Legal issues with volunteered geographic information

Abstract

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) is a relatively new and rapidly developing activity with varying degrees of organization and legal sophistication that involves host sites, contributors, and users. VGI related activities raise a variety of legal issues, from intellectual property to liability, defamation, and privacy. These issues may affect the rights and obligations of all those who use or participate in VGI activities. This article provides an overview of some of these legal considerations from the perspectives of the host, contributor, and user respectively. Les enjeux juridiques de l'information géographique volontaire L'information géographique volontaire (IGV) est une activité relativement récente qui progresse rapidement et qui implique des sites d'hébergement, des collaborateurs, et des utilisateurs,à des niveaux variés d'organisation et de complexité juridiques. Les activités entourant l'IGV soulèvent de multiples enjeux juridiques, allant de la propriété intellectuelle jusqu'à la responsabilité civile, la diffamation, et le droità la vie privée. Ces enjeux peuvent avoir des incidences sur les droits et les obligations de ceux qui se servent ou qui sont associésàdes activités en IGV. L'objet de cet article est de présenter un survol de quelques-unes des questions relativesà ces dossiers juridiquesà partir de trois perspectives que sont le site d 'hébergement, le collaborateur, et l'utilisateur.

Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science or Volunteered Geographic Information? The Current State of Crowdsourced Geographic Information

“…Saunders et al [86] consider the licensing and copyright issues from a Canadian legal perspective when using a range of online current mapping tools. Data privacy laws vary from country to country but generally require the protection of personal information, i.e., information that could allow people to be identified [87]. However, location-based information can reveal personal information that could be disclosed without consent if the users of the data are not careful in how the data are subsequently employed [88].…”

Using volunteered geographical information to map the November 2012 floods in Slovenia

“…As already mentioned by Scassa (2013), great care has to be taken to verify the authorship of the volunteered images and the resulting privacy issues. Additional guidelines need to be written for this purpose.…”

“…When such an image or video was found, attempts were made to contact the author of the image. Even though different licenses for using Facebook, Youtube and other social media networks' data already exist and mainly define open access to such data, national legal property laws provide more strict regulations, especially concerning the intellectual property of images (Scassa, 2013). Therefore, caution was necessary, as some authors present their images on web networks in order to attract attention from television and printed media, who they hope might purchase their images.…”

“…However, those images that might have violated privacy were excluded, as proposed by Scassa (2013). Therefore, images showing people were not used in any presentation.…”

Volunteered Drone Imagery: Challenges and constraints to the development of an open shared image repository

“…These licenses provide the critical 'terms of engagement' for who owns contributed data, how that data is to be shared, and what can be done with that data [73], [74]. For example, the provision of a specific license can determine whether imagery can be used for commercial purposes, or can restrict contribution from volunteers [73].…”