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The terms of use require compliance with GDPR and any other relevant legislation (is there any?) even when contributing from jurisdictions where nothing like them applies.

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The fact that a shop has a sign in the front that says “Proudly a woman-owned business” isn’t personal information, it’s a marketing choice. A mapper tagging that fact isn’t verifying the gender of the owner of the business, they’re verifying the fact that the shop is marketing themselves in this way, and I think that’s an important distinction that’s being lost here. And yes, there are people that prefer to visit businesses with these kinds of attributes, which makes it meaningful to tag.

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If the owner is a person and not a larger corporation, tagging “woman-owned” together with owner=NAME means we’re tagging personal information, which under the GDPR is a no-go.

If it’s a marketing choice, then I’m against having this information on the map. I don’t like OSM being filled with marketing content. I already deleted hundreds of marketing-related tags from the map.

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is the problem here, not the nature of the business

That fact that you don’t like it is irrelevant. There are people that want to define their service in this way and users that want to use that information in choosing which businesses to patronize. It is very un-OSM to oppose people tagging useful and observable-on-the-ground attributes. There is plenty of data in OSM that I don’t care about, but I recognize that it’s useful to other people and so I have no business complaining about it.

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So we’ll need a new guideline and at least some owner=* tag deletions before we can start tagging the “something-owned” signs. We’ll have to verify each case individually then, because many businesses carry the name of a person who may or may not be the owner.

Fair enough. As long as we’re making clear that “a business defines itself as 
” is not necessarily the same as “this business is 
”, I can live with it. Think for example also about businesses promoting how eco-friendly they are.

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That’s even easier since there are established certifications and so forth for evironmental friendliness that can be tagged, for example, the LEED standard in the US. I’m sure other countries have similiar established metrics that can be objectively applied.

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I was talking more about eco-friendliness as a marketing strategy that you might see on a promotional sign. You wouldn’t use those signs as a source to tag that the business is eco-friendly, but you can, at least in theory, use it to tag that a business identifies itself as such.

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Yes, why not tag a shop, which advertise itself as “CO2-neutral” as such? Though of course that makes only sense, if such kind of advert is somehow long term or permanent. But just because you can tag it, doesn’t mean everyone have to.

Just for my understanding, tagging the name=Plumber Smith&Son in combination with contact:*=* or addr:*=* OSM is not a violation of the GDPR? Haven’t checked Overpass, but would imagine these combinations are somehow common and typical editors suggesting to add these information. If this is somehow “super-critical” I would expect there are warnings or validators or QA-tools existing.

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Interesting question. Honestly idk.

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& that’s what I was getting at when I raised it?

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Without consulting expensive lawyers, how can we figure out what information we cannot have on the map if we want to remain compliant with the GDPR?

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I think this discussion is missing one of the aspects of Article 9 of GDPR, specifically,

Paragraph 1 shall not apply if one of the following applies:


(e) processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the data subject;

I don’t think anyone could argue that if you put your personal name in the name of your business and advertise the name of your business, then that is “manifestly made public.”

So, we can put the name of your business in OSM even if it contains your personal name because that information is no longer subject to GDPR.

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Okay, so tagging the address and contact details and maybe even the ethnicity of a person is fine if their name is (part of) the business name and all this information is already public on signs etc.

In cases where the name of a business owner is tagged together with a tag for a public sign that says “this business is something-owned” and the name of the owner is not the name of the business, are we in violation of Article 9?

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I don’t think this is what is proposed here and this solves a problem. We can tag signs since forever, we can also use those tags for “black-owned bussiness” signs, because why not. However the problem is to put this information to the shop directly. If this is “only an advertisment with no real meaning” then it’s on the same page as “eco-friendly” or “the lowest prices” signs, nothing to add to the shop itself.

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Exactly about that is this topic about :wink: Let me quote the first post.

It might not in your area/culture. But this doesn’t mean, globally it’s the same.

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Sometimes I feel like you really trying not to undestrand my points or putting them on the head. Hope it’s not a thing, but please read again.

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I got your point, that you think it’s OK to tag the existence of signs but would not do so, as you don’t see the need. Just wanted to point out, that this topic is exactly about tagging the existence of signs and its content.

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Does anyone certify business ownership status or is it always self-advertised?

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A business may join a local, minority-focused chamber of commerce that has membership requirements such as being a minority business enterprise. For example, my region has a Black Chamber of Commerce and a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. They may choose to advertise their membership online or with a fancy sign at the door. Some chambers also publish their member lists.

Chambers of commerce operate at a local level, and not every area is populous enough to have specialized ones. The closest large-scale thing would be:

This is a strictly voluntary self-certification process, though local governments have additional certification programs layered on top of it. This rarely applies to retail, however, so there’s practically no overlap with shops that would signpost Black ownership or whatnot.

For statistical purposes, the Census Bureau used to conduct a Survey of Business Owners every five years that collects demographic information about business owners. Responses were mandatory under federal law. However, only aggregate data (by county and industry) was released at first; specific responses were kept confidential for 72 years to protect privacy. The most recent release of aggregated data was for the SBO that took place in 2012. More recently, the Census Bureau replaced the SBO with an Annual Business Survey that is still mandatory but is aggregated at the state level, which is even less specific.

The government relies on self-reporting and generally doesn’t certify race and ethnicity in a strict sense; that would run into exactly the privacy concerns that various people have raised in this thread.

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Is your question regards, whether there is anyone checking the advertised sign is matching the reality?

If so I believe it might not be verified by some organization, though it might be questioned by the customers and false advert might bring you in trouble.