Gaia Project Agrees To Google Cease and Desist

Dreben writes "Gaia, an opensource project to develop a 3D API to Google Earth, has decided to comply with a request from Google. The search giant's Chief Technologist, Michael Jones, contacted the project with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project. Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors. They are going so far as to request anyone who has ever downloaded any aspect of Gaia to purge all related files. From the post to the freegis-l mail list: 'We understand and respect Google's position on the case, so we've removed all downloads from this page and we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia).' How does such a request, likely to have turned into a demand, affect fair usage? While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner."

I don't get it either

I came across something like this through work. I was helping to organise a physics conference in Berlin. We were using a town map website to mark the conference venue. I entered the address of the place, copied the url (with all the cgi after it), and made a link so that the visitors could navigate to the map website and immediately get a big red cross on it. Our legal experts told me to get rid of the link because we could face a law suit for improper use of linking to other people's material (even though the huge ad banner still shows viagra and goodness knows what else all around the map, and the visitors were therefore contributing to the ad revenue). It's all fucking bullshit if you ask me.

Re:I don't get it either

... with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project.

Sure, so long as you let us keep the time machine after we've complied!

Re:I don't get it either

The data in question isn't HTML data, traditional linking doesn't really apply.

The data available through Google is not free-as-in-beer. There's no usage fee, but Google doesn't own the data, and they are only defending what they paid for. I would suspect that if these third-party data providers saw that Google wasn't defending their license agreement, they would jack Google's data fees or revoke their license altogether, thus ruining it for everyone, not just those of the Gaia project. Sometimes killing one project is worth it, even if it sucks for some of us.

I'm sure if Google had their own satellites and collected the data themselves and could use it any way they pleased, we would be in a slightly different situation: Google would simply hire the Gaia developers and make a slick product out of it.

Do very little evil?

Mod it flamebait if you wish, but does anyone actually believe a multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporation is not going to protect it's interests, even if it does occassionally mean doing evil? To me this is unfortunate but not unexpected. People treat Google as if the entity itself was open source. It's not. If it suits them they will restrict usage, pull products etc. as it suits them. PR is just that. PR.

Re:Do very little evil?

Is it anything to do with Google? If Google have licensed data from a third party, then they'll be subject to the terms of that contract, which presumably forbids allowing others to access it without some restrictions. Otherwise the licencing company is giving that data out for free to companies with whom they could have instead sold it to.

Re:Do very little evil?

I don't know how the hell issuing a cease and desist so as to hold onto your digitalglobe reseller account could be construed as evil.

If Digitalglobe (who are the providers of Google's content on google earth [digitalglobe.com]) decided Google were breaching their TOS and decided they'd be better off keeping their imaging to themselves then everyone loses, including anyone using local.google.com and Google Earth.

Seems to me that Google are trying to keep a good thing going, and being IMHO reasonably respectful towards the Gaia project's authors.

Re:Do very little evil?

To be blunt, that is a perfectly stupid statement. As has been pointed out below in other comments and in the stub--"Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors."--Google is simply being faithful to prior contractual agreements. Heck, they were gentle enough to simply request a cease and desist instead of sicking the lawyers on them. And is a company protects its interests really "doing evil"? The fact that a company might want to have a say in a product or IP they OWN and they took the time and money to create seems reasonable. Granted, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA go overboard and abuse the law, but that doesn't alter the right of companies to reasonably enforce their ownership. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Re:Do very little evil?

I've long argued that this is entirely unreasonable and what's most broken about the legal system when it comes to IP law. It's not how the world works today but I believe that there should be control over the profits/fruits of the IP created but not of the IP itself. The entire IP system is meant to guarantee innovation isn't stiffled. Instead companies focus on guaranteeing their profits even if that means killing off innovation.

It's hard to say. Certainly there would be more innovation if anyone was allowed to use the data of these images willy-nilly, but would the images themselves ever have existed?

Say I want to map out my hometown using aerial geography. That's a fairly large undertaking, requiring a plane, probably multiple camera, and almost certainly multiple passes over the area. If I'm expected pay for the costs of acquiring those photos, but I can't expect to even break even (because someone can take my data and release it for free), then I have less incentive to spend the money required to acquire the data. We don't get innovation on the use of this data until such time as the data is acquired, and that can be a costly venture.

In the case of books, it's even darker. The only material value a fiction book has is in the paper it's printed on (or the cost of bandwidth, if I release it online). Other than that, any initial investment comes strictly at an opportunity cost (my time). The entire value of the book is wrapped up in its IP, because copies have a trivial cost (compare to 200 years ago, when printing books had a significant cost). To me, this means that intellectual property laws are even more important today, though they should be significantly reduced in temporal length. The ease of duplication means that there is virtually no replication cost, and very little distribution costs (given electronic sales). Any sale can be virtually pure profit, meaning the time to make up the opportunity cost of creating the work is reduced.

For movies and music which typically have an up front, material cost, things change a bit, but still largely hold true. I'd guess (pulling the number out of my--well, you know) that 90% of the money that a film will earn is generated within the first 10 years, certainly within the first 20. Before duplication and distribution were so easy, a lot of the earnings would be eaten up in materials. Without those costs, again, it's much easier to make up the initial investment and turn a nice profit in a shorter period of time.

I'd be really ecstatic if there were stricter controls even than we have now--as long as the length of copyright was reduced drastically and keys were escrowed with the government and released at the end of the copyright term.

Re:Do very little evil?

This isn't evil, it's a requirement of Google's data suppliers. They signed contracts with providers to give map & satellite data of the globe away for free. How satellite imaging providers agreed to this is beyond me. Getting photos like Google Earth uses can be quite expensive (the whole launching satellites thing). In any case, Google pulled it off. They're probably paying some good penny to do it too.

I don't get the objection here. Google gives this stuff away including an API. Open API's were unheard of until Google came around. Somehow, the providers agreed to that as well. That's not enough? They should also become a conduit for everyone that wants to use Google's licensed data as they please?

This is why I don't write open source software anymore. The expectations of the community often far outweighs what they're entitled to.

Re:Do very little evil?

In what way is it evil to keep your promise? They signed a contract; they're doing what they said they'd do.

Google is being good, not evil, by doing this. Unless you think they were evil to sign the contract, in which case they're being evil if they provide Google Earth at all.

The mistaken assumption is "anyone who takes away my toys must be evil". If you have that assumption, you're not being good, you're just being childish.

Licensing!

According to the post, it's quite simple. Google has a license to use their API with the data. It's not google being a bully. It's google saving their rear.

How about Google News?

Google News is using stories from online sources without a license. When will Google itself cease and desist?

Re:How about Google News?

As soon as someone ask the to do so. (Just search slashdot for a history of someone doing exactly that, resulting in google dropping them as requested.)

wow, tough request

> request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development

Hopefully google will let the developers use the google time machine to go back and not work on it.

Qua?

Fair use does not involve using a sublicensed product against the terms of the license agreement. When you spend the money to photograph and map the surface of the Earth you can license it and do with it what you please. Until then you have to deal with the licenses Google Earth's data falls under or not use it. Google is actually being pretty generous in providing a Google Earth/Maps API as they're going out on a limb licensing content from other vendors. There's a reason all of the images have Google logo watermarks or watermarks of the company that collected the data.

matter of time

A growing chunk of the world is going on with their lives ignoring intellectual property completely, and even though I make my living through payments for intellectual property, I am perfectly happy to see the entire IP structure collapse. It's based on some bad assumptions and ultimately destructive conventions.

I, for one, am pleased to walk down the streets of Belgrade and see "Nike" shoes for 5 dollars (US) and slipstreamed copies of Windows XP professional SP2 for less than that. I've made the decision to circumvent the laws of Intellectual Property whenever I can. I look forward to the whole thing blowing up and a new model taking its place (even though there's a chance it could be a worse model).

The direction IP law is taking us goes to a very bad place.

Re:matter of time

so what would you do if someone started selling your work for 75% cheaper than what you sell it for, and as a result, your income dropped 50% or more?

i think you'd turn to those same IP laws you violate for protection. but then when they see that you ignore them when it suits you, you'd be SOL.

Re:Qua?

Well I disagree. Google is putting the data freely available on the net.

Google is not making the data freely available -- it is encrypted and can (ordinarily) only be accessed from within Google software or within the Google network through a passkey. It is as if you had some private banking information stored on an ftp server. The server is connected to the internet. Does that mean it's up for grabs? Would you like for someone to crack your password? Would you like for them to share that information with others?

Secondly, there is no indication in the letter that Google is preventing users from using the content. They are merely trying to regulate it, just as you must regulate any resource. There is not even the threat of a lawsuit. More likely Google would just change their protocols and make people jump through more hoops to get at the data. Is that to anyone's advantage?

Imagine you own a toy store. You have a large free candy dispenser outside your store window set up so that people can sample sweets throughout the day, in the hope of luring in customers. After a few weeks, a woman named Gaia comes by and figures out how to jerry-rig the dispenser so that she can get an unlimited quantity of candy for free all at once. She sets up a table in the public park with the candy she's taken from your dispenser and just gives it out to people, no charge. That's nice of her, being so generous, but it's really at your expense. Soon after, you're forced to take down your dispenser.

That's what's wrong with your argument.

Re:Qua?

Google is actually being pretty generous in providing a Google Earth/Maps API as they're going out on a limb licensing content from other vendors. There's a reason all of the images have Google logo watermarks or watermarks of the company that collected the data.

I used to work for one of the companies named in those watermarks, who provides GIS datasets of the US and a few other countries. They purchase datasets from smaller companies/localities and merge and improve them to provide data to Google, in-car nav companies, and routing for businesses. One dataset that we had purchased from a county government cost the company $30,000. Almost all of the datasets required the company to agree to a Data Usage Agreement. Every street, water, rail, etc. segment that was modified in our database was tagged with the source of the data. I designed the database that cataloged those datasets, imagery, and maps to record the restrictions of each dataset. I was not privy to our sales contracts, but I would assume sales to Google involved passing along many of the same Data Usage Agreements, for a much larger amount of data and of course a much larger sum of money.

And our work probably wasn't nearly as expensive as sending satellites into space like the data from Space Imaging. Their Data Usage Agreements are likely even more limiting, and their data more expensive. My former employer buys satellite images from Space Imaging and more accurate aerial imagery from USGS flyovers to improve the accuracy of their GIS datasets, but they do not produce or distribute the images themselves.

Google did the right thing in abiding by the contracts they signed to license the data from companies like mine. We are already fortunate enough that Google absorbs the cost of that data to provide it through their API like they do, and that Google even managed to negotiate a contract allowing its use through their API.

google should have turned a blind eye.

especially to small time users. It would have generated goodwill. I'm sure their agreements with the 3rd party providers didn't stipulate not to allow other api's to be developed, merely (ab)use of the dataset by said apis. Grey areas would benefit both parties.

Re:google should have turned a blind eye.

I'm on the Google Earth team and yes, this is exactly what happened. The license we have to the imagery forbids us from allowing access from unofficial clients. The data providers take this very seriously indeed and noticed very quickly that such an application was out in the wild.

Fortunately, the Gaia author understood our position and ceased development, for which we are grateful. I think we are going to send him a T-Shirt or something to try and make up for it. It's a small gesture but we don't want him to think badly of us.

I guess some people will see this action as us dumping on the little guy, but it's not that simple. Many Googlers have a background in open source and have been on both sides of the fence. However, the fact remains that this sort of aerial imagery is not only very expensive to produce but also very expensive to manipulate and merge into a unified "Earth". If we allowed open source clients to access the Earth database it would be easier to dump the (unwatermarked) images en-masse and avoid paying the imagery owners for it. Clearly, that's not something anybody wants - satellites don't launch themselves.

Re:google should have turned a blind eye.

"...satellites don't launch themselves."

Which is probably just as well in the long run. :-)

It's Not Google's Data

Google doesn't own most of the map data they're using-- they've bought licenses allowing them to use it in certain ways and Gaia was causing Google to violate those agreements. If Google's data suppliers had cut off their contracts over this, then both Google Earth and Gaia would cease to exist.

Good Luck

"...a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project."

I think they'll have trouble if they cease an desist from past development. It has my head spinning just thinking about it.

What if it was Microsoft instead of Google?

There has never been a time when 2 corporate entities, Google and Apple, have been as beloved and cherished by the public as we have today. It's a true sign of unprecidented respect for a corporation when users obey the corporation's every request without as much as a wimper. If it was Microsoft, the kids would be screaming and it would be on every blog. Google is so beloved, they could tell kids to shoot themselves and they'd do it.

Future direction?

I see one possibility (actually a personal wishlist item more than anything): A GDAL based, cross-platform GPS application that can render geotiffs to a window and plot the current position for locally stored maps. Currently, the only application that does this and, even then, only just (no disrespect, I use it a lot, but maritime charts rarely fit into a 1280x1024 pixel raster) is GPSDrive. Yes, I've heard of mapd and had a few attempts to port it, but it doesn't play nice with FreeBSD. The Grass port, when it is updated, may make exporting them a bit easier than the current GIMP/cut/paste/save as/calibrate routine I currently have to put up with, but until then I'm SOL.

So, guys, since Google Earth uses GDAL (JFGI for the non believers) and gaia is already in the ports tree (with a little hackery to make it respect make.conf's CFLAGS), any chance? Or is it non-trivial?

I'm always looking for hot new things in portage

Thanks for pointing one out, GOOG, I just emerged gaia!

Oh shit! Mike Jones is coming to get you...

"I am Michael Jones, the Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and
Google Local search writing to the author(s) of the Gaia project (
http://gaia.serezhkin.com/ [serezhkin.com]) with an urgent concern. We have now become aware
of your efforts and are concerned that you may not understand the developing
global social impact of your engineering creativity."

MIKE JONES!
*gets his gat*

What is the hoohah about?

"While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner."

Yes - Google Earth is nothing without the data. That's why they pay huge sums of money for that data. They intend to make a return on this investment - and I'm sure anybody with Google shares would expect them to do so.

To make a return they want people to use it. To get more people to use it they developed an API - the usage of which they intend to ultimately bring money back to Google with.

Why on earth would they want other people ripping off the data they paid to license to do other stuff with - something that doesn't return them money. More importantly, whoever is licensing them the data isn't going to be too happy that other people are copying it without paying them a license fee. If I wrote some software and sold copies to people, and one of my customers started burning copies and giving them out to everybody, I would be pissed off with that customer.

If Gaia wants to use the maps, I'm sure the OSS community will collectively reach into their pockets to pay for the licensing fee required (that would be the fee required to distribute those maps free, to anybody). Alternatively, why don't we send up an OSS satellite ourselves and take our own photos?

I fail to see how this is a story..

Open Dependencies

This scenario is a compelling case for open dependencies. Depending on a proprietary data source, like Google's GIS data, is a risk that can destroy a project when that source on which the project depends changes its terms of use, or turns out too limited to use by the project's actual scope or use cases. If Gaia were coded to use an open standard for data, then its developers could probably use Google data as one source during its development. The release could then use whichever data source the user specified. The most Google could do would be to insist the project stop specifying Google as a default source, and maybe stop users from connecting to the Google API.

Though that would encourage a good project (if Gaia is one) to grow the popularity of other data sources that compete with Google. So Google would probably go along with it.

Including tiered architectures with choices for alternative components and data in standard formats is a powerful way to force even a powerful force like Google to go with the flow.

Google apologists? WTF

Google apologists? WTF

After reading several posts, more people are standing up to defend Google and their control of their IP. That is fine, but if the article was about MS or another 'evil' corporate company doing this, we would see 1000 posts by now telling the world how evil they are.

What surprises me, is when I see the same people decry Microsoft or IBM and then in related issues stick up for companies like Google and Apple. These companies are all out for their own interest, give back only what 'little' they 'have' to give back and don't give a crap about OSS.

If you look back at tons of articles, where Apple stops giving back source, closes Darwin, or straps on tons of DRM and closes their entire media business to just themselves; or articles where Google admits to data mining email and has some 'unknown-unholy' alliance to firefox that controls the development of the browser and people just roll over like these are all ok things and people still think these companies are good and all about being Open.

Google is not any better than any other corporate machine, and as they get bigger their weight will be felt more and more by the entire industry.

Google is not about cute kittens any more than MS is about cute kittens.

Ok?

I feel so dirty now...

You are wrong

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=cute+kittens &mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP [live.com]

cute kittensPage 1 of 1,631,025 results

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-09,GGLD:en&q=cute+kitten s [google.com]
    Results 1 - 10 of about 2,120,000 for cute kittens

that means google is about 25% more cute kittens.

How is this violating the license?

They built an API to access google earth data in a different way. The license says you can only access the data via googles client software. But the Gaia project itself is not violating the license, they are just providing the means. Its the people that use the Gaia API that do the violation. This is just like a manufacture of a CD burner. A CD burner can be illegally used to copy copyrighted material, but it is the user of the CD burner that's breaking the license, not the CD manufacturer

Google handled it well

While there can be differences of opinion over whether it was right for Google to make the request, they sure made it with a lot more tact than many companies have in the past. No threats. No blustering. No legal speak. It was a very reasonable letter that respects the recipient's intelligence and moral integrity.

I'm impressed.

rm -rf ~/google-earth

Let's face it, after 10 minutes farting around, it's nothing much any way. No loss here, see ya. Google didn't even develop it.

Some building datasets as open alternative

Open source projects may want to build on open content otherwise this type of problem could come up repeatedly.

Jared Benedict of the Libre Map Project and over 100 map "liberators" have started this collection:

http://www.archive.org/details/maps_usgs [archive.org]

a start-- lets build on it.

-brewster
Internet Archive

From TFA...

The data that we license for Google Earth and Google Maps is made available for use under the restriction that it not be accessed or used outside of Google's client software.
In other words, they got a license for the images, data, whatever only for use in their software. The original providers of that data would - understandably - be unhappy if they allowed the data to be used by other products (remember, they want to keep selling the data to people). So Google has to be the "bad guy" and pull the plug from the 3rd party devs or the data providers will sue them for allowing others to take the data and/or pull the plug on Google's license.

Fundamental misunderstanding

There is a fundamental assumption of the web, which google seem to have misunderstood. It is this:
"Anything you publish, I can use. In return, anything I publish, you can use".

for example, I make my website accessible to googlebot without restriction (including indexing, caching etc). In return, google is available to me. It's simply about fairness: the "price of entry to the Internet" is that one should contribute one's own material.
This is how, for example, people share html layouts. The unfortunate thing is that this combination of reciprocity, fair-use and courtesy is not enshrined in law, and we persist in the ludicrous notion of "intellectual property".

Besides which, if google really want to do (and be seen to do) the right thing, they should offer gaia a blanket license. Fortunately, gaia is free-software, and it will get forked if necessary. It's time google had some stiff competition.

Evil

1: Anything involving lawyers is Evil.
2: Anything holding back Open Source is Evil.
3: Anything involving big corporations against the little guy just trying to make the world a better place is Evil.

That's Three Strikes, Google.

Gaia's speed, and FreeBSD too

I had heard of Gaia, and was going to try it on my laptop (Gentoo) ... but forgot about it. Then I saw it come into the FreeBSD ports tree at an opportune moment and so I built it on my FreeBSD desktop system. When i ran it I at first couldn't figure out if it was doing anything. All I had was a map of the world which I could grab and move... I was about to give up (without reading any docs of course!) when i accidentally hit my scroll wheel.... ZOOOOM.

I have google earth installed on a windows box and play with it from time to time. But (granted that box is older and more limited than the FreeBSD box -- though it does have a much better video card in it) it runs pretty distressing slow... chews up the system resources. Gaia on my freebsd box was *fast*. Amazingly fast. And therefore fun! Sure I didn't have any UI to speak of, could not look up addresses or landmarks... but i was soon zooming in to any place i was interested in and finding my own way around, and having more fun doing it in the fast minimal interface than I ever had in google earth.

Also it was so nice to see in native 64 freebsd bits... i don't think I'll ever see Google's offerings come to my platform of choice ... ever (except of course in the annoying form of Linux emulation). )-:

Alas, the very next day I see the news about the take down....

Sigh.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

...those of Stanford elitism couldnt stop the Ivory Tower's fall [u-tokyo.ac.jp].

if it is a problem with 3rd party date, then...

Google could make its own open source project. All they need to do is to hire Gaia's creator to keep working on it. Then it would not violate terms of licensing with satellite data providers. Google's Gaia could offer simpler functionality than Google Earth or Google Eearch Plus, but still workable and useful on multiple and exotic platforms. my 2 cents.

Hypocrasy

Google makes billions using other peoples data threatens to sue company for using the data Google provides an API for.

Gaia acced the data directly?

I'm confused...gaia was accessing the data directly instead of via the Google Earth API?

This part of the letter seems to have a dose of overacting to it:

The kindness through which Google has made the wonder of our planet
available to more than 100 million users around the world is now threatened
-- not by a menacing and fierce business competitor -- but by you. Please
hear the seriousness in this statement. I am not an attorney. I am not
posturing. Just the opposite. We on the engineering team are hopeful that
despite the risk your actions (break the ToS, reverse engineer parts of the
data protection mechanisms, publish the fact and code, encourage others)
pose to our product, team, company, and users, we remain hopeful that this
was an unintended result of what started as intellectual curiosity by a
smart engineer like ourselves who has a passion to learn how things work.

Yeah, I'm sure that the gaia project was a threat to Google. A bit melodramatic, aren't you Mr. Jones?

Not having used Google Earth, what difference does it make accessing the images via the Google Earth API versus directly?

The CORRECTED Google motto...

...Do no evil.

Unless it's good for business.

Then do just a little bit of evil.

Until people get used to it.

Then do just a little MORE evil.

Wash, rinse, dry and repeat until we're Microsoft in slightly different clothes. ...

Think I'm exaggerating? We'll see in 15 years or so.

At least they got Google's attention

My company has tried three times to get a response from Google's sales team on the cost of licensing Google Earh for a commercial application. The only response each time has been a canned auto-reply on how to download Google Earth. Now I know what we need to do! We'll have our web site violating Google's data licensing terms up shortly, and then we'll sit back and wait for their legal team to get in touch. :-)

Guys...

Google pays for that data, and they are bound by contracts and license agreements to only use it in certain ways. While i'm sure part of the decision is for their own benifits, it still doesn't change that most likely, as part of the agreement, Google has a responsability to make sure that data isn't used in ways that did not conform with said agreement.

Why did they even start the project?

Why did a project like this even get started? Was it the "OMG Google" factor?

Didn't they know that we already have World Wind [nasa.gov] which is Free as in Freedom and Beer and also OSI compliantly licensed?

API is win32 only :(

While digging around for Information about the google-earth API I figured out, that this API is WIN32 only!

How absurd is this? Just the Linux Version of GE seems to be non-scriptable!

Sven

What about Google's use unlicensed data?

In particular, the 3D model of Downtown buffalo.

This model has been a several years long labor of one of the profs in the planning/arch department at University of Buffalo. Yet somehow, mysteriously, this exact same modle ened up in google earth, without attribution. No one at UB is admitting to doing it, but I can't help but wonder where this data came from.

Anyone out there that can clue me in?

Guerilla software development

http://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/guerrilla-devl.html [cryptnet.net]

Stop being censored, develop anonymously! ;-)

Excellent...

... as I was just working on an ebuild for it...

Simple. Google has an agreement with someone else.

Google has an agreement with 3rd parties to use their information a certain way.

Google's own API complies with the terms of the agreement and can change in the future should there ever be a need. it is a liability , but a controlled one.

Gaia's API isn't controlled by Google. Should Google decide to change the limit or scope of the data which can be accessed from their 3rd party API, Gaia might decide they don't want to comply with Google's new standard and continue the old ways.

Google could be considered under breach of contract with whomever owns the data.


Just like how I can't rent out cars I'm currently renting from other rental agencies.

Delete program

we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia).

Why would anyone do so? Its says "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991" in the Licence.

Of course, the gaia-team has received a cease-and-desist letter, but there is no reason for other people not to continue on it until they get a cease-and-desist letter as well and so on..

google - another evil (US) corporation

google is the bad guy in all this - americans are used to having their lives run by corporations - corporations whose only reason for being is to make more profit and fcuk anything else - if they ever did anything that was good to anyone not in their corporation it would be by accident - break up all corporations - they are evil, in every sense of the word - anybody self-deluded or google employess who somehow find good in google's action are stupid or american - is it not true that half americans don't believe in evolution and the other half believe saddam hussein blew up the twin towers and had weapons of mass destruction - perhaps that's not fair but i'm sure you gat my point. google the data retention company that one day will sell all it knows, should be known henceforth as Go-Ogle!

Re:I immediately deleted my Google Earth

Why stop there? I think this pushed me over the edge. I'm not using any Google products any longer. And I haven't just stopped there, I'm boycotting any platform that runs Google products or their searches. I'm not even using my computer right now to write this. To show my indignation, I've decided to cancel my power bill. Hell, since we're already having fun overreacting, I'm just going to run naked through the streets proclaiming the end of the world, all brought to you by Google(tm).

But what if...

But what if the open source project was doing something it wasn't supposed to? Since when does open-source mean "free reign to do anything we please"?

Re:But what if...

They had no contractual license to the map data. I'm going to splice into your phone line and use it to make my calls from now on. You're paying the phone company and I'm not, but I have no contractual obligation to either of you, so I must not be breaking any laws.

Re:What ever happened to Do No Evil?

That open source project was using Google's services without authorization. It not only uses their servers, but it could also get Google in trouble with the people they license their data from. How would you feel if someone routed your cable service to themselves, with the imminent possibility the cable company finds out and fines you?

Re:use nasa instead

Really? Whats the URL to a Linux compatible client?

Re:Crap,

Heh, it's clear you're not working for e.g NAVTEQ, TANA, or TeleAtlas. In that case you'd say the opposite.

Re:use nasa instead

NASA's data isn't nearly as good. The resolution is poor for most places. Beyond that, NASA has no non-windows client, and the windows only one they have isn't as good.

Re:Crap,

"Can I borrow this book?"
"No."
"What, why not?"
"It's not mine."
"So?"
"So I can't lend you something that isn't mine."
"You're not good! You're evil!"

Google doesn't own the images. Gaia was using those images through Google. If Gaia was using those images through Google, and Google didn't own them, then it's up to Google to flex some muscle and make it stop.

Re:For anyone who wants to carry on

or HTTP server http://www.kw.kernel.org/pub/mirrors/gentoo/distfi les/gaia-0.1.0.tar.bz2 [kernel.org]

Re:Where to find

MOD parent up.

Sorry Brin. No Memory Hole for Stanfordites.

Try the cache [64.233.161.104].