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."

Comments

I don't get it either

[localoptimum]

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.

Re:I don't get it either

[Kagura]

... with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project.

Sure, so long as you let us keep the time machine after we've complied!

Re:I don't get it either

[daeg]

The data in question isn't HTML data, traditional linking doesn't really apply.

The data available through Google is not free-as-in-beer. There's no usage fee, but Google doesn't own the data, and they are only defending what they paid for. I would suspect that if these third-party data providers saw that Google wasn't defending their license agreement, they would jack Google's data fees or revoke their license altogether, thus ruining it for everyone, not just those of the Gaia project. Sometimes killing one project is worth it, even if it sucks for some of us.

I'm sure if Google had their own satellites and collected the data themselves and could use it any way they pleased, we would be in a slightly different situation: Google would simply hire the Gaia developers and make a slick product out of it.

Licensing!

[screevo]

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.

wow, tough request

[bunions]

> 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.

Qua?

[Graymalkin]

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.

Re:Qua?

[ben there...]

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 used to work for one of the companies named in those watermarks, who provides GIS datasets of the US and a few other countries. They purchase datasets from smaller companies/localities and merge and improve them to provide data to Google, in-car nav companies, and routing for businesses. One dataset that we had purchased from a county government cost the company $30,000. Almost all of the datasets required the company to agree to a Data Usage Agreement. Every street, water, rail, etc. segment that was modified in our database was tagged with the source of the data. I designed the database that cataloged those datasets, imagery, and maps to record the restrictions of each dataset. I was not privy to our sales contracts, but I would assume sales to Google involved passing along many of the same Data Usage Agreements, for a much larger amount of data and of course a much larger sum of money.

And our work probably wasn't nearly as expensive as sending satellites into space like the data from Space Imaging. Their Data Usage Agreements are likely even more limiting, and their data more expensive. My former employer buys satellite images from Space Imaging and more accurate aerial imagery from USGS flyovers to improve the accuracy of their GIS datasets, but they do not produce or distribute the images themselves.

Google did the right thing in abiding by the contracts they signed to license the data from companies like mine. We are already fortunate enough that Google absorbs the cost of that data to provide it through their API like they do, and that Google even managed to negotiate a contract allowing its use through their API.

Re:Do very little evil?

[Threni]

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.

google should have turned a blind eye.

[troicstar]

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.

Re:google should have turned a blind eye.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on the Google Earth team and yes, this is exactly what happened. The license we have to the imagery forbids us from allowing access from unofficial clients. The data providers take this very seriously indeed and noticed very quickly that such an application was out in the wild.

Fortunately, the Gaia author understood our position and ceased development, for which we are grateful. I think we are going to send him a T-Shirt or something to try and make up for it. It's a small gesture but we don't want him to think badly of us.

I guess some people will see this action as us dumping on the little guy, but it's not that simple. Many Googlers have a background in open source and have been on both sides of the fence. However, the fact remains that this sort of aerial imagery is not only very expensive to produce but also very expensive to manipulate and merge into a unified "Earth". If we allowed open source clients to access the Earth database it would be easier to dump the (unwatermarked) images en-masse and avoid paying the imagery owners for it. Clearly, that's not something anybody wants - satellites don't launch themselves.

It's Not Google's Data

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I immediately deleted my Google Earth

[Kagura]

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).

Re:Do very little evil?

[stunt_penguin]

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.

Re:Do very little evil?

[dgg3565]

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.

Open Dependencies

[Doc Ruby]

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.

From TFA...

[CharonX]

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.