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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if, now that the costs of satellite launches are starting to come down and camera-equipped drones are commonplace, it might be feasible in the near future to start building up a truly open collection of satellite and aerial imagery for use in projects like OpenStreetMap.

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> and camera-equipped drones are commonplace

In Germany, flying drones over occupied areas is expressly forbidden by law to protect the occupants' privacy.

There are already too many idiots and creeps flying around with drones, we don't need to add Internet publication to the mix.

How high up does the drone need to fly before taking pictures and publishing them is acceptable? I mean that's basically what these mapping satellites are: very high-flying drones taking pictures of the ground to be published online.

Person taking a photo out of an airplane: Allowed.

Person remote controlling a camera on an airplane: Not allowed.

We shouldn't be making laws saying a human can do something but a machine cannot. That leads to humans having pointless jobs simply because laws prevent the use of automation.

They get round these laws by sending pilots up in cheap hobby planes like cesnas with cameras attached to the bottom.

That's already being attempted with http://openaerialmap.org/.

I don't know if you will get 'open collection', but I suspect the cost will come down and quality will go up.

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