fake/counterfeit charts!

This sounds strange, counterfeiting is usually only worthwhile on goods that are vastly over-priced. We all know that charts are high quality items sold at very reasonable cost.

It would only pay to copy them if they could be produced and sold at a much lower cost than the genuine article.

Oooops, might just have blown the argument. I wonder if there are forged US charts. :D
 
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If the The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office allowed the free downloading of all the publications that the UK Tax payer has paid for then there would be no need for counterfeit stuff. It's a disgrace as far as I am concerned that we have to pay for these publications.
 
American & Dutch electronic charts are free on-line to download


BlowingOldBoots said:
If the The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office allowed the free downloading of all the publications that the UK Tax payer has paid for then there would be no need for counterfeit stuff. It's a disgrace as far as I am concerned that we have to pay for these publications.
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BlowingOldBoots said:
If the The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office allowed the free downloading of all the publications that the UK Tax payer has paid for then there would be no need for counterfeit stuff. It's a disgrace as far as I am concerned that we have to pay for these publications.
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I'm not sure the UK tax payer has paid for them. The UKHO sells charts and publications to nearly every merchant ship in the world, I think that must fund it more than the taxpayer.
 
Mistroma said:
This sounds strange, counterfeiting is usually only worthwhile on goods that are vastly over-priced. We all know that charts are high quality items sold at very reasonable cost.

It would only pay to copy them if they could be produced and sold at a much lower cost than the genuine article.

Oooops, might just have blown the argument. I wonder if there are forged US charts. :D
Click to expand...


Of course it is cheaper to produce a chart if you don't have to go out and do the survey yourself.
 
sailorman said:
the point is
the American charts are free for citizens of the USA as they paid for the surveys , printing ect out of tax`s.
we pay twice
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This idea is trotted out time and again and is misinformed twaddle.

Let's put it the other way round and ask why the tax payer should pay for surveys for charts for a minority of people to use?

Besides which, many of the surveys done round the UK are done by contract and not by the Royal Navy. Even very recently we had contracted boats with RN personnel on them helping supervise and analyze the data from the multi beam sonar systems.

If you can answer the above satisfactorily we can move on to answering why the UK supplies charts to all over the world and why you think we should give away that data which currently raises revenue for the UKHO?

I too would love free charts - but I can't justify why they should be free...

We can discuss the veracity of the data and the way that UKHO treats data vs the others as well if you want...
 
john_morris_uk said:
This idea is trotted out time and again and is misinformed twaddle....
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You should check the facts before you claim twaddle. The UK waters are surveyed and resurveyed using tax payers money by the MCA. They do not do the surveying themselves but contract the work to private companies. The obligation on the UK to perform this work is apparently due to SOLAS Convention. I can think of a few reasons why any users of our waters should be able to obtain charts for free.
 
sailorman said:
the point is
the American charts are free for citizens of the USA as they paid for the surveys , printing ect out of tax`s.
we pay twice
Click to expand...

john_morris_uk said:
This idea is trotted out time and again and is misinformed twaddle.

Let's put it the other way round and ask why the tax payer should pay for surveys for charts for a minority of people to use?

Besides which, many of the surveys done round the UK are done by contract and not by the Royal Navy. Even very recently we had contracted boats with RN personnel on them helping supervise and analyze the data from the multi beam sonar systems.

If you can answer the above satisfactorily we can move on to answering why the UK supplies charts to all over the world and why you think we should give away that data which currently raises revenue for the UKHO?

I too would love free charts - but I can't justify why they should be free...

We can discuss the veracity of the data and the way that UKHO treats data vs the others as well if you want...
Click to expand...

And on top of that, the American model leads to products of lower overall quality and poorer coverage. This may not be true of marine charts, which have to be produced to an internationally agreed standard, but it is certainly true of land maps and so on. To get improved quality, you have to pay for a product by a private company, which has taken the free data and "improved" it. An awful lot of time and effort in the USA is wasted trying to make road networks from a product called TIGER. Of course, this is free - but it was created by the Bureau of Census for its own purposes, and is not meant as a road map, so it is difficult to use and error-prone. In the UK, there is an excellent product from the OS that does exactly what people using TIGER are trying to do, and although you have to pay, it's not THAT expensive.
 
BlowingOldBoots said:
You should check the facts before you claim twaddle. The UK waters are surveyed and resurveyed using tax payers money by the MCA. They do not do the surveying themselves but contract the work to private companies. The obligation on the UK to perform this work is apparently due to SOLAS Convention. I can think of a few reasons why any users of our waters should be able to obtain charts for free.
Click to expand...
Except that isn't quite true either. I used to look after the Hydrographic Squadron and I well remember the complete despairing disbelief at some of the ideas about who paid for what in surveying were trotted out.

Even if the MCA did task the survey work, it doesn't justify them giving the data away....
 
AntarcticPilot said:
And on top of that, the American model leads to products of lower overall quality and poorer coverage. This may not be true of marine charts, which have to be produced to an internationally agreed standard, but it is certainly true of land maps and so on. To get improved quality, you have to pay for a product by a private company, which has taken the free data and "improved" it. An awful lot of time and effort in the USA is wasted trying to make road networks from a product called TIGER. Of course, this is free - but it was created by the Bureau of Census for its own purposes, and is not meant as a road map, so it is difficult to use and error-prone. In the UK, there is an excellent product from the OS that does exactly what people using TIGER are trying to do, and although you have to pay, it's not THAT expensive.
Click to expand...

I agree. The standards of data accepted by the American are appalling. The way it was explained to me is that just like the UK - anyone can send in reports - but the difference is that they tend to just accept them and include them in the data without any checks and balances.
 
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