Climbing and the ethics of posting ride routes
I entered the route for Tour de Menlo 2008 into my Bikely routes, but I haven’t published it as public because I’m not sure whether that’s polite. The route creators presumably put some work into creating the route (and they did a good job), and maybe don’t want other rides to borrow it wholesale.
Update: A few days later, it occurs to me that the ride route is given as a PDF on their site. That being the case, I think publishing it really can’t do any harm. It’s now linked above.
On the other hand, I would like to be able to show it, because it’s an interesting route to look at and for other people to use individually, and I did a good amount of hard work just now creating the cue sheet correctly (which in Bikely means notating all the turns with the direction and street name) — which the Tour did not do.
The total climb for that ride is about 3600 ft, so it’s roughly analogous to W2W Day 2, being only 7 miles shorter and having the same listed amount of climbing. That’s actually about the amount of climbing I estimated it had, because it felt like doing my hard 34-mile ride (1800 ft climbing) and then doing it again, which it pretty much is. I may do this route again (with a couple of modifications because I think some of their decisions were weird, and also I might rather reverse it and try to climb Montebello first, and then the rest of it — though I don’t know how that might work with the rest of the route) as a training ride, maybe on the last Saturday before W2W.
Only three weeks til the ride! My goodness. I’m glad though, since I’m getting close to being ready to take a break from having cycling be the #3 thing in my life after work and functioning.
I thought about this for the day and I think I may be missing important information. Map data is factual, which means that it is not copyrightable. Of course you use the word polite, so that puts a certain spin on things. I think it comes down to the idea of a route creator. Not sure I agree with the existence of such. ^_^
Also, yay for you to getting to this point! And yay for functioning (eventually)!
Comment by maiki — 24 August 2008 @ 8:51 pm
So maiki, if I understand your comment (not sure I do), then you’re saying that there isn’t such a person as a route creator? Which amounts to saying that routes can’t be created, in some sense, right?
I see that as a legitimate argument — this route already exists, a person who writes it down is only codifying it — but codification is still effort, and is even somewhat creative, in my view.
Comment by Alexis — 27 August 2008 @ 1:42 pm
If the data is presented in a way that has creative flourishes, then the effort may warrant from kind of protection. However, coordinates are factual information, and in themselves non-copyrightable (which I agree with, personally).
I agree that a route creator is as you have said, one who codifies the factual information. They are like a compiler for a dictionary. The definitions in the dictionary can not be protected, but the typography can be, and is protected by copyright.
All that said, I thought it came down to your use of the word polite. It gets fuzzy, and I think that there isn’t any common sense attached to this instance. Is there a polite way to present map data someone else compiled? Perhaps by attribution?
I feel I am covered because I license everything under a license that explicitly permits usage of non-factual works. A CC license would be useful here, ne? ^_^
Comment by maiki — 28 August 2008 @ 4:29 pm
Yes, it would! My website is CC-licensed — sharing allowed, but ND, which I may change eventually.
As I realized, they are advertising the route PDF on their website, so my concern was really null and void. The Bikely route I created is clearly marked as “Tour de Menlo 2008″, so I think that’s ok for attribution.
Comment by Alexis — 29 August 2008 @ 3:12 pm