Navionics Charts Self Destruct?

Well it does at least get round the issue of having to buy duplicate plotter charts and real ones, but crown copyright is better protected legally than Joe Public's copyright and the lawyers at UKHO do follow up cases where they know something has been copied. Might noty matter in Paddyland I suppose but it does here.

All this chat has made me curious. My Navionics chart for the plotter is on a Scandisk CF card with no mention of Navionics on it - so making me wonder if it's official. Worryingly, in view of a comment above, I have just done a dump of the waypoints to the card whilst I updated the op system on the C80. Will I now have problems?

Somewhere out in the www, someone will have cracked the encryption of the Navionics charts just for the sake of doing so. And as they did for the CMap that every long distance sailor seems to have.
 
I can't see why scanning a chart that I have on the chart table and putting it on a PC where I can plot my position is a problem. I have a reciept for the chart and I'm not trying to sell it on.

For the record I'm not trying to knock Navionics. They have an unenviable task. Take this as an example. I have bought Belfield which contains charts from the UK Hydrographic Office as at July 2009. I'm interested in Scottish waters so I've downloaded the NMs for Scotland since then. From Week 28 to Week 48 it amounts to 52 NMs plus there are 8 new chart editions. In fact since July the UKHO have issued close on 3000 NMs. Add to those the NMs issued by other Hydrographic Offices round the world and you see the task that Navionics have to keep charts up-to-date.

I started looking at Navionics because there is an old Furuno plotter on board. It uses the PCMCIA style cards with the older Classic format charts. Since this format is no longer supported by Navionics I wanted to see if I could update the charts myself. I can... From there it was only a short step to look at Gold format for my own amusement (and the fact there is so much cr*p on TV these days). In fact if you turn off most of the vector layers you can end up close to the Classic look.
 
Technically copying ( scanning ) any published item subject to Copyright is illegal. But it is generally accepted that copying to create a 'working' copy for personal use of owner of original item is ignored.

I've been stopped for having own copies of DVD's, CD's and I've replied to C&E that originals are at home ... what they see are 'working copies' that I use to save the originals ... reply is that they have option to ask me to prove ownership of originals.

Problem comes when copies are passed on to a 'friend' ... and that when found can lead to authors getting a bit pee'd off !!

Back to navionics ..... I do know people that can create 'working copies' but based on their comments - Navionics encryption is not broken ... they have to work with it and around it ....
Interesting that someone says they have a Scandisk CF with navionics on ... appears that someone has pasted onto a non-navionics card ... Maybe the old CF card type was easier to do this ?

When you look on-line - you find many sites that have navionics charts and viewers ... but out of interest I've tried some and haven't got any to work ...
 
To make matters worse there seems to be a technical issue with the latest Cardreader and Navionics has suspended production temporarily I was told.
 
NaviagtionPLANNER allows the chart to be copied to the hard disk

You can use the Navionics charts on a PC.
I use NavigationPLANNER and that allows you to even copy the charts to the hard drive so you do not need the chart card out of the plotter.
Can also plan routes at home and put in my Lowrance plotter format.
 
P4Paul said:
After reading the warnings and thinking that it was just a scare tactic, I put my chart in my PC card reader. The PC couldn't read the card and the card wouldn't work in our c120 plotter afterwards. Complete balls up.
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So what did you do to fix the situation, can I ask ?

Boo2
 
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I have the platinum sd card and this requires periodically removing from the plotter and plugging into a pc to get the chart updates with no special reader required but the card does still carry the warnings about potentially damaging the data if abused. I was concerned about corruption by the plotter or pc accidentally wiping out my data so did some research, its not possible to make a working copy as the data is encrypted with a software key which is linked to the hardwired serial number of the sd card , sd stands for secure digital for precisely these type of applications. However I was able to put the write protect switch on and make an image backup to the pc without damaging the sd card. Restoring the image to a fresh sd card does not make a fully working card and as far as I can tell theres no way of spoofing an sd card serial number to get round this so at best the image might be useful to restore the card back to an earlier version should an online update ever corrupt or disable the data.
 
On the version of CPN that I use, there is an option in the on-screen toolbar to hide/display text. The toolbar box has an "A+" in it and the mouseover "shown ENC text".

V1701 said:
I'd like to load mine on my laptop to see what, if anything, I can do with them with Open CPN & Sea Clear2 (both free), which I have loaded on the laptop. Open CPN I have working with CM93 chart data but I can't "see" any land data on them (names of countries, towns, etc.). I have no idea if this is normal or if I have corrupt CM93 data or what...

David
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