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by soult 5534 days ago
The problem with Crowdflow is the way they get the data. Instead of collecting their own data using GPS, WiFi SSIDs and Cell Tower IDs they ask users to submit their iPhone location data cache. This cache is filled from Apple's own location database and from the Skyhook database. So they are, in a way, scraping data from those two databases, which will probably lead to licensing issues.

Now, if there were an open database (open as in I can download it for my own use, not just query it via an API) for WiFi network <-> GPS coordinates and Cell Tower ID <-> GPS coordinates that would collect its data by letting contributors run a simple iPhone or Android app, that would be awesome.
2 comments
aditya42 5534 days ago
What licensing issues? It's your phone, your data. I don't think Apple gets to say what you get to do with your data on your phone. If it was on Apple's servers, maybe they would have a case.

Plus, it's data that Apple shouldn't have been storing (in its current state, anyway) in the first place.

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caf 5534 days ago
The data on the phone isn't observations made by the phone of the location of base stations and access points. It's just a cached subset of access point / location (and base station / location) pairs from an existing, online database.
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jaredsohn 5534 days ago
Then you could make a similar argument for Microsoft scraping Google search results via their browser toolbar.

Writing code that has users doing the scraping for you is still scraping.

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gojomo 5534 days ago
In the US, by the Feist precedent [1], strictly factual directory information isn't copyrightable. Now, Apple Legal could surely muster some case that Apple has creatively enhanced this data, but their strategic interests might be more helped by examples of legitimate user-embraced uses than a strong claim of proprietary ownership.

(To the extent that there is creative expression in the individual users' logs, it could be in their choice of travel routes, making the user the holder of some copyright interest in the time- and space-ordered paths.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

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