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Maps aren't difficult to find these days. Unfortunately, most of the good ones (including Google Maps) are copyrighted and you can't republish them without worrying about said copyright. In looking for some maps for my new Spectrum Shock campaign setting, I stumbled across this collection of sites that feature public domain maps. From there, I found www.nationalatlas.gov , which is a perfect resource for a D20 Modern game set in the United States. From this site, you can customize maps (zoom, layers, labels, etc) and then either save or print them.
They still aren't quite as good as Google Maps, but they're free to reuse however you see fit.
EDIT: Clarified second sentence to avoid further confusion. See comments.
Read the fine print!!!
ReplyDeleteYou can republish Google maps. Just have to provide credit under their terms of service, and be sure to include the Google Earth Logo for Google Earth Maps, and keep to the terms for their other services if you are using a mosh mix of services to render your maps.
More on this here:
http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html
It's easier to make your own anyway. Then you can license it the way you want.
Unfortunately, I believe my post would have been better understood if I had made the second sentence a little clearer. Although I thought my intent was clear based on the last line of the post, the second sentence was (admittedly) poorly worded. I have added to the line to make it clearer (edit in italics).
ReplyDelete@Anonymous:
I have read all of the fine print. Because the majority of the maps that can be found by clicking the link I provided are in the public domain, there is no need to worry about reading any fine print or following any terms of service. Do with these maps whatever you want without the bother of wondering whether or not you are following the TOS, whether or not the TOS have changed since you last read them (which, if I remember correctly, the one to which anonymous refers and every other TOS I've ever read plainly state that they can change without notice), whether or not your usage qualifies as "fair use," or any other legal mumbo jumbo that I would personally rather just avoid altogether. And honestly, not only do I try to avoid legal junk, I'm also no cartographer. It is much easier to copy and paste a map than to make my own. My intent was to provide a link to a list of map resources that my readers can use however they want without worry. Republish Google materials if you want and have fun jumping through hoops for the terms of service agreement. I'll stick to my public domain maps.
I almost feel like a jerk for responding this way, but that comment seemed a little on the rude side to me. Much is lost in written communication. Perhaps I interpreted those exclamation points a little too harshly. If so, I apologize.
Hi Josh,
ReplyDeleteI use these ones for my Rifts Atlas project (http://equip-r.blogspot.com/search/label/Atles%20de%20Rifts):
http://www.shadedrelief.com/physical/pages/download.html
They are free domain.
Hope this helps.