Baltaci

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Baltaci!

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Military maps

Hi. I've noticed you post on Sting's talk page. I don't know anything about the legal implications of using the Soviet military topographic maps, but I suspect that we are allowed to use them as a reference. I find them great for tracing forests, small rivers, the shape of settlements etc. (see this map I made with their help: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KALININGRAD_FINAL.svg). By the way, do you happen to know if there's a website displaying simillar Romanian or Yugoslav military maps? Thanks.

Andrein (User talk:Andrein) 03:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

This is really weird. So you can't even trace over the military maps?! This map, for example, was made by tracing over some Soviet maps and this one by drawing on screenshots from Google Earth. Are they violating copyright laws then? I don't think this is 'stealing' because you only use some of the map (or satellite image) features, not copying the whole thing.

Thanks a lot for the great link to the Yugoslav maps. I've never seen such beautiful topographic maps before!

Andrein (User talk:Andrein) 22:59, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I just came across a gallery of Romanian military topographic maps from 1997 (scale 1:100.000): http://picasaweb.google.com/barakablog/HartaMilitaraARomaniei#

Cheers

Andrein (User talk:Andrein) 05:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I also noticed some inaccuracies on those Romanian military maps. I think they are just a 1997 reprint of older maps. If you are interested in some more accurate topographic maps of (most of) the Danube Delta, you might want to see these Ukrainian maps from 2006 (scroll down to the last 4 of them - izmail, kiliya, tulcha and sulina): http://maps.vlasenko.net/map1k-2006.html.

You said you couldn't find any mention regarding the licence of the Soviet maps on the whole Web. This means that noone (except for the British) bothered to claim a copyright and they are free to use for all regions except the UK. As a further proof of this, I've seen some other maps on Commons which used them as a source.

Andrein (User talk:Andrein) 14:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello Baltaci. Sorry for this late answer.

I don't know under which license Russian maps/data are distributed. The best for you is to grab inside their official sites of mapping (and not a third-party one!) to find out their terms of use. And yes, it is correct that finding downloadable data for free doesn't mean those data can be freely used, specially including commercial uses as it is required in Wikimedia Commons: Google Earth/Maps, the French IGN, etc. make some data available on the Web but cannot be used for map creation, even if it's only for non-commercial use. So each of us has to take a lot of care about the distribution policy of a new source of data before using them.

Good luck in your research, and thanks for supporting our work! Sting (talk) 18:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: If you don't find the terms of use in their sites, try to write to the map agency to get an answer. In the doubt, don't use them to draw your own maps.