

Are Apple 'stealing' Open Street Map data? - sambeau
http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/apple-maps-aka-apple-are-thieving-bastards/

======
rmc
More details from OSMF <http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/03/08/welcome-
apple/> ( and HN submission <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3679604> )

~~~
sdfjkl
Somehow I prefer _we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there_
over _Apple are thieving bastards_.

~~~
rmc
Exactly. Don't attribute to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance.
Getting a company's back against the wall will not endevour them to OSM.

~~~
brudgers
Bullshit on implying this is in any way due to ignorance.

Open Street Map is very clear about attribution
[<http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright>], and Apple has decades of
experience involving aggressive IP protection.

~~~
ugh
I think their message is just right. I would reserve calling them thieving
bastards only after they explicitly refuse to give credit.

What Apple did is shameful but I think what OSM is doing is most likely to
promote their goals. Let others write the outraged articles.

~~~
rmc
_after they explicitly refuse to give credit_

Well then they'd be in breech of copyright, OSM data is Creative Commons
licenced (CC-BY-SA) (It's due to be relicenced soon). There are well
understood, legal, avenues to explore when companies breech copyright. We
don't need to resort to name calling.

~~~
ugh
Moral condemnation is possible outside of legal battlegrounds.

------
sambeau
Confirmed (but no mention of stealing):

<http://blog.osmfoundation.org/>

though there is this:

    
    
      "It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s
       contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get
       that on there."
    

I guess there is an outside possibility that both teams are using the same
Ordinance Survey Data (although this seems unlikely now that the OSM
Foundation has chimed in, I suspect they would have checked this before
announcing Apple's welcome).

~~~
rmc
OSM does not use Ordinance Survey Data. (OS has started allowing some
tracing). The data matches up all over the world, not just the UK (OS only has
detailed maps of UK).

It's OSM data.

As for references of "stealing", remember don't attribute to malice what can
easily be explained by incompetance.

~~~
sambeau
I mentioned it only because their copyright page says they do use OS data.

    
    
      United Kingdom: Contains Ordnance Survey data 
      © Crown copyright and database right 2010.
    

<http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright>

(I agree with your other points)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
OS maps don't show details within private property like ranks in car-parks.

------
jessriedel
So I'm trying to understand the British grammar. The blog author's usage is
correct ("Apple are thieving bastards") because using a plural verb after a
collective noun indicates that it applies to the members (who are _multiple_
bastard _s_ ). But isn't the HN title incorrect ("Are Apple 'stealing' Open
Street Map data?") because the data is/are (unrelated!) being stolen by the
company as a whole, requiring a singular noun, and not being stolen by
individual members?

<http://alt-usage-english.org/groupnames.html>

~~~
weavejester
British grammar traditionally refers to companies in the plural form (e.g.
Apple _are_ releasing the iPad 3 this year), but the American style, where
companies are referred to in the singular form (e.g. Apple _is_ releasing the
iPad 3 this year) is also acceptable in Britain.

The article you linked to is, I think, a little misguided. If I heard "the
government are killing people" I'd assume it meant "the people who make up the
government have collectively decided to kill people", which is really no
different to "the government is killing people". The collective decision of a
group is the individual decision of the entity that group represents.

~~~
brudgers
Perhaps the difference in style is due to the legal status of corporations as
persons in the US. In any event, "Apple is a thieving bastard" does not quite
work.

~~~
Symmetry
Huh? I'm pretty sure that the British corporations work the same way as US,
since personhood is pretty much the defining aspect of a corporation. If I
want a licence to make ARM processors I would go to some person who "ARM
Holdings plc" has authorized to act on said corporation's behalf. Then I would
sign a contract with "ARM Holdings plc". And even if the person I signed the
contract with left the company, or the president of ARM went to work somewhere
else, or even all the employees and all the shareholders were replaced my
contract with "ARM Holdings plc" would still be valid. Likewise there's no one
person who can just sell off all of ARM's assets if they feel like it.

This is how most of the world does it, as far as I can tell, though in
traditional Islamic law you only had business partnerships that dissolved if
any of the members left.

There are various arguments against having authority reside in abstract
entities rather than real people, but I hope you can see how it can be good in
the case of democratic governments at least, like the City of London
Corportation. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation>

EDIT: To be more clear, pretty much all businesses are some sort of
corporation, even though most people use "Corporation" to refer to publicly
traded joint stock corporations. All non-profit organizations are also
corporations. Some (but by no means all) municipalities are also legally
corporations, but I'm not sure exactly what the distinction between that and
other forms is.

EDIT2: Reading some more in Wikipedia, I might be using the word "corporation"
too loosely in the above, and there are also plane companies and partnerships
that are incorporated entities but not corporations, and have the same sort of
legal person hood that corporations do.

~~~
jesseendahl
When you say "plane companies," are you talking about airplane companies (e.g.
Boeing and Airbus) or did you mean to say "plain companies?"

------
kaolinite
Whilst I'm pleased they're using the data (though attribution would be nice),
I'm concerned that they'll start updating the maps themselves and not
contribute their work back to the community. Will have to wait and see I
suppose - I'm unsure what the license for OSM data is.

~~~
rmc
The OSM data that Apple are using is from 2 years ago. That would be under CC-
BY-SA. Attribution is not 'nice', it is legally required (i.e. copyright
infrigment if not attribute).

OSM is changing to ODbL soon (since CC doesn't make a lot of sense for this
sort of data)

~~~
brudgers
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0):

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/>

------
cormullion
From the iPhoto 1.0 license agreement, dated 17 Feb 2012:

"Title and intellectual property rights in and to any content displayed by or
accessed through the Apple Software belongs to the respective content owner.
Such content may be protected by copyright or other intellectual property laws
and treaties, and may be subject to terms of use of the third party providing
such content. Except as otherwise provided in this License, this License does
not grant you any rights to use such content nor does it guarantee that such
content will continue to be available to you."

Don't know what this _really_ means, though...

~~~
ajross
They've always used third party (Google) content for this purpose. that's just
a disclaimer that while they have a license to show it to you for the purpose
of locating your photo, you don't get a transitive license to re-use the data
for other purposes. Basically, the photo is copyright by you, the map is not,
nor is it by Apple.

------
redcircle
Apple traditionally has an 'about' page where they attribute open-source
projects, etc. Doesn't this version of iPhoto have the same? Or perhaps the
iPad/iPhone version has no 'about' page? [edit: by 'page', I mean a dialog box
or something comparable within the program]

~~~
incanus77
No mention of this in the in-app help, in-app legalese, or the EULA as reached
from the App Store page.

------
JVIDEL
I don't see how Apple could tarnish its brand image by saying they were using
OSM. As a matter of fact they could have improved their image regarding open
source by supporting OSM directly, thus justifying the use of their maps.

I'm not going to say it was malice, I really think this was discussed during
development and most of the people in charge thought it wouldn't matter and
nobody would care if they used OSM maps and give no credit to it.

~~~
Joeri
More likely they flagged it as a todo for when the legal team wrote the
licenses, and the legal team forgot. I don't think a developer would even be
allowed to add an attribution notice without running it by legal.

------
edlea
Looking at iPhoto "Journal", Apple probably decided they couldn't redistribute
Google maps so switched to OSM. Just a shame they didn't do it within the
parameters of OSM's license.

Hopefully this was a mistake rather than Apple thinking they either didn't
need to adhere to a license or that they could just bully their way to what
they want.

------
caycep
can you "steal" that which is open?

~~~
rmc
Yes, you can be in breech of copyright with this.

OpenStreetMap data isn't public domain, it's copyright under a creative
commons licence. There are clear rules you must obey to not be in breech of
the licence.

~~~
YooLi
So breech of copyright = stealing? The RIAA and MPAA were right all along...

~~~
runeks
My thoughts exactly. IMHO, published data cannot - by definition - be stolen.
Private data can.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think I'd use the word steal in respect of copyright works. But here
it is the moral rights which are being denied.

How do you steal something given to you as a gift? Claim it was yours all
along and so deny the owner their attribution. Even if the owner of the
copyright retains access to the data you can still deny them their lawful
attribution - that is what has arguably been stolen here I think.

