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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."
Funny, you can still get to the python script that generates the wallpapers from the cached pages of http://gmerge.2ni.net/ on Google itself:
e vinux.org/~2ni/gmerge/+google+maps+wallpaper&hl=en
:)
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:lNdeCgLHUdwJ:l
Get it while its still there!
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
No...
.*AA any day.
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
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
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?
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
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's been shutting down the gMail invite spooler , too, but according to the creator and owner of the site (http://isnoop.net/gmail/) 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
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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Google has website shut down, asserting their intelelctual property rights = reasonable
MPAA has website shut down, asserting their intellectual property rights = Gestapo
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Google
Yahoo
MapQuest
The reason Google is distorted is because the satellite image matches with the road maps. The satellite isn't nearly as far north as it would need to be to properly take the images it has. It is closer to the horizon so it gives a distorted looking image. Google most likely distorts the maps on purpose.
so hosting a site could be a problem, but how about something like greasemonkey on firefox to do it locally? would that get around the restriction?
The reason they do this is to simplify the mapping of latitude and longitude to pixel coordinates. In reality 1 second east/west is a different distance on the ground depending on how far from the equator you are (e.g. 360 degrees is zero distance at the poles).
What they've done is picked a reasonable average for this distance over the area they cover (North America and the UK), then projected the map so this distance equals the same number of pixels over the whole map. This way they don't need to resort to trig functions in their Javascript.
On a related note, the gmail invite spooler has also been taken down recently.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
They don't look square, they look as though it's a perspective drawing, which a map isn't supposed to be. Check out a similar Yahoo Map for comparison. If you put a protractor down on a printout of that map, you'd see 90 degree angles (more or less, I suspect). Not so on the Google version.
Breakfast served all day!
No. In fact, anyone can go and take a picture of anything in public.
;)
Now, if it was taking pictures of *inside* your house, you might have an issue.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
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.
It's very necessary. Consider:
Things google could have done: 1) sued. 2) threatened to sue until you settled for $3000 (yeah, I'm talking to you DirecTV!). 3) Claimed rights they don't actually have 4) contacted his ISP and gotten him shut down.
Things google actually did: 1) asked him respectfully and nicely to stop. 2) provided a legitimate reason for the same.
I've never seen a C&D that friendly. Style makes a big difference in things like that, and shows that google "gets it" and isn't throwing their weight around needlessly.
The difference is that the RIAA strategy doesn't rely on stopping filesharing one by one, it relies on fear. Nobody would stop doing it until they receive the "please stop" letter. I'm sure that number is way bigger than the ammount of users the Fasttrack network lost in the US because of fear of being sued for thousands of dollars.
Google's argument would be that when you access Google Maps you are accepting their terms of use, which are incorporated by means of the link at the bottom of each page. This is probably correct, but their argument would be stronger if you had to view the terms and click on an "I accept these terms" button before you accessed the website.
If you use a third party client to connect to the AOL IM network, on the other hand, you're not seeing any of AOL's terms of use - so how can you be bound by them? As a legal matter, it's fairly clear that you're not. This is why AOL tries to block third party clients technically rather than legally.