Mapilio's support for OpenStreetMap

The Mapilio project, which I have been following for a while and think is promising, recently published a page explaining how they provide data to OpenStreetMap. Sometimes the upload time may take longer, but since it is in beta, I think it is acceptable. It looks like a new player is joining this industry. I would like to hear the experiences and thoughts of people who have tried the application.

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I am considering taking some personal time to compare the post-upload resolution between Mapilio and Mapillary.

The linked page seems entirely content-free. is there a page anywhere that explains how they provide data to OpenStreetMap?

Can you share updated information here when you reach the necessary data level?

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I only have the information on this page, but I’ll leave a Discord link for you where you can ask any questions you have

That’s not going to happen - I don’t have enough time to follow every $random_external_project’s private communications channel. They appear to be using OSM to market themselves - I was merely asking if there was anything public to back that up. I’m guessing that the answer is “no”.

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Their terms & conditions do not mention OSM use at all. Combined with the above-average aggressiveness of those terms (“Except for the license you grant below, you do NOT retain all rights in and to your User Content” - emphasises on NOT is theirs, not mine), as well as general closed-source approach (even worse then Mapillary/Kartaview) I do not hold much hope of their usefulness to OpenStreetMap users, unfortunately.

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This clause seems to preclude using Mapilio imagery to contribute edits to OSM “You will not: Modify the Mapilio Services, remove any proprietary rights notices or markings, or otherwise make any derivative works based upon the Mapilio Services;” Dissapointing. I agree with @Matija_Nalis

I found this license page Mapilio | Licenses And Rights
It says :

Any images on Mapilio are released under a CC-BY-SA license

CC-BY-SA is incompatible with ODbL (and additionally problematic with OSM CT)

For comparison, individual Mapillary and KartaView photos are also licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. However, these services’ terms of use specifically allow their use in OSM editing. The image license ends up being more relevant to sites like Wikimedia Commons that can then accept uploads of the images themselves.

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As tyr_asd noted in Add mapilio data by channel-s · Pull Request #9664 · openstreetmap/iD · GitHub they have a separate page on their website Mapilio | Data for OpenStreetMap that explicitly allows using their images to contribute to OSM.

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They updated their terms and conditions to explicitly mention and allow the usage for contributing to OSM:

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Thanks for update! Unfortunately, the updated terms (as written) still seem incompatible with OSM :cry:

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Hey you guys! I noticed that Mapilio has updated their Terms again. I drop the link here in case anyone wants to take a look. It seems to have clearer terms than the previous one.

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I know that it’s not carved in stone but using street imagery to update the map is not necessarily derived work, and license clash does not apply.

As in areas of life elsewhere: when you look at something, you learn something, and you are using this learned information to create any work then it is not derivative work but part of the normal way of human learning and working.

On the other hand if you take the image and trace it using software, and store the result in the database then it would be derived work. Similarly if you take the image, put it into the background of JOSM and draw its features over then it would be derived work.

It is even up to dispute whether recognising signs count as derivative work (I’d lean towards the “yes” interprertation) since it is not technically taking bits of the original and putting them into the new.

I do not think the CC-BY-SA imagery license would make it illegal to work with it, as it didn’t when OSM tiles were CC-BY-SA published (not so long ago), as well as Mapillary or OpenStreetCam. (Not to mention Yahoo!, Bing and similar commercial imagery, where the commercial license did not matter as long as it has been permitted to be used in OSM.)

So it’s alright to use Google Street view?

(sorry, but that’s how this paragraph sounds to me)

Google’s terms have explicitly prohibited building a map database from their maps services. They are not relying solely on copyright law.

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Can you show me the permission from Google that their images can be used for OSM?

Both Yahoo! and Bing have provided a written permission to allow their service to be used for OSM mapping, despite that the imagery itself was copyrighted and that their ToS forbids to use the service in various ways. Google doesn’t, while the source of Google (at least as far as I am aware Digitalglobe is one of the sources Google use) may permit to use their data, which still does not allow you to use the “derived” data from Google, unless Google gives us direct permission.

But @pnorman said it best: do not mix up Copyright and Terms of Service (civil law). Copyright may not forbid you to use the imagery but the terms forbid you to use it for that purpose and in certain ways.

It is a tricky thing since for services who do not care much about legality it is possible to look at the images, look around, memorize it, then close the image and use the knowledge to do anything (that is the theory at least they will tell to the judge), so “in theory” neither ToS nor Copyright would have been violated, but in the case of OSM we prefer not to violate © and ToS neither by word nor by spirit: we strive to have really unquestionably clean data (mostly to protect data consumers!). That’s why you should not use sources where either © or ToS forbid you to use their service to build maps or similar services to theirs.