Do Maps have Copyright

[photocroatia]

I am curious do maps in books and or on the internet have copyright.

There are a lot of websites that have maps of various countries towns, places etc

I know people will say yes they have copyright, my question is, who has the copyright on maps, I would have thought there would be only a handful of companies in the world who would do mapping.

Britanica etc.

Thank you

[Skinny]

Not 100% sure but I think they do.

If you get a crappy map like say of mapquest.com I think it's still their property.

And in books, the author either created the map or has referenced and asked the original author of the map for permission to publish the map

[treeline]

Maps have a copyright if somewhere it says they do. Almost all maps claim a copyright. Look hard, it's probably there.

[hunderdown]

Creators of maps spend a lot of time and money to make them. And make them accurate. Then they deliberately build in small but characteristic inaccuracies which they then include in their copyright registration.

Do not use other people's maps without permission.....

[treeline]

Yeah, my brother works for the company that builds the mapping database used by many of the big players. They study maps, aerial photos, satellite photos, even rarely go look at a location. All info is carefully digitized as accurately as possible. And then (he has described at considerable length) they go to great efforts to insert errors and anomalies into the map. Carefully considered so as not to cause much trouble for the poor soul driving around lost, but designed to be unmistakably clear as their own original "art" to prove you stole their data. They even have standards as to how frequently these errors must appear.

[photocroatia]

Thank you for your replies.

I have no intention of using maps without permission, what I didn't understand was that almost every travel type website (big or small) has maps and I can't see how they could all get permission,they seem to have different maps too, it could be that they are scanning maps in.

Does anybody know of any websites that offer detailed maps(Europe) taht can be copied in exchange for a link back.

If you could send me a PM I would appreciate it.

[BigDave]

Unfutrunately, this probably isn't of much use in Europe, but a great source of public domain maps and charts is the US government.

It might pay to check the copyright laws where you are interested in getting the maps.

You could also check with the local governments and chambers of conmmerce to see if they have any available for publicity.

[cellularnews]

You can get copyright free country maps from the CIA World Handbook.

You can also find some maps for most (but not all) countries released under the GNU Free Documentation License on the Wikipedia site.

Highly detailed maps rarely come free as they are expensive to produce.