Google Maps has a new tool to help the consumers of its popular maps also be producers. Users-generated improvements will be a benifit to many, but probably most to Google itself. While the Google video below paints all of this in light of personal or civic empowerment (“leave your mark”), we should also understand that this move towards us becoming “prosumers” of these maps is also about the company taking advantage of our free labor in hopes of earning greater profits. Does that bother anyone?
Comments 9
Jean-Marc Liotier — May 23, 2011
Of course it bothers us - and the OpenStreetMap project if how we push back.
By using Google Map Maker, you provides Google with your knowledge and get nothing in return. In contrast, http://www.openstreetmap.org makes its data free and open : you put the data in, and then you can do pretty much whatever you want with it - remix, reuse, share. Why settle for anything else ? Letting anyone restrict reuse of your own contributions is being scammed... Friends don't let friends use Google Map Maker.
Instead of paraphrasing others in this well worn debate, I'll give you pointers to good critiques of the Map Maker licensing terms :
- http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/google-mapmaker-and-openstreetmap/
- http://brainoff.com/weblog/2010/03/16/1541
In a nutshell : you put your knowledge in a black hole and all you get back is bitmap tiles that you can't even use commercially or for anything that competes with Google. Want to export your data to convert to the Garmin format to upload it to your GPS receiver ? No, sorry - you can't do that... You can only use the Google Maps application.
Unless you can freely get the source data, get full attribution for it, modify it freely, distribute it freely and use it freely - even commercially, it is not free.
You want to own the map instead of sharecropping for Google ? Welcome to OpenStreetMap - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/...
replqwtil — May 25, 2011
Monetary rewards are hardly the be all end all of compensation. In fact, when it comes to creative intellectual labour, increased monetary rewards tend to diminish the return one gets from labourers. In reality, most people do this kind of thing to achieve more intangible feelings of accomplishment. I think that by reducing it to a question of who is profiting monetarily off of the labour of creating this data set is to completely ignore the fact that F/OSS software and data creates more than a monetizable resource, it also creates a Commons. People contribute to it for the satisfaction of investing in something larger than themselves. They are able to be a part of a Communal effort to improve things for everyone who uses that software/data, including themselves. I think that that that psychological return, of being part of something larger than ourselves, is more important than monetary returns for most people. Focusing only on a financial dimension seems overly reductionist to me, and misses the complexity that human interactions can take.