

Ask HN: Are Maps Really this Dangerous? - BTCThrowAway

Background:
I work at a fairly big tech company. My team is working on a feature that will display maps and overlay data on top by shading in countries based on some metric.  I have never worked on maps before, but I have seen this used in all sorts of websites.  So our website doesn't seem to be breaking any new ground whatsoever.<p>Problem:
We want to get feedback on this feature, but before we can let customers see it, we need to have a bunch of committees sign off that we aren't doing anything that will get us sued or use language/graphics that will offend people in a random part of the world.  According to one committee, if we release these maps that use detailed country borders, we could get sued for millions of dollars and people could potentially be thrown in jail.  They claim that this is a likely scenario because there are other regions in the world that define borders differently than the western world and we must present them maps based on how their governments portray the world.  This means we would have to do some IP tracking and generate a custom map based on how each region should see that map and there could be dozens of different versions of the country borders.<p>We are looking to get &#60; 100 customers to try this out in the U.S. and Canada. We are not looking to do a world-wide launch.<p>My questions for HN:
1) Is what this committee saying true?  Can we really be sued or people thrown in jail for having software showing a potentially incorrect country border in a beta version of a website?<p>2) Do any of you run into these types of committees that enforce policies before you ship betas?  If so, are they a good thing for your company? Or do they do more harm than good?
======
Someone
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx):

"In the original release of Windows 95, you could change your time zone by
clicking on the map, and the time zone you selected would highlight.
Similarly, you could change your Region Settings by clicking on the world map.
This was one of those little touches that made Windows 95 that much more fun
to use.

But we had to remove those features within months of release, even though we
based both of the maps on the borders officially recognized by the United
Nations.

In early 1995, a border war broke out between Peru and Ecuador and the
Peruvian government complained to Microsoft that the border was incorrectly
placed. Of course, if we complied and moved the border northward, we'd get an
equally angry letter from the Ecuadorian government demanding that we move it
back. So we removed the feature altogether.

The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban
all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region
to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border
must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are
incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of
Windows 95 for them.

Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject."

And this is not limited to maps. Even names have to be carefully chosen, and
that is not limited to tiny details. It is "former Yugoslavian republic of
Macedonia", not "Macedonia", except, probably, in the republic itself, 'China'
either has a relativel small island or a huge mainland that is occupied by
renegades, etc.

------
beatpanda
I don't know about the jail thing, but this is a big deal.

There's a mountain of sociological literature on the ideological nature of all
maps. If you have time, it's worth checking out.
[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41144136?uid=3739560&#...</a>

------
jamesjguthrie
"there are other regions in the world that define borders differently than the
western world and we must present them maps based on how their governments
portray the world."

I've never heard of this to be honest. How can we in the west tell a country
"This is what your border is" and have it be something different to what they
claim is their land?

~~~
jamesjguthrie
"According to one committee, if we release these maps that use detailed
country borders, we could get sued for millions of dollars and people could
potentially be thrown in jail."

And if this were true, every single developer here who uses Google Maps in
their app and releases that app worldwide, will be subject to prosecution. It
sounds like bull to me!

~~~
dmm
Google detects where a person is connecting from and shows different maps to
people connecting from different areas.

A prominent example is viewing borders in India and Tibet. If you have a
Chinese ip you will see a different border than if you use an Indian ip.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
Ah, I didn't realise this.

