To charge an Electric Vehicle, we need to arrive at a charging station during its opening hours.
Some charging stations are available 24/7 (example : petrol stations) but some others are inactive during night (supermarkets) even if the parking doesn’t close.
The opening hours can not be found by survey and are only available on the provider’s proprietary platform (website, app).
Can I add the opening hours on openstreetmap or is illegal? Will the provider sue OSM for copying from their platform?
For non-import activities, looking up an individual business’s hours on their website is generally considered uncopyrightable information. Collection copyright may attach if you import a bunch at once.
I could not possibly make an automated import because I must check all charging stations coordinates from satellite view (and automated imports of proprietary data are illegal, the last thing I want is OSM to be sued).
I have spend 2 full working days to manually check ~200 charging stations, of which 2/3 needed more details and 1/3 were completely missing.
The fee=yes and charge=0.29 EUR/kWh are legally obtained by survey. All AC charging stations are the same since they switched to a paying model.
I used their website to view the name and opening hours of the charging station. The website is under copyright license.
Then I received a message from @hwman calling names as a first line (!), and then blaming me for the provider, the name, and the charge. iD automatically completes the provider and wikidata, and then prompts to complete the name, fee, charge, and other tags. The names are widespreadly used worldwide but he claimed that germany is an exception. He claimed the provider automatically completed by iD was wrong. He also claimed that the charge is changing over time, for which I requested proof.
He sent me a 2nd message wrongfully accusing me of making “mechanical” edits, I explained it was all manual.
What happened next is that @woodpeck reverted my work of the past 2 days (also some things I edited 17 days ago) until I bring proof of how I got the names. I don’t care much about adding names to the stations, but the opening hours are falling in the same legal frame that’s why I open the thread.
Edit: At the moment I feel completely demotivated to upload anything on osm, when this heavy work is so poorly rewarded, and 1 rude person escalates until another reverts my changes.
I hope for a peaceful resolution where my work will be restored (or, at least the legal part of if).
Meanwhile I will keep the charging stations as favorites just for myself, on my phone.
As far as I can see this kind of edit still is what OSM calls “mechanical”. Thus a discussion beforehand is important.
About the fee: Yes, there are stable fees but many (!) operators change fees for different reasons and with differing frequency. Also, the fee isn’t the same for every user. So it’s rather pointless and/or misleading to add a specific fee to charging stations in Germany.
I do understand your frustration. Still the rules for these kinds of edits are there for very good reasons and there have been several occasions in the very recent past where adherence to them would have helped everyone involved.
@sheldonelectric why should you start adding charge tags on charging stations. Providers can have multiple tariffs on each station. Prices can change overnight. I think this is a lot of effort.
Opening time on the other hand is a must have tag. Data consumers take this and routing software can make better planing for EV’s.
I really can’t grasp that a charging provider would consider their maps and data as not distributable. One can always send an email to ask for such permission.
In Europe we are lucky to have public registries on each country by EU guidelines.
Back on topic of opening hours, for which I initially opened the topic.
do I have to ask the operator, if they consent that I import data from their website?
The answer to your question is very different if you are accessing a website of the actual operator of the chargers or if this is one of the (many) charging station data collecting operations.
I would never copy from plugshare or chargemap. I only use them only to drive to the charging station, as intended in their ToU. Such companies are making money by showing adds when we’re on their platform, and copying their data could be seen as diminishing their profits. (Also, I’ve noticed their data is too often wrong).
The name and opening_hours are being copied from the operator’s website, where I can also confirm it’s still the same charge. When I copy their data, they don’t loose any money from adds, and they increase their profits because they become more visible.
I’m aware that other providers charge differently depending if we use an app or scan a QR, or on the time of the day. But this specific provider can only be activated with a credit card, has no QR, and therefore we all pay the same. The intention behind charge=0.29EUR/kWh was to show that it’s the cheapest provider I found.
“From a legal risk perspective, we do not consider accepting this information to be a legal risk to OSMF and therefore DWG is not going to revert these edits.”
I don’t know about other countries but most of the charging stations I have seen in Germany do not have names. They usually have a brand, an operator and a location, but any combination of those does not automatically qualify as name.
This does also apply for the ALDI charging stations. “ALDI SÜD Neuwied” for instance is not a charging station name. It is simply the name of the supermarket chain and the town where it is located.
Tagging the charge is questionable imo. Prices for electric power change frequently and it could cause a lot of updating adding the actual charges into the database.
Those both sentences doesn’t match to each other. How can something be the cheapest if everyone pays the same? I agree with @Map_HeRo that at least for Germany the prices vary a lot, based on any kind of membership, how fast you charge,… It would be quite the same as tagging the price of apples in the supermarket. They are not stable enough to be in OSM.
Could you elaborate on how you derive name, brand, opening hours from a aerial image? I assume obviously those data is not verified by you OTG, but you will add that from a third party data source?
Just to add, that you (@sheldonelectric) should discuss that within the community you will do those automated import. If you start such a discussion, I suggest to describe quite detailed where the data is coming from and which steps you carry out until the data is uploaded to OSM. Discussing something in Help and Support does not grant you permission to carry out your automated edit.
unfortunately yes, definitely. We had similar issues with the apps/websites of postal services in the past where they did not want us to copy collection times from their sites.
This does not fall under copyright as no creative work is involved here, but under database right (in the EU: Directive 96/9/EC ); and it is the same right we have based the OSM Open Data Commons Open Database-License (ODbL) on.
As much as we want users to adhere to it when accessing OSM data we should (or better: MUST) respect it when using data from other sites / sources.
PS: whether copying the data eats into someones profits or not does not matter in this respect.
@Map_HeRo and @aighes you have not read my post. As I said, Aldi (of which I provided the link) has only 1 mean of payment and therefore only 1 price, which is stable over the years and is the cheapest in the country. Please stop referring to other providers who charge differently depending on the app we’re using and change their prices overnight.
It seems you haven’t read the Website. Especially the payment section. First of all, there are 3 different prices depending on the charging Power and they also accept the membership cards and therefore not the Alsi price applies.
That LWG ticket was mostly about taking information from a single shops website, where information like opening hours is a simple, single fact.
It does not cover the the topic of scraping information for all physical locations of a chain business from a generic website representing such information for all locations, generated from a backend database.
So if I look at the website of e.g. the local bakery down the road here, which is a traditional privately owned shop, copying the opening hours from there is OK.
But for the large chain store down the road, where the websites for all stores are centrally managed: not so much.
(The situation is even more tricky for chains that have both own and franchise locations)
“On big chains with a single website that lists all of their locations”
“Upload of scrapped data into OSM, it has no legal impact on us - people are doing it based on their own jurisdiction.”
“There’s no investment in the database for a business for its own opening hours, because that is something that the business has to have for its purpose of operating. A business does not have additional investment in a database, so there are no database rights to protect.”