
German OpenStreetMap making map unusable, to protest against EU copyright reform - Tomte
https://www.openstreetmap.de/karte.html
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ObsoleteNerd
Good on them. I wish more big sites would grow some balls and take action like
this. The Internet as we know it is being attacked from multiple angles right
now, with the EU filtering proposals, AU/5Eyes anti-encryption proposals, etc.
The MSM are all onboard with the "think of the children! terrorism! what are
you trying to hide?!" propaganda, and most of the big sites/services enjoy the
Government contract money too much to dare upset their masters.

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throwaway2016a
The FAQs on the proposed reform for anyone who, like me, was not up to speed:

[https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-
market/en/faq/frequently...](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-
market/en/faq/frequently-asked-questions-copyright-reform)

Note that it is a very biased source and uses a lot of hedge words like
"major" and other fuzzy words like "majority" which can be interpreted in
diferent ways.

Per the FAQs "Article 13 of our proposal does not target services similar to
Wikipedia."... just because it "does not target" does not mean it won't be
unintended collateral damage. I haven't read the reform but I'm curious what
safeguards it has to remove uncertainty from platform providers on if their
service is effected by this.

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ahartmetz
Oh no, more evil political hacking! Placing an industry PR article into a
newspaper of note is totally fine btw.

[http://m.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/eu-and-
copyright-...](http://m.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/eu-and-copyright-
anatomy-of-a-political-hacking-15771185.html)

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faitswulff
I hope they made sure that their maps weren't being used for critical purposes
like rescue operations[0] before doing this?

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/2015/05/the-open-source-maps-that-
made...](https://www.wired.com/2015/05/the-open-source-maps-that-made-rescues-
in-nepal-possible/)

~~~
sabman
Also Humanitarian Operations are governed by Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
[0] - they have their custom styling [1].

[0] [https://www.hotosm.org/](https://www.hotosm.org/) [1]
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_map_style](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_map_style)

~~~
maxerickson
"governed" probably isn't the right word. HOT is a separate organization from
OpenStreetMap. They do a lot of work editing OSM and there are people with
overlapping involvement.

In addition to running their own tileserver, they also often produce large
format maps in QGIS or what not.

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dudeweee
Since when do businesses hate copyright protection again? The only service
providers upset by this are the ones that won't be able to copy paste maps
from other sources anymore.

~~~
bopbop
Not exactly true - every service will have to implement a copyright checking
mechanism, which is a huge technical outlay likely to require linking in with
a bigger company - which will further cement existing businesses.

Also, just about companies always being keen on furthering copyright, Disney
seemed fine about it when they created steamboat Willie, Cinderella, snow
white, etc, all based on prior art.

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Tomte
Translated from
[https://www.openstreetmap.de/uf/](https://www.openstreetmap.de/uf/)

"How can I remove the black error tiles?" – "You can't, at all. But in a few
days we're going to restore functionality."

And they mean it. They haven't even made it so that a reload blacks out other
tiles. No, they really want to make it utterly unusable, even with effort on
the user's part.

So now the German OSM holds pretty much the same place in my heart as the
German Wikimedia club.

The OSM Foundation needs to react harshly here. To think that I used
StreetComplete just yesterday. That will certainly stop.

~~~
detaro
... because a single website with tons of alternatives does a small protest
action you don't like you're not going to contribute to the entire project
anymore? I honestly can't understand that.

~~~
Tomte
A single web site that is obviously pretty officially affiliated with the OSM
project proper (as far as "unofficial" can go) and loves to use my contributed
data kicks me in the shins. Yes, I feel I'm justified in being mad.

Wikimedia Germany is also legally seoparate from the Wikimedia Foundation, and
still everyone considers them the official German offshoot.

~~~
freyfogle
You contributed the data so that they - and everyone else - can do what they
want with it as long as they stay within the terms of the license. I don't see
that they are violating the license by choosing to render that data a certain
way (in this case as a black tile).

~~~
tuukkah
German OpenStreetMap is not a third party who is only bound by the copyright
license though - it's a contributors' community with various explicit and
implicit expectations. See e.g.
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct)

