Re: [Flightgear-devel] Use of old maps

[Ralf G. <rge...@kn...>]

Hi,

David Luff schrieb:
> Hi folks,
>=20
> I happened to come across the following ebay item whilst looking for=20
> a map which caught my eye:
>=20
> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1937-Ordnance-Survey-Map-42-Llandudno-and-Denbigh=
_W0QQitemZ8403614581QQcategoryZ121824QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
>=20
>=20
>=20
> It's a 1937 OS map to a reasonably hilly area of the UK, and appears=20
> to have quite detailed contours.  All the information I can find=20
> suggests that Crown Copyright persists in OS products for 50 years=20
> from the date of publication, suggesting that it might be possible to
>  extract freely usable elevation data from such maps, admittedly not=20
> up-to-date but likely to be much denser than the 3-arcsec SRTM.

IANAL, but you might be even better off than you think. At least here in
Germany, courts seem to consider only the map itself (its presentation)
to be protected by copyright but not the base data (such as elevation
isolines, roadlines, etc.), as the base data itself represents reality
and does not lend itself to creativity ("pers=C3=B6nliche geistige Sch=C3=
=B6pfung"
or "personal mental creation"), which is a basic requirement for
copyright protection according to German copyright law.

I know of one specific case where a map created by a consortium of=20
communitities was scanned and vectorised by a private map creator to=20
create a new map and sell that. Germany's federal court of law (BGH)=20
specifically said that this action is legal, even if deliberately=20
introduced errors are vectorised as well=20
(http://www.jurpc.de/rechtspr/19990054.htm, German decision)

You may have to check whether similar conditions apply to this specific
map and Crown Copyright. I repeat: I am not a lawyer ;-)

Cheers,
Ralf