How do we equip OSM?
The project to create a free world map OpenStreetMap.org is well known to habravchanam, he has his own blog on the site. This map can be edited and used by everyone, and the format of the data stored on the server is open, so third-party developers have written many programs for viewing them, editing and printing maps.
The project participants use either “free” data, which is not protected by law, or the data whose owners allowed to use it to create a map. True, such permissions are very rare. Of the large-scale “data exemptions,” one can only recall satellite images of Yahoo! search engines. and Bing, which community members can use. Among Russian companies, we can recall ScanEx, which gave the Oesemer community permission to use the data from the Kosmosnimki.ru website. For many regions that are covered with high-resolution images, they are quite enough to make a detailed map of the area. True, such coverage is mainly in regional centers and large cities, and in the provinces the detailing is not enough for this. But the main objects can be seen there. However, there are a lot of databases that are created by the authorities: these are various kinds of registers of objects, local plans, master plans of settlements. According to many members of the community, since they are created with taxpayers' money, they should be available to everyone. The opinion is quite logical, but we will now talk about whether this is so or not.
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The main obstacle to the use of satellite imagery and other information is the fear of possible copyright infringement. Moreover, the sacred copyright sign is now molded literally on everything, including the fact that this copyright is not protected in principle. Most recently, we have already discussed what is not protected by copyright . In an article devoted to this issue, we examined one of the main criteria for a copyrighted work, namely, “creative”. Copyright protection requires that the work be the result of creativity, the hallmarks of which are novelty and originality. The result of purely mechanical work cannot be protected by copyright. But if we look at the satellite images that serve as the basis for the map services, then with all the desire to see some kind of “creativity” in them will not work. They are the result of mechanical fixation of the earth's surface by satellite camera.
Considering that even simple “frontal” photographs of paintings are recognized as “non-creative”, satellite imagery has no chance at all to become “works of art”. However, strict bans on the use of “unlicensed” snapshots make sense.
OSM is an international project, and legislation in different countries is different. In order to "secure" against possible claims, it makes sense to introduce the most stringent requirements for the "licensed purity" of the data used. So these seemingly excessive requirements are still worth fulfilling.
A fundamentally different question - with those data that are collected in Russia and relate to its territory: the treatment of them is governed by Russian law. Let's see what can be used freely in OSM and other similar projects. Article 1259 of the Civil Code contains a list of things not protected by copyright:
6. Are not subject to copyright:
1) official documents of state bodies and bodies of local self-government of municipal formations, including laws, other regulations, judicial decisions, other materials of a legislative, administrative and judicial nature, official documents of international organizations, as well as their official translations;
2) state symbols and signs (flags, emblems, orders, banknotes, etc.), as well as symbols and signs of municipalities;
3) works of folk art (folklore), not having specific authors;
4) messages about events and facts that are for informational purposes only (messages about the news of the day, TV programs, vehicle schedules, etc.).
Here we see several groups of data that may contain information necessary for the map. First of all, these are official documents. Some information in other sources is simply not found. For example, local laws and regulations are practically the only source of information about the boundaries of urban and rural settlements that make up municipal districts. As an example, we cite the order of the Ministry of Regional Development “On the approval of the boundaries of municipalities in the Volgograd region”, in which these boundaries are described. According to the description, in principle, you can try to build the necessary boundaries, using the specified guidelines. If possible. But it is much more convenient to do this not only in the textual description, but also in the cadastral map . The State Real Estate Cadastre is a systematic list of land plots with information about their purpose. In addition, information about the boundaries of cities, districts and municipalities is also entered in the cadastre. The order of his conduct is determined by the law "On State Real Estate Cadastre."
The cadastre is a collection of information contained in official documents, it is not protected by copyright. A cadastral map maintained by Rosreestr is a graphical representation of the information in the cadastre. Thanks to the craftsmen from the OSM community, there is a way to connect the images from the cadastral map to one of the common Josm editors, so that “inventorying” the inventory with checking the position of objects using satellite images becomes quite easy. True, the data in it is not for the whole of Russia.
Due to the fact that when creating a map, many sources are used, including amateur aerial photography, the accuracy of OSM in some regions has long exceeded the accuracy of ordinary “civilian” maps. For example, the already mentioned boundaries between municipalities are applied, it seems, only in OSM, they are not even in other “popular maps”, which are based solely on satellite images. Yes, and on ordinary maps created by Roskartografii these borders are also not applied. Sometimes they can be found on the websites of regional administrations: for example, the Administration of the Bryansk region has published a territorial planning scheme , as well as map maps , but the quality of these schemes is such that they can only be used “for information,” the data is still more accurate in the cadastral map.
In addition, copyright information is not protected by copyright. On the websites of state authorities one can find open databases, information from which can also be freely used in amateur cartography. An example is the Federal State Statistics Service, which publishes many databases on its website. The same applies to transport routes, which are also massively mapped. But do not forget that the database, in addition to copyright, there is also the "right of the manufacturer of the database." We also talked about it .
If you remember, the manufacturer of the database has the right to prohibit extracting records from it, while “extraction” means not just receiving data from the database, but mass, that is, that affects the entire base or a substantial part of it. In addition, “extraction” means transferring the contents of a database to another medium, which does not occur when “delineating”, so that it is impossible to violate the rights of the database manufacturer. Draw calmly. Just do not forget that the law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” requires in such cases to indicate the source. OSM uses the “source” tag for this purpose.
Before that, we mentioned only the information that can already be found on the websites of the authorities. However, most of the “state” databases are done on a “just be” principle, characterized by a non-obvious interface and intricate data access methods. There can be no possibility of providing automatic data extraction on the “state” website, as most of them don’t even have an RSS feed. And so it will be as long as the authorities do not establish order in the field of computerization and data processing. True, so far the most important achievements in this field have been the “legalization” of software. But even she touched far from all institutions, so far, especially in the provinces, it is considered a benefit to the employee to be given a computer, but what he will install on this computer is his personal difficulties.
It is simply out of the question to define any information processing rules and data formats used. In such conditions, a very small circle of departments reveals the really useful information on their websites, and its main volume is the texts of various regulatory acts, which are often processed and posted by third-party companies, for example, Pravo.ru . It is regulations that are now becoming the main source of data for OSM, and the distribution of such data is not at all involved by the state, but by all the same oesmery enthusiasts. It was enthusiasts who made, for example, a service for checking railway station codes, checking the boundaries of settlements and streets using data from address classifiers, a database of regional centers based on a classifier of municipalities, and other useful services. And as a negative example of the publication of geographic information, one can cite the “ Master Plan of Moscow ”, published in the form of three “books” composed of graphic files. Parts of the city map are published on separate pages using frames: it seems that the creators of the site decided to make it as difficult as possible to familiarize themselves with the document. And there is no question of providing for the possibility to download the plan or export it to some format.
The only large-scale data transfer to the project can serve as an example with Rybinsk, whose plan was exported to OSM and became a decent map. However, in this case, an enthusiast was simply found in the Rybinsk administration. Meanwhile, two years ago a law came into force, which is designed to resolve this particular problem, it is called “ On ensuring access to information on the activities of state bodies and local self-government bodies ”. It is he who regulates the list of information that should be published and provided at the request of citizens.
One of the basic principles enshrined in law is the principle of openness and availability of such information. Restrictions on access may be established only by federal laws. The thirteenth article of the law defines the list of the information that should be posted on the Internet. Plans of settlements in this list, as expected, is not specified. But the example of Rybinsk shows that it is still possible to reach an agreement, and an example with Moscow shows that cartographic information is sometimes still laid out voluntarily.
The Town Planning Code previously contained the requirement to publish the master plan of the locality on the Internet, however, the fourteenth paragraph of the twenty-fourth article, in which it was envisaged , is now canceled. It remains only to write requests to the administration of the district or settlement, since there are no restrictions on the provision of the general plan in the law. But, as already mentioned, the culture of working with information in state institutions is at an extremely low level. The victim of this culture (or rather, its absence) was the law “On ensuring access ...”. It simply does not perform.
If you examine the website of any government agency with the law in your hands, you will find that there are some categories of information that should be made public by law. And in responses to inquiries to state bodies, there are sometimes downright enchanting things: for example, the year before last, the answer of one of the Krasnoyarsk officials to a request concerning the verification of budget expenditures was made public . According to the official, "the requested materials of the means of verification are not information." And in this case it was a question of a request sent in accordance with the law “On Mass Media”, which gives journalists more rights than ordinary mortals. So, if you want to send a request to the local administration, the result may not please you at all. As already mentioned, the whole thing - in the cultural characteristics of Russian officials. And they, unfortunately, are not regulated by the adoption of the law.
The project participants use either “free” data, which is not protected by law, or the data whose owners allowed to use it to create a map. True, such permissions are very rare. Of the large-scale “data exemptions,” one can only recall satellite images of Yahoo! search engines. and Bing, which community members can use. Among Russian companies, we can recall ScanEx, which gave the Oesemer community permission to use the data from the Kosmosnimki.ru website. For many regions that are covered with high-resolution images, they are quite enough to make a detailed map of the area. True, such coverage is mainly in regional centers and large cities, and in the provinces the detailing is not enough for this. But the main objects can be seen there. However, there are a lot of databases that are created by the authorities: these are various kinds of registers of objects, local plans, master plans of settlements. According to many members of the community, since they are created with taxpayers' money, they should be available to everyone. The opinion is quite logical, but we will now talk about whether this is so or not.
No data
')
The main obstacle to the use of satellite imagery and other information is the fear of possible copyright infringement. Moreover, the sacred copyright sign is now molded literally on everything, including the fact that this copyright is not protected in principle. Most recently, we have already discussed what is not protected by copyright . In an article devoted to this issue, we examined one of the main criteria for a copyrighted work, namely, “creative”. Copyright protection requires that the work be the result of creativity, the hallmarks of which are novelty and originality. The result of purely mechanical work cannot be protected by copyright. But if we look at the satellite images that serve as the basis for the map services, then with all the desire to see some kind of “creativity” in them will not work. They are the result of mechanical fixation of the earth's surface by satellite camera.
Considering that even simple “frontal” photographs of paintings are recognized as “non-creative”, satellite imagery has no chance at all to become “works of art”. However, strict bans on the use of “unlicensed” snapshots make sense.
OSM is an international project, and legislation in different countries is different. In order to "secure" against possible claims, it makes sense to introduce the most stringent requirements for the "licensed purity" of the data used. So these seemingly excessive requirements are still worth fulfilling.
A fundamentally different question - with those data that are collected in Russia and relate to its territory: the treatment of them is governed by Russian law. Let's see what can be used freely in OSM and other similar projects. Article 1259 of the Civil Code contains a list of things not protected by copyright:
6. Are not subject to copyright:
1) official documents of state bodies and bodies of local self-government of municipal formations, including laws, other regulations, judicial decisions, other materials of a legislative, administrative and judicial nature, official documents of international organizations, as well as their official translations;
2) state symbols and signs (flags, emblems, orders, banknotes, etc.), as well as symbols and signs of municipalities;
3) works of folk art (folklore), not having specific authors;
4) messages about events and facts that are for informational purposes only (messages about the news of the day, TV programs, vehicle schedules, etc.).
Here we see several groups of data that may contain information necessary for the map. First of all, these are official documents. Some information in other sources is simply not found. For example, local laws and regulations are practically the only source of information about the boundaries of urban and rural settlements that make up municipal districts. As an example, we cite the order of the Ministry of Regional Development “On the approval of the boundaries of municipalities in the Volgograd region”, in which these boundaries are described. According to the description, in principle, you can try to build the necessary boundaries, using the specified guidelines. If possible. But it is much more convenient to do this not only in the textual description, but also in the cadastral map . The State Real Estate Cadastre is a systematic list of land plots with information about their purpose. In addition, information about the boundaries of cities, districts and municipalities is also entered in the cadastre. The order of his conduct is determined by the law "On State Real Estate Cadastre."
The cadastre is a collection of information contained in official documents, it is not protected by copyright. A cadastral map maintained by Rosreestr is a graphical representation of the information in the cadastre. Thanks to the craftsmen from the OSM community, there is a way to connect the images from the cadastral map to one of the common Josm editors, so that “inventorying” the inventory with checking the position of objects using satellite images becomes quite easy. True, the data in it is not for the whole of Russia.
Due to the fact that when creating a map, many sources are used, including amateur aerial photography, the accuracy of OSM in some regions has long exceeded the accuracy of ordinary “civilian” maps. For example, the already mentioned boundaries between municipalities are applied, it seems, only in OSM, they are not even in other “popular maps”, which are based solely on satellite images. Yes, and on ordinary maps created by Roskartografii these borders are also not applied. Sometimes they can be found on the websites of regional administrations: for example, the Administration of the Bryansk region has published a territorial planning scheme , as well as map maps , but the quality of these schemes is such that they can only be used “for information,” the data is still more accurate in the cadastral map.
In addition, copyright information is not protected by copyright. On the websites of state authorities one can find open databases, information from which can also be freely used in amateur cartography. An example is the Federal State Statistics Service, which publishes many databases on its website. The same applies to transport routes, which are also massively mapped. But do not forget that the database, in addition to copyright, there is also the "right of the manufacturer of the database." We also talked about it .
If you remember, the manufacturer of the database has the right to prohibit extracting records from it, while “extraction” means not just receiving data from the database, but mass, that is, that affects the entire base or a substantial part of it. In addition, “extraction” means transferring the contents of a database to another medium, which does not occur when “delineating”, so that it is impossible to violate the rights of the database manufacturer. Draw calmly. Just do not forget that the law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” requires in such cases to indicate the source. OSM uses the “source” tag for this purpose.
“To take them is our task!”
Before that, we mentioned only the information that can already be found on the websites of the authorities. However, most of the “state” databases are done on a “just be” principle, characterized by a non-obvious interface and intricate data access methods. There can be no possibility of providing automatic data extraction on the “state” website, as most of them don’t even have an RSS feed. And so it will be as long as the authorities do not establish order in the field of computerization and data processing. True, so far the most important achievements in this field have been the “legalization” of software. But even she touched far from all institutions, so far, especially in the provinces, it is considered a benefit to the employee to be given a computer, but what he will install on this computer is his personal difficulties.
It is simply out of the question to define any information processing rules and data formats used. In such conditions, a very small circle of departments reveals the really useful information on their websites, and its main volume is the texts of various regulatory acts, which are often processed and posted by third-party companies, for example, Pravo.ru . It is regulations that are now becoming the main source of data for OSM, and the distribution of such data is not at all involved by the state, but by all the same oesmery enthusiasts. It was enthusiasts who made, for example, a service for checking railway station codes, checking the boundaries of settlements and streets using data from address classifiers, a database of regional centers based on a classifier of municipalities, and other useful services. And as a negative example of the publication of geographic information, one can cite the “ Master Plan of Moscow ”, published in the form of three “books” composed of graphic files. Parts of the city map are published on separate pages using frames: it seems that the creators of the site decided to make it as difficult as possible to familiarize themselves with the document. And there is no question of providing for the possibility to download the plan or export it to some format.
The only large-scale data transfer to the project can serve as an example with Rybinsk, whose plan was exported to OSM and became a decent map. However, in this case, an enthusiast was simply found in the Rybinsk administration. Meanwhile, two years ago a law came into force, which is designed to resolve this particular problem, it is called “ On ensuring access to information on the activities of state bodies and local self-government bodies ”. It is he who regulates the list of information that should be published and provided at the request of citizens.
One of the basic principles enshrined in law is the principle of openness and availability of such information. Restrictions on access may be established only by federal laws. The thirteenth article of the law defines the list of the information that should be posted on the Internet. Plans of settlements in this list, as expected, is not specified. But the example of Rybinsk shows that it is still possible to reach an agreement, and an example with Moscow shows that cartographic information is sometimes still laid out voluntarily.
The Town Planning Code previously contained the requirement to publish the master plan of the locality on the Internet, however, the fourteenth paragraph of the twenty-fourth article, in which it was envisaged , is now canceled. It remains only to write requests to the administration of the district or settlement, since there are no restrictions on the provision of the general plan in the law. But, as already mentioned, the culture of working with information in state institutions is at an extremely low level. The victim of this culture (or rather, its absence) was the law “On ensuring access ...”. It simply does not perform.
If you examine the website of any government agency with the law in your hands, you will find that there are some categories of information that should be made public by law. And in responses to inquiries to state bodies, there are sometimes downright enchanting things: for example, the year before last, the answer of one of the Krasnoyarsk officials to a request concerning the verification of budget expenditures was made public . According to the official, "the requested materials of the means of verification are not information." And in this case it was a question of a request sent in accordance with the law “On Mass Media”, which gives journalists more rights than ordinary mortals. So, if you want to send a request to the local administration, the result may not please you at all. As already mentioned, the whole thing - in the cultural characteristics of Russian officials. And they, unfortunately, are not regulated by the adoption of the law.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/124448/
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