Request for Comments - Especially from Australian GPS Users

REQUEST FOR COMMENTS - ESPECIALLY FROM AUSTRALIAN GPS USERS

In private email, I was asked to make this posting to encourage
informal comments from GPS users, especially those form Australia.

Appropriate responses (good, bad or other) posted to
sci.geo.satellite-nav will be compiled and presented to the US
government at an official Asia/Pac CGSIC meeting in July. Please
feel free to comment on either of these topics.

o WAAS-like services for non-aviation users
o Governmental Copyright of mapping products


SOME BACKGROUND ON THE LATTER ISSUE

Copyright law requires that a person own the copyright and because a
corporation is a legal person they can own corporation. Under Crown
Law (UK, Canada, Oz, NZ and others), there is something like the
Aussie Corporations act. That act in the past has been used by the
federal government to push its agenda in things like work safety and
health programs by such claims that its worker insurance program is
provided by a corporation which is the government and has legal
controls over other corporations by several legal means. The result
is that the government is a corporation.

Now there is a political mess caused by the Liberal party (aka
Republicans) who run the federal government and the Labor (aka Democrats)
that run all the states and local governments. The result is the Liberals
want to end what they see as socialist work polices that make it
hard to fire people who aren't doing their jobs. They introduced a
number of laws that pushed things even a bit farther along using the
Corporation Act as a legal basis. The result is these new terms are
about to be taken to the Supreme Court which will have to decide if
the federal government is a legal person. The results will go one of
two ways. If the federal government wins, it means all the "you can't sue
the government" goes out the window or if the states win then things will
mostly go back to how they were with the small exception that the
government can't own a copyright. So all that map data ends up in th
public domain -- just like in the US.

All comments welcome!

There are way too many emotive political arguments over the Federal
Government (controlled by Liberal Party) 'Work Choices' regulations to
get anything like meaningful responses.

Yes, we needed to roll back some of the overly protective previous
regulations but these so called 'Work Choices' have gone way too far
in the other direction.

I suggest that this post does not belong in this newsgroup even tho it
may in the future have some minor advantages to mapping users.




wrote:

Putting government generated mapping data in the public domain wont have a
great affect on pricing (if that is the aim of this discussion). Not all
mapping data in Australia belongs to or is generated by the government
anyway. Besides, basic mapping on its own isn't that expensive. Its the
attributes that are added and the processing to make it useful in a routing
GPS that adds most significantly to the cost..

What is the point of presenting this before the US government anyway??

Sam Wormley wrote:

o Governmental Copyright of mapping products

As the Copyright Laws of most countries are being ripped assunder by
countless individuals who copy and pirate mapping and charting products for
their own use, surely it is time that governments saw the light and stopped
trying to "hold back the tide".

File-sharing and other "illegal" activities are making a mockery of
Copyright Law, and not just in mapping and related products, so the US
Government's attitude is the only sensible one in the circumstances, unless
we want to shut down the Internet.

The proliferation of copied charts and maps across the developed world has
to be seen to be believed, so why not legalise a situation where the dubious
"holder" of the copyright, much of which was acquired at the taxpayers
expense (i.e. stolen in the first place), frees up all of his data which is
not deemed to be a National Security risk?

RAW

Dennis Pogson wrote:


Not going to happen. It's akin to a shopping centre saying "since everyone
is stealing our stuff anyway, we've decided to now give it away for free".


A different story altogether. People have been copying and duplicating
stuff they shouldn't for eons. The only mockery that's happened so far, is
with the RIAA, and that's only because of the media coverage.


Not going to make a squat of difference. The market uses the best available
technology to transfer it's data. If not the Internet, it will be BBS's. If
not that, it will be CD's and DVD's. If not that, colour printed paper. If
not that, black and white. If not that, a compass and your wits. There's
only so far you can go before making it so bloody useless that you may as well
kill the industry because the technology that made it viable has been banned.


Sure, but let's go on example shall we? This situation already exists in at
least several countries, and they're STILL paying for their taxpayer-funded
mapping. So who cares what _should_ be happening, because the only thing that
counts is what is _actually_ happening.

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