Aerial Imagery of 95% of New Zealand released under open license | Hacker News Reader

Aerial Imagery of 95% of New Zealand released under open license

data.linz.govt.nz

126 pointspolemic15 comments

The license is: CC BY 3.0 NZ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nz/

Why exactly is there a "New Zealand" version of the license, and how does it differ from the regular CC BY 3.0 ?

Interesting question. I clicked through the link on the country flag and found this page: [1]. Relevant extract:

In the past, when it was demonstrated that a ported license was needed, Creative Commons worked with experts to craft a localized version of its six, core international licenses. Over 50 ported license suites exist. These ported licenses are based on and compatible with the international license suite, differing only in that they have been modified to reflect local nuances in how terms and conditions are expressed, drafting protocols and, of course, language. They are effective worldwide, as is the international license suite.

[1] : http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_Affiliate_Network

In pre-4.0 versions of the CC licenses, they produced "ported" versions that were intended to adapt the general principles of each license to the specifics of each jurisdiction's norms/terminology. 4.0 seems to have dropped that and written "international" licenses instead.

Different countries have different laws and language.

NZ differences from England and Wales (seemingly out of date): http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/international/nz/english-...

For example, you'll see that "attorney" is not a term of the art in NZ, and "adaptation" is preferred over "derivative work" to bring the terminology in line with NZ law.

For other versions see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Jurisdiction_Database

Finland has had this since 2012. It really helps small companies who develop gis and map applications as well as hobbyists.

http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/opendata

http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/opendata/list-of-the-digi...

Not just small companies - the highest users of this data are large engineering consultancies, research institutions are various central and local government agencies. Then GIS firms, architects and planners. Hobbyists use the data, for sure, but there are massive economic benefits in this data, for many industries.

Minecraft version or it didn't happen ;)

Great to see more and more of these official maps becoming available.

Is this something that can be (has been?) incorporated into the likes of OpenStreetMap? The full dataset (544GB) is available to download or order, so presumably it is technically possible.

Not necessarily. OpenStreetMap relies on users to digitize features. Many of the OSM editors already include imagery from other providers. My guess would be digitizing from this imagery would not be much different and not worth the effort. The Landsat [1] program is another great contribution for imagery. Though lately programs like these have been in jeopardy with the congressional cut of everything science [2].

[1] http://landsatlook.usgs.gov/ [2] http://ens-newswire.com/2013/08/08/uncertain-funding-jeopard...

OpenStreetMap does indeed sometimes mirror and serve up free imagery sets like this so that contributors can trace from it. Sometimes it's the OSM sysadmins doing this on OSM hardware, often it's just individual contributors doing it for their area.

If our worldwide imagery supporters (Bing and Mapbox Satellite) provide equal-quality imagery then there's no great urgency. But these local sources can often be better than what's available elsewhere.

Hah, well there are national DEMs available, and land use datasets - you could generate a natural landscape minecraft map quite easily.

> Is this something that can be (has been?) incorporated into the likes of OpenStreetMap?

It's worth nothing that LINZ have been extremely helpful with things like licensing and funding to get core topographic data into the OSM set for New Zealand. See this page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/LINZ

Would be really cool if Aerofly (http://www.aeroflyfs.com/) did a New Zealand map.

First thing I randomly zoomed in on was a sheep.

There was an error querying that location.

A similar, albeit private yet arguably more intuitive, Australian alternative: http://nearmap.com/au

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