Re: [OT] - Using GPS/digial maps without license could land you for 7 year jail.
at bottom :-
On 10/05/2016, Amey Abhyankar <sco1984@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 May 2016 at 21:35, shirish शिरीष <shirishag75@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Put up blog posts, talk on all digital forums where-ever you can,
>> there are already existing laws which deal with people who make
>> inaccurate maps of India.
>>
>
> The good part =
> http://www.indiatimes.com/news/looks-like-the-upcoming-indian-map-law-just-scared-google-into-showing-jammu-kashmir-and-arunachal-pradesh-as-indian-territory-254768.html
> ^_^
>
> Regards,
> Amey.
>
Right. I saw that, but only if you go via google maps india. If you
use tor (like I do) and I tried dozen of countries and all of them
still show the whole of J&K as well as the whole of Arunachal Pradesh
as disputed territories still. So it's good and limited to only the
Indian view-point, for all others the status-quo remains as before
i.e. no change from the picture shared/shown as-before.
But the issue is just not that Google was misrepresenting the Indian
viewpoint, the bill would make everybody who is using and sharing maps
as a criminal if you don't have a license. The ambit of the law is
much, much larger than that. .
As far as misrepresentation of boundaries are concerned, it is already
been part of our law.
See https://indiankanoon.org/doc/496978/ and there are also laws for
misrepresentation of indian border under the IT law act.
IF it was just for misrepresentation of the Indian borders, I don't
think anybody, lest of all me would have had any issue with the all.
The law goes much more further and in guise of license would shut off
all volunteer-based map-making activities (like OSM HOT) Openstreetmap
Humanatarian Network as well as individuals who with help of
cartography data and stats generated by the Indian govt. are able to
point out either faulty data or other lucane as shared by the State.
For the end user, at the simplest maps would become more expensive and
would not be as timely as it is or could have been.
I do not know whether this is known or not but about couple of years
back, Pune Municipality (the city where I live in) bought maps from
Google at a pretty high price (there was hue and cry for couple of
days and then business as usual) . The maps were about a decade old.
Now anybody who is living in Pune would know that just within the last
decade the character of the city has changed enormously, more areas
have come under Greater Pune Metropolitan Area as well as lot of
infrastructure as in roads, bridges etc. have been built along with
huge percentage of students making Pune their home for studies as well
as working.
So how useful those maps to make policies with is highly doubtful as
they are using very stale data.
This would become more of a common occurrence if the bill becomes law.
Map-making would become an underground activity and criminals would be
the one who would benefit from it rather than society as a whole.
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
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