Licensing map data must be really hard
I've been to the Dominican Republic; I've travelled down its roads, looked at its maps and been aware that there was stuff there. You know, the roads and stuff that get you places.
A while back I mentioned a post by Bret Taylor in which he speaks about how much effort Google puts into licensing content and how hard it would be for anyone else to code up a cool application that required such data. A little later I noticed that there was some massive gaps in Google Maps coverage.
Now I'm no map person, and I wasn't the first person to notice such things, but it struck me as a little odd. Andrew Larcome, a man of great mapping knowledge, suggested licensing issues as the cause of Google's missing data. This was something I'd been thinking from the start, but the point is reinforced by Taylor's post linked to above: Google has teams of legal people workign on getting this data and they still have issues, what happens to archaeologists in the same places? There's likely to be some differences, but if Google has trouble, you can't imagine it'd be easy for the little guys.
Anybody know?
A few years back someone suggested to me that I read up on Archaeological Theory from South America; I think I'll go back to my original thinkings about Peru, Bolivia et al and see what I can find in the literature.