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Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

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Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#71

Post by wslh »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #60
mikeash wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not at all obligated to abide by an open source license that just happened to be bundled in with a bunch of files you downloaded. The thing is, without that license, you're bound by copyright. That means you're not allowed to redistribute those files, or anything derived from them, at all without permission from the copyright holder, with the exception of uses allowed by fair use. For source code and similar t…

I think the point you make is an excellent one. However, we've seen court decisions that essentially equate ToS violations with wire fraud, no? I wonder where the line gets drawn...

And we've also seen antimonopoly actions against companies abusing their power position.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#72

Post by res0nat0r »

wpietri wrote: post #62
joshma wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this feeling of self-entitlement - who are we to judge whether or not an API has been offered "in a reasonable manner?" I'm guessing it's very resource-consuming to collect, process, and maintain the data necessary for geolocation APIs (especially given the upstream providers). It'd be one thing for Google to be deceptive about it, offer a free service, and try to upsell you every point along the w…

I agree in part with your point, but I think Google has pulled a bit of a bait and switch here. For many years, they were conspicuously open and friendly, as you would expect from a company run by engineers. That got them a lot of geek love, and a big boost to their early adoption efforts. I also think it had the effect of stunting the growth of alternatives. (E.g., Google Reader.) Now they are running things more in…

By open and friendly you must be talking about small pet projects released by single or small groups of engineers that didn't take much effort to produce.

If you are expecting unlimited free access to some thing like maps which employs many people and probably millions of dollars to produce, without expecting any type of return to sustain further growth...well it's time to rethink your strategy if you plan on staying in business.

Why does HN believe companies that spend millions of dollars to provide services, many times for free, and for pay with restriction are somehow "evil" (since we're talking about google this feels like an appropriate time to use this irrelevant phrase again).

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#73

Post by javajosh »

Okay, so I have a question: how can open source geocoding services sustain themselves? Doesn't it cost money to gather all of that data? Where does that money come from if the service is free? I would expect an OSS geocoding service to be a) seeded with data that is out of copyright (basic geography and placenames, b) spruced up with any well-regarded modern free datasources (probably government funded), c) spruced up even more from volunteers donating GPS data.

Would a geocoding service be a good candidate for a state-run utility?

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#74

Post by mkopinsky »

ubasu wrote: post #19

From the article: "I’m not RMS, I love open-source for very pragmatic reasons. One of the biggest is that I hate hitting black boxes when I’m debugging!" RMS started the free software movement because he wasn't able to adapt a black box printer.

Even if RMS started from a pragmatic standpoint, his position has clearly moved far beyond pragmatism.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#75

Post by DannyBee »

Mithaldu wrote: post #38
dewitt wrote: post #11

FWIW, Google doesn't particularly like it when people use APIs outside the terms, either. Having to take down an app is never fun or enjoyable for anyone involved. And the cases in which the terms aren't programmatically enforced right away isn't necessarily a choice; often it is difficult to differentiate at scale between legitimate usage and disallowed usage. And while I don't know how every other company writes th…

I would have some sympathy with this if you made it easy for single people to pay you to be able to use your data in a manner outside of the ToS of the free APIs. However, for the Elevation API there are two choices: * free and heavily restricted * business api, which looks extremely sketchy † and is blocked to most people The gaming world has learned this with Steam and friends already. People will pirate the hell o…

"I would have some sympathy with this if you made it easy for single people to pay you to be able to use your data in a manner outside of the ToS of the free APIs. "

I'm not sure why you assume, among other things, that upstream contracts always make this possible.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#76

Post by reginaldjcooper »

mikeash wrote: post #42
lmgftp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really could use more exposure. People who believe that because they only had to click "Accept" they may claim ignorance or stupidity/absurdity of the terms the accepted ought to be corrected. It's simply silly to think you may violate the terms of any agreement made, especially when that agreement is necessary to your use of the service (hence "terms" of service). While it is clear that hacker culture embraces…

Personally, I think it's silly to think that you may be bound to the terms of an agreement just because you clicked a button that says "Agree", without any of the fundamental attributes of a contract being present, and without even interacting with a representative of the other party in any way.

I've noticed typically I agree with your views, but on this case we diverge.

I think it's reasonable to assume that when the service cannot be accessed before the accessor clicks "agree", and the accessor clicks "agree", that constitutes a valid contractual agreement. It's no more silly than mailing in a credit card application and being bound by those terms.

The fundamental attributes are present. There is a contract and you can agree to it or not. Your interaction with the company is viewing the terms the lawyers wrote and agreeing to them or leaving the website.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#77

Post by reginaldjcooper »

mkopinsky wrote: post #74
ubasu wrote: post #19

From the article: "I’m not RMS, I love open-source for very pragmatic reasons. One of the biggest is that I hate hitting black boxes when I’m debugging!" RMS started the free software movement because he wasn't able to adapt a black box printer.

Even if RMS started from a pragmatic standpoint, his position has clearly moved far beyond pragmatism.

Has it? I think it's very pragmatic to want control over your hardware and the ability to repair problems or add functionality as desired. If you consider it from what is best for society as well, it's very restrictive to have hardware where the software cannot be modified.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#78

Post by magicalist »

dll3824 wrote: post #69
Mithaldu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have some sympathy with this if you made it easy for single people to pay you to be able to use your data in a manner outside of the ToS of the free APIs. However, for the Elevation API there are two choices: * free and heavily restricted * business api, which looks extremely sketchy † and is blocked to most people The gaming world has learned this with Steam and friends already. People will pirate the hell o…

Really, don't bother trying to contact them, it's not worth it. If anything their business API is less sketchy than their actual sales tactics. We had two different conversations with them and the first time the rep quoted us a rate that worked out to $72 per 1000 map impressions. The second time we spoke to a different rep who, when asked the differences between the free plan and the business plan, told us that if w…

uh, even at its highest it was $4 per 1000 (and now it's 50 cents) and you get 25,000 free per day. And that's through the automated API console, no enterprise license. And the "consequences" are...you get an over quota message. Seriously, search for "OVER_QUERY_LIMIT" and then compare that to all the stories of people being sued and shut down because they went over their maps API quota. I'll wait.

I've heard of terrible sales calls with them, so maybe that's what happened, but this seems a bit of a stretch. If it did, I hope you did some basic research before deciding what to go with.

In any case, MapBox is great and they deserve the support, so at least it worked out.

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#79

Post by timClicks »

Does anyone know of a good guide to DEM (Digital Elevation Model) formats? New Zealand has some great open data[0], and I expect that it would be a fun exercise to create your own elevation API from it but I don't know how to get started

[0] http://koordinates.com/#/layer/1418-nz-80m-digital-elevation...

Re: Why you should not pirate Google’s geo APIs

#80

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

joshma wrote: post #58
Mithaldu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have some sympathy with this if you made it easy for single people to pay you to be able to use your data in a manner outside of the ToS of the free APIs. However, for the Elevation API there are two choices: * free and heavily restricted * business api, which looks extremely sketchy † and is blocked to most people The gaming world has learned this with Steam and friends already. People will pirate the hell o…

I don't understand this feeling of self-entitlement - who are we to judge whether or not an API has been offered "in a reasonable manner?" I'm guessing it's very resource-consuming to collect, process, and maintain the data necessary for geolocation APIs (especially given the upstream providers). It'd be one thing for Google to be deceptive about it, offer a free service, and try to upsell you every point along the w…

Building your own elevation API is absolutely trivial; I don't know why anyone would even want to pirate Google's API for large-scale usage.

Firstly, the data is freely available. It's NASA's SRTM [1], downloadable from a zillion mirror sites.

Then just take some code to calculate a lat/long offset and find the right position in the right tile. Bob Osola has some easily portable PHP for this if you need it [2].

Free hint: Putting both your tiles and your (Lua) lookup code in Redis, then calling the latter with EVALSHA, is a really neat and fast way to do this.

If you really need ocean depths, higher resolutions than SRTM offers, or stuff above 60 degrees latitude, then it gets a little more complex. But for 90% of cases doing it yourself is eminently practicable.

[1] http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/ [2] http://www.osola.org.uk/elevations/

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