Google: Finally, A Human Face Behind The C&D, Instead of Nastygram Lawyerbots

Google asks the creator of the Gaia project – “an attempt to reverse engineer famous Google Earth and implement its functionality in open, portable, customizable and extendable way” – to stop his attempts. But they’re actually asking nicely. Or, as Andy Baio puts it, “finally, a human face behind the C&D, instead of nastygram lawyerbots.” (via Google Blogoscoped)

Original letter from Michael Jones:

From: “Michael Jones”
Subject: Writing from Google about Gaia and Google Earth

Hello,

I am Michael Jones, the Chief Technologist of Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local search writing to the author(s) of the Gaia project (http://gaia.serezhkin.com/) with an urgent concern. We have now become aware of your efforts and are concerned that you may not understand the developing global social impact of your engineering creativity.

The data that we license for Google Earth and Google Maps is made available for use under the restriction that it not be accessed or used outside of Google’s client software. These products — Earth, Maps, and Mobile Maps –each have a data protection mechanism tailored to their environment. They
also all come with a clearly indicated end user license agreement, known as the Terms of Service, which means “these are the conditions under which we are providing access to valuable data through our client software for your use.” In all three cases, the ToS are very clear that the data services used by the client software must never be accessed directly and that the encryption, passkey, and other data protection mechanisms must not be circumvented.

We appreciate that you like our software and enjoy the many millions of dollars and years of labor that the licensed data represents. Unfortunately, your curiosity about the protected server mechanisms ignores the Google Earth Terms of Service, the software license agreement that you accepted when installing Google Earth, the built-in encryption mechanisms within the client/server protocol, the economic rights of a worldwide network of providers who license this data to Google, and most of all, the sense of fair-play that is the basic relationship between Google and its users worldwide.

The kindness through which Google has made the wonder of our planet available to more than 100 million users around the world is now threatened — not by a menacing and fierce business competitor — but by you. Please hear the seriousness in this statement. I am not an attorney. I am not posturing. Just the opposite. We on the engineering team are hopeful that despite the risk your actions (break the ToS, reverse engineer parts of the data protection mechanisms, publish the fact and code, encourage others)
pose to our product, team, company, and users, we remain hopeful that this was an unintended result of what started as intellectual curiosity by a smart engineer like ourselves who has a passion to learn how things work.

Are we right?

If so, we really need to have you take down that code and refocus your work toward building an open earth viewer that uses open earth images (such as from NASA) or licensed earth images from willing providers rather than having the basis of your project being the improper use of our images. If you understand the gravity of the situation and agree to respect or position in this, please let me know quickly (hours rather than days) and on an equally responsive time scale please modify your project pages to remove anything suggesting or teaching the improper access to our data servers.

Anxious to hear from you,
Michael

–
Michael T. Jones, Chief Technologist, Google Earth, Maps, Local

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