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Post by CBenson
What I think most people think waze's stance is is the following statement found in the wiki:

"Those terms of use also apply to you. You cannot use Google's aerial images to edit Waze's maps. In some jurisdictions you may be able to use them as a reference (like looking at a map in a mapbook), but not as an overlay as with the Greasemonkey script Googze."

This is entirely consistent with my interpretation. If waze has a stance that "copyrighted materials such as Google should not be used" then they need to make it clearer.

Again, there are significant licensing and copyright issues here, if you are not positive what you are doing complies with the relevant law and terms of service, don't do it.
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Post by CBenson
Just so I understand correctly, you're planning to change the very page that waze personnel just changed in an attempt to clear up their policy for new editors?
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Post by CBenson
victornpb wrote:I can use the Google Maps Aerial Only as a reference to draw the roads? since it's just a photograph, there's no geometry or names written, I'm not copying anything, right?
Do not copy the Google aerial maps as that is prohibited. Waze provides aerial images. To avoid problems, use the aerial images that Waze provides.
However, there is a real distinction between using Google only as a reference and copying. This is laid out in the documentation.
You can copy a photograph, so just because there's no geometry on names written on the aerial image doesn't mean you are not copying it. Using an automated means to extract and save data from the images is not using the images only as a reference. Overlaying the images on a map you are editing is not using the images only as a reference.
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Post by CBenson
No significant map company is going to admit that they intentionally introduce inaccuracies into their maps. There are plenty of methods to include data in maps to show copying that are not misnames or mislabels. To demonstrate copyright infringement, it takes much more than a common misspelled road name on the maps.

However, as has been noted every map has inaccuracies whether intentional or not. Simply relying on a single source is not good practice. Even relying on a single street sign can be inaccurate. I have one street where only one street sign along the street is misspelled.
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Post by CBenson
Just remember that US law doesn't apply to much of what waze does.
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Post by CBenson
See Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Serv. Co. Inc., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) cited earlier in the thread for the proposition that facts aren't protected by copyright in the US.
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Post by Daknife
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Google purposely misnames/mislabels data in order to catch copying.
Sorry but I don't believe it does, nor that such traps would remain for long as any user can go in and edit to correct intentional errors. Such a tactic might have once worked in the days of paper maps or closed systems, but since they opened their maps up to any and everybody to fix and improved (something I think they learned from Waze) such is no longer a viable method.

I no longer have to just live with the typo or misspelling of my street, I can fix it. And their trap vanishes. As to just plain inaccuracies, that happens often due to errors in the official government sources.
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Post by Daknife
Waze had user editing before Google did. And Google is very good at seeing what others do that works and if not patented or copyrighted following. They do a great job of leading but in many ways they lead by seeing what to follow, maybe it wasn't Waze maybe it was Open Maps, regardless of your nitpick, the point stands, editing traps are no longer viable as users can and will fix those intentional errors.

On the humorous side, maybe that is the real purpose of the IGN editors, to inject such intentional errors into the maps, they just do it so badly we make sure to fix their work as soon as we find it.
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Post by Daknife
Reviewed by other editors, and should a legitimate edit be repeatedly reversed people will complain. When it was paper maps or closed GPS devices where they had no ability to edit or even really complain about such errors, users just had to live with them. No longer is that an option. And users will retaliate against rejected edits. I had one that some dude in South Africa rejected even though my edit was entirely legit. I remade the edit, and then went and found some edits that editor had rejected and rejected some of his, with a note that if he is going to review edits on the other side of the world he'd better learn to trust the locals making the edits. My re-edit went through.

Google is far from perfect but they pride themselves on the level of accuracy they present and rejecting legitimate edits does not support that corporate policy. Google is Serious about it's "Do no Evil" motto. Even more so the culture within the corp among the engineers developing these projects is very strongly against such a policy of rejecting edits that fix inaccurate information.
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Post by Daknife
BTW just just found this. False names are NOT copyrightable IP.
Copying of copyright traps consisting of "false facts"
does not constitute infringement.
See
Nester's Map & Guide Corp.
v. Hagstrom Map Co.
, 796 F. Supp. 729, 733 (E.D.N.Y. 1992) ("To
treat `false' facts interspersed among actual facts and
represented as actual facts as fiction would mean that no one
could ever reproduce or copy actual facts without risk of
reproducing a false fact and thereby violating a copyright.");
Nimmer, supra
, § 13.03[C]. The traps here easily fit the "false
fact" mold. As noted above, the names of geographic features may
not be copyrighted; thus, fictitious names may not be
copyrighted. Similarly, the existence, or non-existence, of a
road is a non-copyrightable "fact."
from page 19 of This court decision regarding maps.

So traps can apply to how existing streets are laid out (google splitting many roads that don't qualify for splitting under Waze's guidelines) but any information presented as factual is not protected by copyright if the information is false. So again the previous position put forward in this thread that mass copying of Gmaps, using scripts or direct overlay tools violates, occasionally referring to Google to verify a street name or layout even if the information included is a trap is not infringement on Waze's part, particularly as Waze imposes no direct supervision or control over the individual editors. Waze has made a good faith effort to provide adequate editing tools to eliminate the need to directly copy from Google, so how can it be found liable for the actions of non-employee, non-supervised user editors, based on a day of reading past case law including the linked case and other cases, based on extensive precedence and current case law severely limiting copyright protection of maps (as noted in my linked case) I see no liability for Waze. Though IANAL, I do enjoy reading legal code and case law.
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