Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen
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Post by Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen on May 16, 2015 7:48:20 GMT 8
Reply to ChadHill
Chad
The answer is no!
The reason I keep saying no is because of continuing real issues of copyright infringement. I'm not going into details, but some of the issues are serious.
The maps I produce are covered by copyright law in the same way as a book is covered by copyright law. Try asking someone, who is the author of a published picture book, if their pictures are available for free to illustrate a forum just because one has purchased the book.
Yesterday, I offered a PDF of the original NARA map to this forum. If taken up, someone can get it digitised and donate it to the forum. My previous employer had a charge out rate for digitising at $125/hr. The quickest I could digitise the three sheets of the 1936 map would be 1,000 hours. Corregidor.org and this forum are lucky to have the MapMaster map as a reference.
Again I thank you and Karl for your understanding regarding the removal of the clipped MapMaster map from the Forum and PhotoBucket. But again, the final answer is no to use of my maps except as defined under copyright law.
Martyn G Keen
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Post by Karl Welteke on May 16, 2015 10:56:42 GMT 8
Hello Martyn. Now it is about 11am, Philippine time, 2015-05-16. Just got back from the Sorsogon City trip, home at my wife’s village now and see a lot has been written in the new thread re your map.
And I noticed that you noticed that I did respond right away and removed those items in question. About any other it would be great to help me find them. Generally most of the time I tried to use other sources.
I was not silent until now, on the 14th of May when I first got aware of your thread, I acted right away and removed the items in question. I sent you an email and the address I have from you must be wrong, because I have not received a response. I wrote that email on the 14th of May 2015 about 1738 hours local Philippine time.
Here is a copy of it and I hope that it will close the matter between us.
Hello Martyn
I have seen your entry re the copyright of your map. I will get right on it to remove it. I hope you will give me time to find the others.
I apologize that I have done it but I thought you would not mind. I am sorry and will remove those snipped map sections of your map and replace it with others.
I don't have the 1936 version, I have the 1932 copy but I am sure that makes no difference.
You know me I keep busy, I walked all morning today, then swam and did not see your entry until this afternoon and tomorrow I plan to hit the road to drive to Sorsogon City. As you may know I am on my annual May vacation to the wife's village. And the internet here is not reliable.
Because we are on vacation I am not working of my desktop but of my old 2007 laptop. For example your email address is not on the Microsoft Outlook and I got your address from the Yahoo account which is also not up to date. In view of that would you please acknowledge this email so I can be sure you have received this email?
Do you want to reply on your entry in the forum saying the same thing as in this email, more or less?
Again I am sorry and wish you a great Aussie Day.
Karl, the PI-Sailor from Sorsogon Province at the moment.
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Post by JohnEakin on May 16, 2015 11:00:22 GMT 8
I've never seen this complete map, and even if I had I don't know all the details of mapmaker's claim to copyright. Sometimes one little detail can change everything, so my comments are general in nature, but perhaps something to think about.
Copyright of US Government works is something I deal with on a daily basis in that I distribute a lot of data which originates with the government. I sometimes claim copyright on the basis of my arrangement of the data only, because original works prepared by US Government employees may not be copyrighted.
Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of "original works of authorship" including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished.
Perhaps "authors" is the operative word in this case. Is mapmaker claiming to have authored something or only reproduced a US Government document? If so, copyright is not available to the person who prints a book or simply reproduces the work of others.
In reading the original post in this thread, it appears that there is some confusion between a copyright and a license. I have never purchased a copy of this map (and I'm not likely to after seeing this foolishness) so I don't know if there may be some sort of legally enforceable license agreement involved. But the bottom line is I don't see in this message any claim of authorship and that is the basis of any copyright claim. I guess no one will ever know until the person claiming copyright hires a lawyer and tries to enforce his claim to copyright in court.
Let's see, this forum is hosted somewhere in cyberspace and operated by an Ozzie and the alleged violators are in how many countries? Probably cost a couple of hundred grand just to sort out the proper venue and good luck enforcing anything if you get a judgment.
YMMV.
Best,
John
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Post by Registrar on May 16, 2015 11:39:52 GMT 8
Mapmaster,
Yes, I think I can place such scans a you are offering in the site somewhere so as to allow members to use them as the basis for illustrating the results of their research, and thereby educating the new students in the field.
With all due respect, and though I appreciate the supreme and protracted effort that went into your 1936 map, effort is not a factor which interests or influences Copyright Law. The cases make it clear that it is creativity which creates copyright, not cost or effort. Similarly, the cases reflect that slavish copying is not creativity. If there is a requirement for good mapping, it is accuracy, not creativity.
Even the colorizing case precedents do not seem to answer your legal position. They are in respect of movies, not maps, and different criteria apply. (I even found an anecdotal instance where an artist had limited himself to colorizing images which were not in copyright, yet still had to concede all he had created was not copyrightable.) The law in Australia in respect of maps is different than that in the US, as Australia claims Crown Copyright, and the maps by U.S. government agencies, including U.S.G.S., U.S.D.A., N.O.S, N.O.A.A., and N.P.S. and the Census Bureau, are in the public domain.
I was consulted by an institutional entity some time back concerning copyright issues, so I do not come at cross-border copyright issues entirely green. Going from the general to the particular, I became particularly interested in a circumstance where a fellow had become quite the celebrity by putting his name on images which were in the public domain, and on many that were not. Many assumed his name placed prominently on the image to indicate he had some form of copyright. His approach was one that I had encountered, and had believed valid for some time - namely that having made "efforts" to retouch, the placing of his name on an image conferred copyright in the enhanced version. It does not. This is how pissing contests begin.
Copyright is a very complex field, and a godsend for expensive lawyers. What I have learned is that, once the pissing contests escalate, those without a legal opinion to back up their claims can find themselves, like our friend Rick who came to Casablanca for the waters, misinformed.
I wouldn't have been doing my job on this site had I not been in contact with both Karl and Chad. Both have clearly decided to withdraw from their position for valid reasons other than conceding copyright. All of this could have been accomplished with a quiet personal message.
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Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen
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Post by Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen on May 16, 2015 14:07:38 GMT 8
Hi Karl
Yes, there are several dead email addresses caused by changes to internet and phone providers, caused when we went onto a fibre optic internet connection. A dead computer didn't help either. The new email address has the same letters and numbers as the bigpond email address. That is the letters and numbers to the left of the @ symbol are the same. The remainder of the email address is @gmail.com.
I did notice that both you and Chad removed the images straight away. I have said thank you to both you and Chad on this post and the matter is now at rest.
Regards
Martyn
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Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen
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Post by Mapmaster - Martyn G Keen on May 16, 2015 15:16:49 GMT 8
Reply to Registrar and JohnEakin
I appreciate what both of you are saying. Some aspects have been previously covered. Some are out of context and not helpful. Adding further discussion to this topic is not swaying my opinion that I have copyright ownership of the digitised map in question. As a reminder, the map's copyright statement was advised by you, Paul Whitman, as was the statement of copyright use at point of sale.
I know and have stated above, that the original paper 1936 map is neither classified nor subject to copyright. The original map sheets were not put in some sort of magical machine, a button pressed and two minutes latter a file was loaded onto a thumb drive.
Creativity equals copyrightable? A hand drawn digital map where one didn't previously existed? Corrections of 80 year old errors? Completion where detail was missing after years of copying map copies and copies of map copies? Transferability from 2d to 3rd for the overlay of historic aerial photography? Value adding such as PDF transportability? Storage of user annotations? Transferable to Garmin GPS as a "paper map/custom map"? Creativity equals copyrightable - yes!
Back to the 1936 map scans: I will have to send you a link here as soon as I can set it up. The file is a PDF at 65 megabytes in size. The resolution is better than I originally had to digitize the 1936 map. I will try to add a reduced resolution of the PDF and a JPG. I'll put a password and post a hint that you should know.
Martyn
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Post by batteryboy on May 16, 2015 20:40:27 GMT 8
Hi Martyn, looking forward to the link.
Cheers, B-Boy
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Post by Martyn Keen on May 16, 2015 21:39:44 GMT 8
Hi Tony and EXO
The links have been sent to Paul via EXO@corregidor.org. There are 6 in all being 3 PDFs, 2 JPGs and a KMZ. The KMZ will open in Google Earth over the satellite image of Corregidor. The other files are in various resolutions. The quality of all is good or better. The sizes of the best are very large, but still useable on a laptop.
Let me know if there are any problems downloading.
Martyn
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Post by batteryboy on May 17, 2015 7:03:45 GMT 8
Hi Martyn,
Thanks a lot and hope to see you soon again.
EXO... waiting for your cue.
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