triple homicide with my pencil its a shame, yes, but its also not my fault. Why is the internet home of the great double standard; as soon as a tool is easy to use it suddenly becomes the makers problem? As long as our systems designed to promote violations of TOS, its frankly not our problem.

Most every TOS says "for personal use only", google's qualm was that this script makes it easy to circumvent that. These claims are rediculous, even if theres a number of other violations.

-Myren

They really have no choice

They use GDT/TeleAtlas Data and guess what, they don't have the right to allow people to make derivitave works of TeleAtlas's work. I guess they could wait till Teleatlas sued them and the offending sites, but they probably don't want to lose their data license. This would be kind of like if you recorded a radio show that played a song (which they licensed the ability to play) then when you were selling or giving away copys on your website they asked you to stop.

A more open content provider: USGS (links++)

It is ludicrous to claim that Google invested that much in the original content, since everyone just gets it from US Geological Survey.

So, go to the National Atlas [nationalatlas.gov] and download and use to your heart's content. If that is not good enough, then go download all the data you can imagine [nationalatlas.gov]. Still not enough, you can access all the layers via web services that comply with specifications published by the Open Geospatial Consortium [opengeospatial.org] at run time from your own web pages.

Now, write your congressmen and tell them how you appreciate that they made all this available to you, the citizen, for free, instead of spending all that tax money only to add a fee that makes it prohibitive for all but corporations who can be gatekeepers to keep you out. And hope that this doesn't become another casulty of Iraq budgets.

While you are at it, start a USGS support mailing list and an open source project to keep this sort of alive.

Re:A more open content provider: USGS (links++)

While we do get some data from government sources, there are a lot of images there that come from private companies who pay to have pilots takes pictures from cameras mounted on planes.

Perfectly reasonable

Look this is a perfectly reasonable response. Suppose someone started using your personal webserver to constantly test their bandwidth, i.e., put up a page which invited people to measure the speed they could download your entire site.

Also it doesn't look like any of the other sites are in trouble. If you read the notice they asked them to take it down because it encourages non-personal use of google maps. Basically I take that to mean it encouraged people to put it in the background rather than actively using it. Alot like the example with the webpage. I mean how would you feel if people started using your webpage as a background and made you go over yout transfer quota.

Yep, they are doing evil

...but when did they jump the shark - with google groups 2 I suppose.

Another shut down...

Yet another Gmail user-created service shut down: http://isnoop.net/gmail/ [isnoop.net]

It's all in the approach

I think there's such a positive reaction to Google's request as we're not used to getting such thing with a lubricant, and a pretty high quality fragrent one at that. Wait until somebody takes a stand against Google somehow, sorta like the AOL/MSN Inop wars.

the other hacks wont be taken down

The terms of service section that was violated was the photographic imagery section, they don't seem to mind the other stuff, just don't molest the pictures.

NASA World Wind

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov] I just wanted to let people know that the latest CVS of NASA World wind has a plugin engine that allows people to do the same thing (Their is even a plugin already made to do it!)

It is most gratifying...

that your enthusiasm for our map service continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the IRC worms currently converging with your site are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed virus payloads are of course merely a courtesy detail.

(with apologies to the late Douglas Adams)

What you're not getting

is that the Tile Stitcher Wallpaper pulled in the Google images, and created new images from them by putting them together. None of the real Google Maps hacks do that; they simply reuse the regular Google Maps interface with overlaid enhancements.

Re:Sorry Google, but there ain't no contract

...any more than Fox can dictate the terms of your television-watching to you.

Shh! Don't give them any ideas!

Re:Sorry Google, but there ain't no contract

"Google may be able to prevent commercial use of the images..."

That's the point. The webmasters are lifting images and using resources from Google without their permission. Google makes money by showing visitors ads. These tools do not show Google's ads to end users - Google can claim they lose money by having their resources taken without the chance to earn income.

Their product is being offered to users in ways they did not intend, did not authorize, and are unable to monitize.

Re:Sorry Google, but there ain't no contract

You almost had it. Google's ownership of copyrights actually does allow them to set the terms that they have. You can use their service however you see fit for the most part, but you can't COPY (or rebroadcast, or make a derivative work from, etc.) the information except under the rights they grant. It's not a contract; it's a license. It's the same mechanism the GPL uses to restrict what can be done with GPL-licensed software.

Re:Sorry Google, but there ain't no contract

How did the parent get modded insightful?

The maps are a copyrighted work. By default, you can't redistribute derivatives of that work unless the copyright holder explicitly grants permission.

The terms of service explain your rights to the content... they don't restrict them.

And yes... Fox can't dictate how you watch television. But try recording their lineup, stripping the commercials, and putting them on the Internet. :)

Re:Sorry Google, but there ain't no contract

any more than Fox can dictate the terms of your television-watching to you.

You must not have tried to record a favorite program going off the program guide.

Re:Who wrote that headline?

Yeah, it's a funny headline. I was a little twisted too about whether to consider 'Maps' a verb or a noun and the same for 'Hack'.

Re:They should come to europe

That depends on what EU country you are in, but it is generally true that local laws tend to override any unfair "Terms of use" crap placed on a website. That being said, websites are still subject to Copyright and a website owner generally only grants you the right to use _their_ website. Google could take action against people breaking their IP rights regardless of the "Terms of use" listed.

Apparently the *only* person in the country...

that doesn't watch pro sports, at least once in a blue moon.

Prefaced onto the beginning of EVERY sports telecast, is a note that the broadcast is owned by the league, and the network. And that rebroadcast, etc, is strictly prohibited w/o permission from the before mentioned entities.

Re:Is this English ?

No it's not correct, it looks like there are a few words missing:

The Google Maps team recently noticed your Google Maps tile "stitcher". [We are pleased] to see developers interested in our products and we commend you on the service.