Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[Ed Stevenhagen]

The result of not protecting individual copyrights

Read this as just a bad example of an individual reaction (of me..) on a
bad protection of whatever rights....:

For more than 30 year I spend mapping room and pillarmines in the
Netherlands in South Limburg.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~estevenh/geonet/index.html

But suddenly... Subsidized by the Dutch authorities Luck Walschot. member
of the studygroup SOK, published the book "Gebroken Mergel" with several
of my maps.

Read: http://www.xs4all.nl/~estevenh/geonet/w001/index.html

He published my maps knowing that I would not give my permission. So he
removed my name from all my maps and wrote down "maker unknown". On two
maps he even wrote down that he made the maps(xx!)himself.
He got my maps as secretary of the study group Studiegroep Onderaardse
Kalksteengroeven(SOK) were he is still  a member with some "protection".
The SOK is part of the "Natuurhistorisch Genootschap" (NHGL) 
http://www.nhgl.nl/

What can you do? Shall I spend a lot of time and money to claim my rights
for something that already happened. I protested as member of the
studygroup at the NHGL and the subsidizers. The reaction: he did it as a
privat person and NOT as a member of the studygroup.

So our own "cave"(marl mine)-surveying society in the Netherlands is in
fact NOT protecting copyright or whatever rights or rules of behaviour.

What is the result. Yes,.. a lot of frustration. I left the studygroup
under protest. I closed my archive of over 1000 maps and aerial pictures
and more sources. And the future of it will be uncertain.
Yes I still help enthousiasts, like the University of Leiden, surveying
the system of tunnels of the Atlantic Wall, to help the research of 
hibernating bats.
Visit my site  http://www.xs4all.nl/~estevenh/geonet/atlantic/index.htm

But no high resolution maps anymore or scalable vector map as I used to do
on my site. And you will find always an irritating copyright notice on the
picture. That a personal reaction when you feel that your work is not
protected, even not by yopur collegues!

It just happens.

Ed Stevenhagen
Zoetermeer - Netherlands








> On Mon, 15 May 2006, Andy Waddington wrote:
>
>> David Gibson wrote:
>
>> But if I collect the same facts, and if both of our collections are
>> sufficiently accurate that they agree with each other totally, then
>> how is the copyright Act to distinguish between them ?
>
> Let's not talk hypothetical...  there is real case law on the topic.
> (At least in the US.)
>
> Two surveyors produced a map of the same county.  The maps were
> essentially the same.  One sued the other for copyright infringment.
> The courts ruling was that the maps were essentially identical, but
> had separate copyrights, and therefore one could not infringe the other.
>
>
> This and other interesting cases are in the "United States Code Service's
> annotated "Title 17 Copyrights"
> They show (in my opinion) that the meaning assigned by the courts to some
> phrases is very different from any normal dictionary meaning...  Which
> makes arguments based solely on the dictionary meanings (as I've seen
> here) rather moot.
>
>
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> --
> Cave-Surveying http://lists.survex.com/mailman/listinfo/cave-surveying
>