Mapping accurately is an incredibly time-intensive process.
A person or company that puts in the time and effort to accurately map an area and sell the resulting product deserves to get compensated for that time spent, in my opinion. And if someone comes in to take their work, copy it and sell it as their own, then that could justifiably be called copyright infringement or theft.
Just like how a painting of a church can be copyrighted (while the building is not), or how a dictionary can be copyrighted (while the words are not), a map can be copyrighted while the features that it depicts are not.
like wtf is a copyright for?!?
The copyright is for the time and effort spent to accurately map a region.
Mapping accurately is an incredibly time-intensive process.
A person or company that puts in the time and effort to accurately map an area and sell the resulting product deserves to get compensated for that time spent, in my opinion. And if someone comes in to take their work, copy it and sell it as their own, then that could justifiably be called copyright infringement or theft.
Just like how a painting of a church can be copyrighted (while the building is not), or how a dictionary can be copyrighted (while the words are not), a map can be copyrighted while the features that it depicts are not.
The copyright is for the time and effort spent to accurately map a region.
Copying maps costs AA £20m. ‘Fingerprints’ in Ordnance Survey sources used as proof