Gaia Project Agrees To Google Cease and Desist

Dreben writes "Gaia, an opensource project to develop a 3D API to Google Earth, has decided to comply with a request from Google. The search giant's Chief Technologist, Michael Jones, contacted the project with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project. Amongst other things, they cited 'improper usage of licensed data,' which Google licenses from assorted third party vendors. They are going so far as to request anyone who has ever downloaded any aspect of Gaia to purge all related files. From the post to the freegis-l mail list: 'We understand and respect Google's position on the case, so we've removed all downloads from this page and we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia).' How does such a request, likely to have turned into a demand, affect fair usage? While the API is intended to interface with the the Google Earth service, Google Earth is nothing without the data. Yet at the same time, Google openly publishes their own API which uses the same data in the same manner."

wow, tough request

[bunions]

> request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development

Hopefully google will let the developers use the google time machine to go back and not work on it.

Re:I don't get it either

[Kagura]

... with a request to cease and desist from all past, present and future development of the Gaia project.

Sure, so long as you let us keep the time machine after we've complied!

Re:I immediately deleted my Google Earth

[Kagura]

Why stop there? I think this pushed me over the edge. I'm not using any Google products any longer. And I haven't just stopped there, I'm boycotting any platform that runs Google products or their searches. I'm not even using my computer right now to write this. To show my indignation, I've decided to cancel my power bill. Hell, since we're already having fun overreacting, I'm just going to run naked through the streets proclaiming the end of the world, all brought to you by Google(tm).

Re:Do very little evil?

[Perseid]

Really? Let's try.

companyCanDoNoEvil("Sony");

COMPILER ERROR

Hmm. Ok. How about this?

companyCanDoNoEvil("SCO");

MASSIVE ERROR. MELTED PROCESSOR DETECTED.

I feel so dirty now...

[way2trivial]

You are wrong

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=cute+kittens &mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP [live.com]

cute kittensPage 1 of 1,631,025 results

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-09,GGLD:en&q=cute+kitten s [google.com]
    Results 1 - 10 of about 2,120,000 for cute kittens

that means google is about 25% more cute kittens.

Re:google should have turned a blind eye.

[unitron]

"...satellites don't launch themselves."

Which is probably just as well in the long run. :-)

Re:Google apologists? WTF

[TheNetAvenger]

You might as well act surprised that people vote for the guy running for office instead of the cranky guy who shoots at neighborhood cats...

But isn't the cranky cat shooter now vice president?