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I'm editing an area outside Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada where the background sat images inside the iD editor (I assume that is what I'm using) are very low quality.

The Ontario government has an amazing site with high-resolution aircraft (not satellite) imagery of most of the province, including my area (I can see my pool umbrella and wood pile).

How would I go about editing OSM data using that map as the background? I don't mean within OSM, if there is a way to do this externally that would work for me - as long as the tool is on the Mac, which is my main editing platform.

For that matter, is there a way to edit on top of Google Earth or similar well-known systems?

I have noticed in the past that when I make a KML file in Google Earth and then look at that in some other mapping program, the features may no longer line up, there may be a slight difference in the cooridnate mapping on the order of a few meters typically. If I can edit externally, how do I ensure that the changes I make are properly aligned with OSM?

asked 20 Aug '20, 20:18

Maury%20Markowitz's gravatar image

Maury Markowitz
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accept rate: 0%

According to the splash screen on that website:

Grant of Licence.

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources ("Licensor") hereby grants to You a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to view and print a single copy of the material on this web site (the "Site Products") solely for User's personal, non-commercial use.

Licence Restrictions.

Unless otherwise specified, User may not copy, modify, distribute, transmit, display, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, link to or frame in another website, use on any other website, transfer or sell the Site Products, in whole or in part, either voluntarily or by operation of law. The foregoing prohibition expressly includes, but is not limited to, the practice of screen scraping, database scraping or any such practice or activity, the purpose of which is to obtain data or portions thereof, or portions of databases from the Site, in any manner or any quantities not expressly authorized hereunder.

Does the particular imagery you're interested in have a much more permissive licence? If not it doesn't look viable.

(20 Aug '20, 21:23) InsertUser

The above is simply a generic statement for the website, so not so relevant for our typical use.

(20 Aug '20, 21:46) SimonPoole ♦

So that there is no misunderstanding: using sources that are incompatible with OSM, be that data or background imagery, will eventually get your edits removed, this includes anything from google.

That said, the actual sources for the imagery are listed here https://www.sdc.gov.on.ca/sites/MNRF-PublicDocs/EN/CMID/Ontario_Imagery_Copyright_Notices_Revised.pdf

I would suggest first discussing this with the Canadian OSM community maybe somebody has already inquired and knows more, depending on politics in the state it might be possible to get explicit permission for the use in OSM.

The CA mailing list can be found here https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

permanent link

answered 20 Aug '20, 21:45

SimonPoole's gravatar image

SimonPoole ♦
44.7k13326701
accept rate: 18%

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question asked: 20 Aug '20, 20:18

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last updated: 20 Aug '20, 21:46

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