Submission + - Google Earth cease and desist demand
Dreben writes: "Gaia, an opensource project to develop a 3D API to Google Earth, has decided to comply with a request from Google Earth's Chief Technologist, Michael Jones, to cease and desist from all past, present and future development for amongst other things "improper usage of licensed data," which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors. They are going so far as to request anyone who has ever downloaded any aspect of Gaia to purge all related files.
From the post to the freegis-l maillist..
"25 November 2006, we've got the letter from Michael Jones, the Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local search, requesting us to cease reverse engineering and improper usage of licensed data that Google Earth use. We understand and respect Google's position on the case, so we've removed all downloads from this page and we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia)."
How does such a request, (likely to have turned into a demand), affect fair usage? While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner.
Issues surrounding fair usage of Google Earth output are discussed in the Wikipedia article on Google Earth. "the output of Google Earth is very similar to that of programs such as Microsoft Flight Simulator and The Sims, which are also made from copyrighted code and data. Such images are considered freely available for use in another project, or as an original work.""
From the post to the freegis-l maillist..
"25 November 2006, we've got the letter from Michael Jones, the Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local search, requesting us to cease reverse engineering and improper usage of licensed data that Google Earth use. We understand and respect Google's position on the case, so we've removed all downloads from this page and we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia)."
How does such a request, (likely to have turned into a demand), affect fair usage? While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner.
Issues surrounding fair usage of Google Earth output are discussed in the Wikipedia article on Google Earth. "the output of Google Earth is very similar to that of programs such as Microsoft Flight Simulator and The Sims, which are also made from copyrighted code and data. Such images are considered freely available for use in another project, or as an original work.""
