UKHO

[webcraft]

I just got harassed (e-mail) by the UKHO for using an image derived from an Admiralty chart as the background of a table displaying a text message on a website. The physical size of the image was maybe 5" across at a display resolution of 800x600, and the image was faded to give it a 'watermark' effect. The whole thing was then overlaid with black text. As a navigational tool it was slightly less useful than a torn index page from an out of date AA book, and was only there as decoration.

Apparently I might get permission to use it if I pay a license fee, a digitising fee and an internet fee - probably something like £100 in all - and I think they thought the image was too 'hi-res' to be allowed anyway. (I own the original chart).

Needless to say I have removed the offending graphic, and replaced it with something similar but not derived from a UKHO chart.

I know copyright protection is a GOOD THING, but isn't this a little over the top? It's not the only example of the UKHO being extra-possesive. No UK server running the excellent X-Tide tidal prediction programme can show UK predictions now because apparently UKHO claim copyright on the harmonic constants used to make the predictions.

I wil be looking at other chart publishers next time I need to add to my folio.

Nick

BlueMoment.Com
http://www.bluemoment.com

 

[rogerroger]

does UKHO come under Crown Copyright ? if so you're free to use it if you quote the source...

does sound very petty. I have heard that if you change more than 50% of the image you can use it but I have no idea if this is actually true or a designer's rule of thumb for what they can get away with.

Roger Holden
www.first-magnitude.co.uk

 

[webcraft]

Re: 50% rule

It's a myth

It is an offence to perform any of the following acts without the consent of the copyright owner:
- copy the work,
- rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public,
- perform, broadcast or show the work in public,
- adapt the work.

So - they've got me bang to rights legally, as I adapted it. The fact that it was not useable for the purpose for which it was created and therefore could not possibly cause any financial loss is not legally relevant. It's just the unbelievable pettyness of it I can't believe. The offending graphic has been relaced with a (free) US chart, and the overall effect is the same.

Nick

BlueMoment.Com
http://www.bluemoment.com

 

[Guest]

Re: 50% rule

I was, in my youth, a hydrographic surveyor in the hydrographic dept of the Admy.

You are right up my street and I could write a book about my former department which would have the legal eagles on my neck. Not because I was badly treated nor because I did not enjoy my work, but because of what is called CROWN COPYRIGHT.

The UK laws governing this are a major disgrace. Worse than that. They are a scandal.

I write books and know about copyroght in the private sphere. Forget that, it is not unreasonable in my opinion. But CROWN COPYRIGHT which goes on for ever is totally unreasonable.

Much of the contents of an Admiralty chart do not come from Admiralty sources. I retired in 1959. Since then I have cruised in yachts. During this time I have sent in countless "H notes" (info about changes in charts). many of these have led to a Notice to Mariners and have presumably been incorporated into new editions of charts. We are all urged to do this 'to make navigation safer for all'.

Now I find my observations are issued by the H depratment (that is a wonderful typing error, isn't it?) under their copyright. I moved the Comoro islands over a mile to the east. This is now their copyright. I am very angry about this, but under our so-called democracy there is nothiong I can do about it. If I am fool enough to use my expertise to help my fellow mariners, then I must allow 'H' to prosper by my personal efforts. IT IS TOTALLY UNREASONABLE.

The Hydrographic department was set up with public funds and for years isseued subsidised charts to everyone and in doing so put out of business all the independent chartmakers. They then turned the heavies on and put up their prices to an unreasonable level. In civilian life, this would have the Monopolies Comm down like a ton of bricks. It is illegal to cut prices with the intention of driving smaller competitors out of business so that one can increase prices as a monopoly. But 'H' gets away with it.

I have been fighting this fior years and have got nowhere. La Thatcher screwed it further by making 'H' an agency which had to be financially independent. No other country does this. It is lunacy. She took control of it away from the Navy who had always behaved honourably and gave it to the civil service who do not know the meaning of the word honour (vide the fact that Merchant seamen on Russian convoys did not get a medal and whose pay was stopped the day that theeir ship was torpedoed).

Sorry. I am getting carried away and several on this forum have indicated that they do not appreciate the views of the elder generation. I'll shut up.

William Cooper

 

[Guest]

Re: 50% rule

There are certainly few things in life worse than the army of petty British Civil Servants who have almost all forgotten who pays their wages and for whom they work.

What Thatcher started, John Major continued - he priviatised HMSO by selling it a an absurdley low rate to his cronies.

One day, some day, the situation will change. Until then there are too many people in power (on BOTH sides of the Commons) queing up to put their snouts in the trough.

I also fear there is nothing the small boat community could do to alter the situation ... although the RYA could try (sounds of laughter echo through the hallways of their new HQ)

I haven't found the offending post, Bill, but don't give up - maybe it was written by a civil servant?

 

[rogerroger]

Crown Copyright...

Hmm, having now visited the site I see that the information is indeed "Crown Copyright".

I suspect, therefore is the the fact that you HAVE changed the image that's the issue. I think had you used it in an unchanged state and quoted the source it would have been fine.

I consult to the DfES on the production of educational web sites and the DfES (sorry, Dept. for Education and Skills) are happy for any other institution to reproduce any information as long as the source is quoted as it is Crown Copyright. (They prefer this not to happen as any changes to the original content won't be reflected in the copy).



Roger Holden
www.first-magnitude.co.uk

 

[webcraft]

Re: Crown Copyright...

They don't care how the information is presented. They just want to annoy potential chart buyers and charge them as much as possible.

I quote from the e-mail:

'The conditions under which we permit the display of our copyright material or any product that is derived form it, are:

A maximum extract of image of 100mm by 100mm based on the original material. This may be scaled. Or
Display of the material, at any size, at a resolution of 21 dpi or less.

The following approximate charges apply for display of UKHO Admiralty Charts on the web.

Usage Fee £13.00 per chart.
Digitising Fee £40.00 per chart.
Internet Fee £50.00 per edition of Admiralty product per A4 Internet Page equivalent.'

Note the use of the word 'approximate'. and the insane use of A4 equivalent as a measurement in web terms. An A4 page at 640x480 is a quarter page at 1280x960.

(Note also use of dpi in a confusing manner)

They want a licence to print money, with terms of reference so obscure that there is no appeal. Bear in mind that this was purely a decorative background. It looks just as good now I am using a non-Admiralty chart, and has only succeeded in promoting the sale of Imray or other charts, IMHO.

(The URL, if anyone is interested, is http://www.bluemoment.com/tides.html - perhaps it is the content that the background was being used for that annoyed them?)

Nick




BlueMoment.Com
http://www.bluemoment.com

 

[dk]

Re: Crown Copyright...

You want to watch out that the US chart wasn't produced using UKHO data (which it probably was) as reproducing it will still cost you. You do not automatically have an extension to a US license just because they say you can use it! C-Map and Navionics have been fighting this battle for years - while the UKHO were struggling to catch up with modern technology they have done their level best to hold back everyone else from doing so!

This business is one of my pet grouses. Being in the media business, any company would kill to have its product spread over the pages of an international magazine for free - but not the UKHO. No, they want to charge you an extortionate fee just to reproduce a graphic portrayal of something the UK public has been paying for out of the public purse for centuries.

How do they get away with it - because we put up with it. If they can't close down child porn sites on the internet I suggest someone starts a free chart site from scanned Admiralty charts, run from some eastern European contry that couldn't give a toss about Crown Copyright.

DK (another grumpy old bu**er)

 

[rogerroger]

Re: Crown Copyright...

Interesting - I didn't realise you could charge for Crown Copyright material - by definition it's stuff that belongs in the public domain.

Personally I don't think they have the right to charge - but hey, a copyright lawyer is certainly something I'm not!!

Roger Holden
www.first-magnitude.co.uk

 

[pugwash]

Moving the islands

Bill, surely there's no copyright on facts, only on the way they are presented. So if you issue a warning that the Cormoran Islands are out of position and do so in the form of a notice to mariners then you are trespassing on the Admiralty's patch, but if you do it in another form, for instance by writing a letter to YM or posting the info on your website, you are safe.

I also write books and always remember the golden rule -- if you steal stuff from one book it's plagiarism but if you steal from two books it's "research."

 

[webcraft]

Re: UKHO data

It's this ownership of data that stopped UK servers running the excellent X-Tides programme for British ports. (You can still download it and run it on your own PC - so long as the UKHO don't catch you using it to check UK tide times, I suppose). They have no clain on the software, but the UKHO apparently own the movements of the heavenly bodies - or at least the algorithms governing them that are used for tidal predictions.

If the UKHO wanted to pursue me over this small and insignificant piece of web decoration they would have to find out who published the chart. As it is free anyway I personally doubt if it used UKHO data. If it did, then they have to prove that that is where the image came from. The small-scale, much altered graphic in question is no more than a piece of background design, utterly unuseable and unreadable for navigation, and is up a river somewhere in the US - if the UKHO provided the data does it come from before the War of Independence?

If they DID pursue me and proved that it was UKHO data behind the chart, I would merely create another graphic - if necessary from scratch. But that would not be reasonable pursuance of copyright, would it, that would be some sort of bizarre vendetta - they can't be that bad, can they?

Are they watching this forum, I wonder?

(Beginning to get paranoid now . . .)


Nick

BlueMoment.Com
http://www.bluemoment.com

 

[Guest]

Re:Ns to Ms

No, I did not issue a notice to mariners. The form is to send an H Note to H, and he then uses your information to issue a N to M., and then claims crown copyright on it. As the H note contained a drawn chart (by me), which was reproduced in a more formal form and on a different scale, I could feel miffed.

Of course it is irrelevant now that satellite charting is so accurate.

Incidentally, the islands were French at that time, and though our H issued the amendment, the French would not acknowledge or admit that their survey was flawed.

Would anyone like to know how I made the estimation? Well I'm going to tell you anyway.

I got the sun, the moon and Venus at about 1500 local time and with a minimum of 50 degress as a cut. I shot nine of each, discarded the three out of line and averaged the six and plotted them on a twelve inches= i mile scale. I also took horizontal sextant angles of left and right edges of the islands both before and after the sights, and ran them on for the ship's movement.

It keeps one busy.

William Cooper

 

[Guest]

Re: UKHO data

I think I can clear up some common misunderstandings. When Don Street first issued his yachtsman's charts of the Caribbean via Imray, he did not get H's permission. He took his data from A,erican (DMA) charts and relied on the fact that as an American citizen they were royalty free.

H s**t on Imray. The charts were withdrawn, and later re-issued at a big price increase. I was then helping Don by checking his material.

Hydrographers of different countries help each other and swap data. Much of the data for US charts comes from British sources. This means that a US chart can be subject to British Crown copyright!!!

It also enables the British H to get royalties on charts that originate in American, royalty free material

Talk about a foul-up.

A classic example is the nautical almanac. Ever since 1943, the data has been produced by Uncle Sam as part of an agreement, and the same data is published by UK and US authorities. In the UK the publication is crown copyright, and if you copy out the times of sunset you go off to the Tower.
In the US anyone can issue copies of the almanac royalty free, and many clubs and chandlers do just that, filtering out the complex and concentrating on the local.

How can this arise?

OK, we poke fun at the RYA, but really they ought to take this piece of what the French call tartufferie to the Monopolies Commission.

William Cooper

 

[webcraft]

More UKHO

UKHO have a free tidal prediction service - EASYTIDE - accessible at http://www.easytide.com/ - but you are not allowed to link to it from your own website unless you are an 'approved' inward linker.

(It's excellent, BTW - you can bookmark individual ports).

There have been various test cases on this, none of them successful for the claimants . . . apart from anything else, spider-driven search engines would be in a lot of trouble. However, I have complied on my website by showing the URL but not making it clickable, as I wouldn't want to be the subject of another pointless test case and couldn't afford legal representation.

Has anyone else linked to any part of the UKHO site without permission, and if so have they been hassled?

What is wrong with these people?

Nick

BlueMoment.Com
http://www.bluemoment.com

 

[peterb]

Re:Ns to Ms

Bill

Next time you send information to the hydrogapher, try marking it with the copyright symbol. Then, when they use it in a NtM, ask them for royalties. Sauce for the goose.....

 

[Guest]

Re:Ns to Ms

Yes, I should.

Trouble is I have three hats:-

1) Irascible old bastard

2) Writer

3) Terribly responsible and well-brought up navigator.

And I seem to get them confused all the time.

William Cooper

 

[Buck]

Re:Ns to Ms

Bill

I had'nt noticed anything that indicated points two and three, what date do you start displaying these attributes? Is it linked to the vernal equinox?

Buck

the past is past, only the future can change.