Slashdot Mirror
Gaia Project Agrees To Google Cease and Desist
Dreben writes "Gaia, an opensource project to develop a 3D API to Google Earth, has decided to comply with a request from Google. The search giant's Chief Technologist, Michael Jones, contacted the project with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project. Amongst other things, they cited '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 mail list: '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."
I came across something like this through work. I was helping to organise a physics conference in Berlin. We were using a town map website to mark the conference venue. I entered the address of the place, copied the url (with all the cgi after it), and made a link so that the visitors could navigate to the map website and immediately get a big red cross on it. Our legal experts told me to get rid of the link because we could face a law suit for improper use of linking to other people's material (even though the huge ad banner still shows viagra and goodness knows what else all around the map, and the visitors were therefore contributing to the ad revenue). It's all fucking bullshit if you ask me.
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
According to the post, it's quite simple. Google has a license to use their API with the data. It's not google being a bully. It's google saving their rear.
Google News is using stories from online sources without a license. When will Google itself cease and desist?
> request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development
Hopefully google will let the developers use the google time machine to go back and not work on it.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Fair use does not involve using a sublicensed product against the terms of the license agreement. When you spend the money to photograph and map the surface of the Earth you can license it and do with it what you please. Until then you have to deal with the licenses Google Earth's data falls under or not use it. Google is actually being pretty generous in providing a Google Earth/Maps API as they're going out on a limb licensing content from other vendors. There's a reason all of the images have Google logo watermarks or watermarks of the company that collected the data.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Is it anything to do with Google? If Google have licensed data from a third party, then they'll be subject to the terms of that contract, which presumably forbids allowing others to access it without some restrictions. Otherwise the licencing company is giving that data out for free to companies with whom they could have instead sold it to.
especially to small time users. It would have generated goodwill. I'm sure their agreements with the 3rd party providers didn't stipulate not to allow other api's to be developed, merely (ab)use of the dataset by said apis. Grey areas would benefit both parties.
Google doesn't own most of the map data they're using-- they've bought licenses allowing them to use it in certain ways and Gaia was causing Google to violate those agreements. If Google's data suppliers had cut off their contracts over this, then both Google Earth and Gaia would cease to exist.
Why stop there? I think this pushed me over the edge. I'm not using any Google products any longer. And I haven't just stopped there, I'm boycotting any platform that runs Google products or their searches. I'm not even using my computer right now to write this. To show my indignation, I've decided to cancel my power bill. Hell, since we're already having fun overreacting, I'm just going to run naked through the streets proclaiming the end of the world, all brought to you by Google(tm).
But what if the open source project was doing something it wasn't supposed to? Since when does open-source mean "free reign to do anything we please"?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
There has never been a time when 2 corporate entities, Google and Apple, have been as beloved and cherished by the public as we have today. It's a true sign of unprecidented respect for a corporation when users obey the corporation's every request without as much as a wimper. If it was Microsoft, the kids would be screaming and it would be on every blog. Google is so beloved, they could tell kids to shoot themselves and they'd do it.
I don't know how the hell issuing a cease and desist so as to hold onto your digitalglobe reseller account could be construed as evil.
If Digitalglobe (who are the providers of Google's content on google earth) decided Google were breaching their TOS and decided they'd be better off keeping their imaging to themselves then everyone loses, including anyone using local.google.com and Google Earth.
Seems to me that Google are trying to keep a good thing going, and being IMHO reasonably respectful towards the Gaia project's authors.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
To be blunt, that is a perfectly stupid statement. As has been pointed out below in other comments and in the stub--"Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors."--Google is simply being faithful to prior contractual agreements. Heck, they were gentle enough to simply request a cease and desist instead of sicking the lawyers on them. And is a company protects its interests really "doing evil"? The fact that a company might want to have a say in a product or IP they OWN and they took the time and money to create seems reasonable. Granted, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA go overboard and abuse the law, but that doesn't alter the right of companies to reasonably enforce their ownership. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
A growing chunk of the world is going on with their lives ignoring intellectual property completely, and even though I make my living through payments for intellectual property, I am perfectly happy to see the entire IP structure collapse. It's based on some bad assumptions and ultimately destructive conventions.
I, for one, am pleased to walk down the streets of Belgrade and see "Nike" shoes for 5 dollars (US) and slipstreamed copies of Windows XP professional SP2 for less than that. I've made the decision to circumvent the laws of Intellectual Property whenever I can. I look forward to the whole thing blowing up and a new model taking its place (even though there's a chance it could be a worse model).
The direction IP law is taking us goes to a very bad place.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"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."
Yes - Google Earth is nothing without the data. That's why they pay huge sums of money for that data. They intend to make a return on this investment - and I'm sure anybody with Google shares would expect them to do so.
To make a return they want people to use it. To get more people to use it they developed an API - the usage of which they intend to ultimately bring money back to Google with.
Why on earth would they want other people ripping off the data they paid to license to do other stuff with - something that doesn't return them money. More importantly, whoever is licensing them the data isn't going to be too happy that other people are copying it without paying them a license fee. If I wrote some software and sold copies to people, and one of my customers started burning copies and giving them out to everybody, I would be pissed off with that customer.
If Gaia wants to use the maps, I'm sure the OSS community will collectively reach into their pockets to pay for the licensing fee required (that would be the fee required to distribute those maps free, to anybody). Alternatively, why don't we send up an OSS satellite ourselves and take our own photos?
I fail to see how this is a story..
This isn't evil, it's a requirement of Google's data suppliers. They signed contracts with providers to give map & satellite data of the globe away for free. How satellite imaging providers agreed to this is beyond me. Getting photos like Google Earth uses can be quite expensive (the whole launching satellites thing). In any case, Google pulled it off. They're probably paying some good penny to do it too.
I don't get the objection here. Google gives this stuff away including an API. Open API's were unheard of until Google came around. Somehow, the providers agreed to that as well. That's not enough? They should also become a conduit for everyone that wants to use Google's licensed data as they please?
This is why I don't write open source software anymore. The expectations of the community often far outweighs what they're entitled to.
This scenario is a compelling case for open dependencies. Depending on a proprietary data source, like Google's GIS data, is a risk that can destroy a project when that source on which the project depends changes its terms of use, or turns out too limited to use by the project's actual scope or use cases. If Gaia were coded to use an open standard for data, then its developers could probably use Google data as one source during its development. The release could then use whichever data source the user specified. The most Google could do would be to insist the project stop specifying Google as a default source, and maybe stop users from connecting to the Google API.
Though that would encourage a good project (if Gaia is one) to grow the popularity of other data sources that compete with Google. So Google would probably go along with it.
Including tiered architectures with choices for alternative components and data in standard formats is a powerful way to force even a powerful force like Google to go with the flow.
--
make install -not war
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=cute+kitten
cute kittensPage 1 of 1,631,025 results
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,120,000 for cute kittens
that means google is about 25% more cute kittens.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Heh, it's clear you're not working for e.g NAVTEQ, TANA, or TeleAtlas. In that case you'd say the opposite.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
In what way is it evil to keep your promise? They signed a contract; they're doing what they said they'd do.
Google is being good, not evil, by doing this. Unless you think they were evil to sign the contract, in which case they're being evil if they provide Google Earth at all.
The mistaken assumption is "anyone who takes away my toys must be evil". If you have that assumption, you're not being good, you're just being childish.
I have discovered a truly remarkable
While there can be differences of opinion over whether it was right for Google to make the request, they sure made it with a lot more tact than many companies have in the past. No threats. No blustering. No legal speak. It was a very reasonable letter that respects the recipient's intelligence and moral integrity.
I'm impressed.
The data that we license for Google Earth and Google Maps is made available for use under the restriction that it not be accessed or used outside of Google's client software.
In other words, they got a license for the images, data, whatever only for use in their software. The original providers of that data would - understandably - be unhappy if they allowed the data to be used by other products (remember, they want to keep selling the data to people). So Google has to be the "bad guy" and pull the plug from the 3rd party devs or the data providers will sue them for allowing others to take the data and/or pull the plug on Google's license.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
I've long argued that this is entirely unreasonable and what's most broken about the legal system when it comes to IP law. It's not how the world works today but I believe that there should be control over the profits/fruits of the IP created but not of the IP itself. The entire IP system is meant to guarantee innovation isn't stiffled. Instead companies focus on guaranteeing their profits even if that means killing off innovation.
It's hard to say. Certainly there would be more innovation if anyone was allowed to use the data of these images willy-nilly, but would the images themselves ever have existed?
Say I want to map out my hometown using aerial geography. That's a fairly large undertaking, requiring a plane, probably multiple camera, and almost certainly multiple passes over the area. If I'm expected pay for the costs of acquiring those photos, but I can't expect to even break even (because someone can take my data and release it for free), then I have less incentive to spend the money required to acquire the data. We don't get innovation on the use of this data until such time as the data is acquired, and that can be a costly venture.
In the case of books, it's even darker. The only material value a fiction book has is in the paper it's printed on (or the cost of bandwidth, if I release it online). Other than that, any initial investment comes strictly at an opportunity cost (my time). The entire value of the book is wrapped up in its IP, because copies have a trivial cost (compare to 200 years ago, when printing books had a significant cost). To me, this means that intellectual property laws are even more important today, though they should be significantly reduced in temporal length. The ease of duplication means that there is virtually no replication cost, and very little distribution costs (given electronic sales). Any sale can be virtually pure profit, meaning the time to make up the opportunity cost of creating the work is reduced.
For movies and music which typically have an up front, material cost, things change a bit, but still largely hold true. I'd guess (pulling the number out of my--well, you know) that 90% of the money that a film will earn is generated within the first 10 years, certainly within the first 20. Before duplication and distribution were so easy, a lot of the earnings would be eaten up in materials. Without those costs, again, it's much easier to make up the initial investment and turn a nice profit in a shorter period of time.
I'd be really ecstatic if there were stricter controls even than we have now--as long as the length of copyright was reduced drastically and keys were escrowed with the government and released at the end of the copyright term.
Tell that to Daniel Brandt, creator of scroogle.org.
Google is at least several orders of magnitude more evil than Microsoft, the only difference is PR.
Brin and Page started immediately with the Orwellian doublespeak. Like the US government naming their War Department the Department of Defense, they make their motto "Don't be evil", while doing all manner of evil things. They record everything you've ever searched on, your emails on gmail, they know who your friends are, they actively hire and work with the NSA and CIA, they decide what are newsworthy sources, what sections of news you care about, and what should be news on any given day.
And while all this is going on, they are running defense by publicizing that google refuses subpoenas. How noble! As if that is going to make the slightest difference to how the government tracks the citizenry, Democrat or Republican. The only difference is that the illusion of google being "unmicrosoft-like" is maintained. If the government wants the information, it's going to get it.
And as far as the government is concerned, if google didn't exist it would have to be invented. The one stop shop of information gathering, profiling and opinion shaping. Reality to most people is rapidly becoming the first 10 search results of any google search and the daily google news page. That's a scary thought.
Just as scary is the profiling. It would be trivial to compile a list of crimes and or suspects, and match the reason for suspicion/type of crime with their search history. Just do a large enough sample, maybe ten thousand people. Correlate the search terms with the crimes and suspects. Now for the general populace, add up the frequencies of search terms, multiply by the high correlations found in your previous experiment, and you have an easily ranked list of who to watch.
The moment there is large scale unrest, guess who gets a one way ticket to Guantanamo, guilty or otherwise. It's just like Stalin executing the Polish Officers at Katyn forest, only more precise. Rather than liquidate anyone who could mount resistance, this way you can leave the docile (or paranoid) intelligentsia. You will need someone to run your factories, after all.
Google is capable of orders of magnitude more evil than Microsoft. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But they have a nice uncluttered UI, and different colored letters! How cute! And isn't google earth cool!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Google pays for that data, and they are bound by contracts and license agreements to only use it in certain ways. While i'm sure part of the decision is for their own benifits, it still doesn't change that most likely, as part of the agreement, Google has a responsability to make sure that data isn't used in ways that did not conform with said agreement.