Talk:TopoZone

Copyright?

Can someone please explain the copyright issue of maps accessed by TopoZone? It is said that original work of U.S. government agencies are in the Public Domain. What TopoZone presents appear to be USGS maps, which would mean they are in the Public Domain. However, the maps have a Copyright Notice "Copyright 1999-2003 Maps a la Carte, Inc.". How can that company "Maps a la Carte" use Public Domain material and put restrictions on it, or can it not? It would be nice to use some USGS maps in Wikipedia. How is the first sentence in this article to be interpreted, which starts "While the topography maps are still free"? Are they free or not, despite the Copyright Notice?Ratzer 07:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't answer most of your questions, but the place where the article describes the maps as "free" it means free as in beer. ^L_Wizard @ 10:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I read somewhere (I don't recall were) but this is because topozone adds something extra to the maps and are therefore allowed to charge money/copyright it. The biggest thing I notice are the edges of UTM zones (look at terra server). ChristopherM 18:07, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

TopoZone uses public domain data from the USGS (which wasn't free - we had to pay for it) to create TopoZone. That data was modified and manipulated in order to create a seamless, nationwide display of topo maps. The original data from the USGS cannot be put together in this manner without clipping, reprojection, datum shifting, rescaling, and other modifications. This is not easy to do; other sites displaying this data (such as Microsoft TerraServer) do not do it completely or correctly. The copyright message to which you refer pertains to what is called a "derivative work", which is what our maps are. While they are based on USGS data, they are different from USGS data in a substantial way due to the additional work we did on them. We do not claim a copyright on the original USGS public domain data; we claim a copyright on our derivative work.

It is also worth pointing out that "public domain" does not mean "the holder is obligated to distribute it at no cost". If I have a USGS topographic map and you would like a copy of it, I might require you to promise to call your mother every Sunday in exchange. I'm free to do that - I don't have to give you the data at all. You're free to refuse, and since this is public domain data you may well be able to find another source to provide you the data on more favorable terms or even without restriction at all. Once you have a copy you may also choose not to give it to anyone at all, or you may offer it under whatever terms you like. "Public domain" means that I may not claim copyright or ownership rights on the data, and I cannot prohibit anyone else with an independently-obtained copy from doing whatever they like with it. USGS topographic maps have been available in a variety of forms from a variety of sources for quite a few years now.

Many Wikipedia articles with geographic content or information contain links to TopoZone topographic maps. We have always made it very easy to link to TopoZone maps, which can be viewed and printed for free by anyone. Edmcnierney 01:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Topozone Demise

Looks like this has changed — one can no longer easily reach TopoZone maps, and they cannot be viewed or printed for free by anyone. I realize it's churlish to complain about losing something that one never had to pay for; at the same time, though, it's disappointing to see it close and be replaced by something less fully-featured for which one has to pay $50. Are USGS topographic maps available online elsewhere? Huwmanbeing ☀★ 22:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I like Acme Mapper, which puts Terraserver-USA maps in a Google Maps-style interface. There seem to be several Google Earth overlays that show topos too. --NE2 18:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Topozone alternatives

Having been greatly inconvenienced when TopoZone went subscription-only, I started building a replacement the next day (and have built map tile sets covering 90% of the US so far). Try TopoQuest for a fairly close match to the old TopoZone feature set including place name searches, plus some extra features like downloads of maps in DRG (GeoTIFF) form and details of individual map quads. Additionally, you can swap topoquest.com in place of topozone.com in old TopoZone map URL's to get the equivalent map (leave the rest of the URL the same, just change the domain name). Ryanniemi (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 18:27, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

You rock. I assume you're using the Internet Archive/Libre Map Project's DRGs to generate the tiles? --NE2 16:18, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow! What an interesting set of contributions. Assuming the signed names are really the people they represent, we see a contribution from Topozone founder Ed McNierney in August 2007 (who also contributed to the article) and then a June 20 contribution from Ryan Niemi, founder of the awesome topoquest.com. I added subheads above to clarify. It seems the company founders may not have advanced wiki skills. Thanks again! Americasroof (talk) 18:25, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a matter of advanced wiki skills - when the "company founder(s)" replied, there was one question and the original writer didn't create a "subhead", which wasn't very valuable when there was only one topic.Edmcnierney (talk) 22:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

NE2 - Indeed, much of the DRG's have come from archive.org / Libre Map Project. Building all the tiles that quickly wouldn't have been possible without Libre, so I'm eternally grateful to a Libre group and archive.org for making the DRG collection available! There's some holes in the Libre map collection that I need to fill in by hand, and while attempting to reproject the roughly 1000 DRG's that are tagged as referenced to the NAD83 datum rather than NAD27, I've discovered major registration errors on those DRG's that I'm still working out solutions to (half the DRG corner coordinates are still NAD27 jumbled randomly together with NAD83 in the same DRG file). That's largely the reason for the large missing chunks of map coverage in Nevada. Libre was the source for 90% of the DRG's. Most of the DRG download links currently link to the DRG files at archive.org, but I need to sort out which ones are actually missing from archive.org or misregistered and make those download links go to my local copies (once rounded up or corrected, that is!). Currently 96% of the published 1:24K topos covering the continental US are tiled and integrated into the Map Viewer, the remaining 4% need manual intervention to locate the DRG's and/or correct registration errors before the tiles can be generated. Next up will be Canada.. Anyway, glad everyone is finding TopoQuest useful! Ryanniemi (talk) 20:59, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ray - Looks like we need an article on you and topoquest. Are there any third party articles (or a history of your website around)? I amazed at how elegant and fast and useful your site is. It's amazing how fast you cobbled it together.Americasroof (talk) 21:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, glad you like it. Establishing notability for a TopoQuest article may be the main challenge. I created a TopoQuest article a little while back, with a neutral POV and including a lot of technical info on where the map data comes from, how it's processed and what open-source software tools are used to make it all happen. It was immediately tagged for speedy deletion as SPAM and non-notability. Another editor disagreed on the notability issue, and the article was nominated for AfD instead. The community consensus was to delete the article for non-notability and WP:COI. I'm not sure how easily notability could be established now though, as I'm not currently aware of any third-party articles or verifiable sources that meet the WP notability guidelines (though Google does return a lot more hits for TopoQuest now than it did back then). While not really helpful for addressing notability, anyone interested in the history of the site or technical details of how the map data gets processed might find the About TopoQuest page interesting (or else will be severely bored, hehe!). Ryanniemi (talk) 11:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

We need to get it back on. The fact it's one of the default map sites for Wikipedia should greatly help (and one of the very few Topo sites). Unfortunately everytime I get ready to do something these days I seem to get distracted. If I get time I will try to work on it this weekend. I'll send you an email for some specific questions. Thanks again. Americasroof (talk) 13:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I would highly recommend the USDA's NRCS Data Gateway as a source for DRGs. The Libre Map Project didn't "liberate" anything, since the US Federal Government made a complete set of DRGs available for free download long before Libre Map came along. And unlike Libre Map, the NRCS site is actually a complete set (Puerto Rico? Guam? US Virgin Islands?) of DRGs. The user interface leaves a lot to be desired, but it's a complete and free source that's been available for several years now at NRCS Geospatial Data Gateway (lots of other data there, too!) Edmcnierney (talk) 22:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Ed - Thanks for the NRCS tip, I appreciate it. And thanks for the many years of enjoyment I got from browsing topos on TopoZone! Ryanniemi (talk) 23:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Quick note, I finished the automated tile processing script for Canada 1:50K topos for TopoQuest this evening. Processing underway, starting with British Columbia. I have a quad core 2.4GHz box crunching the tiles, and will likely have all of the Canadian 1:50K topos completed within 2-3 weeks. Ryanniemi (talk) 11:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)