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Who Owns Scotland and the Ordnance Survey
by
Andy Wightman
FEBRUARY 2007
All
Ordnance Survey (OS) digital mapping was removed from this website
on 23 February 2007. This was due to the unilateral termination
of my contract by OS in October 2005 and my unwillingness to
accept the new terms that were being proposed by them due to
excessive costs, continuing contractual uncertainty and a breakdown
of trust.
What
follows is a very brief summary of events. The
full story can be downloaded as a pdf
file here and is recommended
for those who wish a more detailed understanding of what happened.
For information on the new mapping sources I will be using, visit
my Mapping page.
Firstly
I should clarify that the
story is being published for two reasons, namely:
- that
I owe an explantion to all the users and supporters of the
whoownsscotland project
and;
- that
this episode raises important issues about use and licensing
of OS data by the citizen in the UK.
When
this website was launched in May 2002, we had an agreement with
the Ordnance Survey over the display of 1:50,000 and 1:250,000
scale digital mapping. This allowed us to display maps to illustrate
the land owned by various landowners. The following is an example
This
arrangement worked well and no further contact was had with OS
apart from annual licence renewals until I received a surprising
letter
from OS in October
2004 which claimed that the website was in breach of Crown Copyright.
1 October 2004
Dear Mr Wightman,
CROWN COPYRIGHT
We understand that you are the proprietor of the domain name
www.whoownsscotland.org.uk and operator of the website to which
that domain name resolves.
It has recently come to our attention that without our authorisation
or licence you are using Ordnance Survey mapping/data on the
above named website..........
...........Your reproduction of Ordnance Survey mapping/data
on the website without our authorisation or a licence is an infringement
of Crown Copyright in accordance with the Act.
This came as something as a shock as I had purchased the
original mapping data in 2002 and had paid annual licences
in June 2003
and June 2004.
I was a customer of OS, had by now paid them a total of £4371
and had a written agreement with them to do what I was doing.
I responded immediately by phone pointing out my existing agreement
and denying that
I was
in breach of Crown copyright. Following this telephone conversation
on 5 October 2004, the OS wrote a letter to me.
5 October 2004
Dear Mr Wightman
Digital Data and Framework Direct Licence
Account No 100036507
Further to your call to our Contact Centre today, we are
writing to confirm that your Framework Direct Licence (FDL)
allows
you to display the Scotland mapping data on your website.
..........We would like to apologise for any inconvenience
caused by the confusion over your current licensing arrangements.
Please
be
assured that our IP & Legal Team will not need to contact
you again.......
I was now reassured that everything was in order and there
would in future be no further questioning of what I was doing
- this
was premature.
In February 2005 I wrote to OS enquiring about the licensing
conditions that would apply if I were to distribute the whoownsscotland
website on a CD-ROM as part of the next edition of the book
Who Owns Scotland. I was asked to complete a form. I did
this and
sent it with a covering letter dated 10 March 2005.
In late April 2005, I received a telephone call from a Mr
J who said that a letter was on its way to me and that a
meeting
would
be a good idea. I asked why and he suggested I digest the
contents of the letter first. No letter arrived so I tried
phoning him
on 12 May but got no answer. Then a letter arrived dated
23 May 2005 followed by a phone call from Mr J announcing
that
he would
be flying to Edinburgh from Southampton to meet me on 26
May 2005.
In
this letter the OS argued that in fact the website did not conform
to the licence I had and that, furthermore, the display of polygons
on the OS map was potentially an infringement
of Crown copyright.
So
now, some other part of Ordnance Survey has another look at the
website and decides it does not comply with something or other.
Why can’t
they get their act together?
Now the OS were claiming that,
“ ...the website is not in compliance
with clause 3.1 of our FDL.”
Yet
seven months earlier in their letter of 5 October 2004, they
had said that,
“ we are writing to confirm your Framework Direct Licence (FDL) allows
you to display the Scotland mapping data on your website.”
I was confused and became increasingly
alarmed at the way in which OS were apparently changing the rules
every 6 months and flatly contradicting what their own legal people
had been
saying previously.
At the subsequent meeting, I
pointed out that I had what I understood was a perfectly acceptable
agreement in place which had been confirmed by OS’s
Intellectual Property and Legal Team. The OS representsative
simply pointed out that from his perspective I did
not have
a valid
OS licence. I made no headway attempting to fathom who, of all
the people I have been in correspondence with, had
authority
to speak on behalf of the
Ordnance
Survey. As a customer of OS, my relationship is with OS and not
a series of individuals
with different stories to tell. Subsequent lengthy email correspondence
confirmed that what had been agreed in the past was
now being disregarded and had no
force.
Protracted email correspondence followed until in July 2005 I
was presented with a set of new proposed contract terms which
would
amount to paying anything from £ 10,100
-£15,700 in the first year with subsequent years costing around £5100
and possible upwards of £10,000.
There followed a further protracted email correspondence as I tried
to clarify various aspects of the revised licensing arrangements.
Despite this, no firm proposal was forthcoming
from OS to make a reality of what had been discussed. I decided
to let things
continue
as they were since after all, it was not me who was proposing changing
anything - it was the OS and if they wanted me to sign up to a
new contract then the
obligation was on them to come forward with firm proposals.
By May 2006 it was clear that I was going to be moving to Ethiopia
at the end of June. My normal licensing renewal date was 31 May
and an invoice
was normally
sent out in late May informing me of the coming years licence fee
which I would normally settle in June. Since paying this would
be difficult
from
Ethiopia
I was keen to pay this but by early June I was aware that no such
invoice had been
sent to me. I phoned OS Customer Services to ask what had happened.
They said they would find out and phoned me back the same day to
inform me
that all my
contracts had been terminated in October 2005.
By now I was I suppose ready for anything but this took me aback
once again.
The Framework Direct Licence (Section 11.1) is quite clear that
“ Either
party may terminate this Contractor Licence with immediate effect
at any time by giving notice to the other party.”
No such notice had ever been given to me.
Eventually,
in January 2007, after further email correspondence, I informed
OS that due to their unilateral termination of my contract, the
excessive financial demands now being made and the continuing
uncertainty over future licensing arrangements, I would cease
using OS digital mapping and seek alternatives.
In the expanded version of this story I discuss the implications
of all of this and, in particular, the important issues it raises
about how OS licenses its data, derived data, customer care, and
a much
wider
issue of
access to
publicly-funded data in the UK.
In
conclusion, I am very dissatisfied with my treatment by Ordnance
Survey. I also question the legality of what they have done.
But my
own problems
are insignificant
in comparison to the wider issues this tale raises. The national
topographic map
belongs to Ordnance Survey (actually to the Crown) and OS license
its use. However, its arrangements for doing so appear to be
so hard-nosed
and commercial
that
ordinary citizens cannot use the data that their taxes have
paid for.
The only people who seem to benefit are corporations (who can
afford the fees), universities (whose staff can get access)
and public
sector organisations.
Any of the rest of us who want to do geographic research or
analysis are stuffed.
When I was a boy, I grew to love maps and was fascinated by
the work of the Ordnance Survey. I still love maps. I don’t love
the Ordnance Survey though.
Andy Wightman
Addis Ababa
February 2007
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