GADM license violation

[bryce-carson]

Problem

@ashokkrish, according to the license of GADM data, we aren't allowed to redistribute the shape files (*sp_1.rda) without receiving prior permission to do so. I imagine this is frequently violated by users of GADM because they haven't read the license terms for the data. Have you received prior permission to do so, or should I modify spatialEpisim to download the data on demand on the user's machine, rather than these files being redistributed with spatialEpisim and increasing its download requirements (currently downloading spatialEpisim will require you to download the shapefiles for all countries, even if you're only interested in one).

Quoted from a License file included in a ZIP of a shapefile downloaded from https://www/gadm.org/

These data were extracted from the GADM database (www.gadm.org), version 3.4, April 2018. They can be used for non-commercial purposes only. It is not allowed to redistribute these data, or use them for commercial purposes, without prior consent. See the website (www.gadm.org) for more information.

See https://www.gadm.org/license.html for the license that applies to all formats, which imposes the same restrictions.

Alternative solutions to the problem

One

Either you've already contacted the GADM copyright holders and received prior permission to redistribute the files to suit our purposes, or you should do so that we may continue to redistribute them without continuing to violate their license.

Two

library(geodata)

##' Returns a SpatVector for the requested country on demand, either retrieving
##' the data from disk if it has been downloaded before, or downloading it for
##' the first time.
##'
##' The level one boundaries are the least granular administrative boundaries
##' that countries create to subdivide themselves.
##' @title Retrieve a SpatRaster of level 1 boundaries from local or remote disk
##' @param countryISO3C The uppercase ISO three character code a recognized
##'   country.
##' @return SpatVector
##' @author Bryce
lvl1AdminBorders <- function(ISO3C) {
  geodata::gadm(country = ISO3C,
                level = 1,
                path = here("gadm",
                            sprintf("gadm36_%s_1_sp.rds", tolower(ISO3C))),
                version = "3.6",
                resolution = 1)
}

[ashokkrish]

Thanks, I will fill out this form (https://rasterra.com/contact/gadm_contact_form) and seek permission.

[bryce-carson]

Thanks, I will fill out this form (https://rasterra.com/contact/gadm_contact_form) and seek permission.

Okay. For the future, you prefer that we distribute the files (if we are given permission) rather than download them on demand? The difference between the two is that:

1. There is a remote possibilty that the GADM servers will be offline/unavailable at some point when a user wants to use spatialEpisim, and R won't be able to download the data; or they are trying to use spatialEpisim without being connected to the web and will likewise be unable to download the data when needed by the application.
2. The user will be forced to download a lot of data before they can use spatialEpisim, but with the on-demand solution in TWO this won't occur. It would also immediately resolve the issue.

If we aren't given permission, then we must use solution two regardless.

[ashokkrish]

GADM servers are unreliable. I have experienced it during holidays and late late nights. I prefer we give this along with the code.

[bryce-carson]

GADM servers are unreliable.

That's unfortunate. Alright; we'll hope we are given permission.

[bryce-carson]

@Toby-exe, while this ticket is unresolved, I think it's alright if we validate the uploaded coordinate data using the rnaturalearth package; that package is fully open-source, so there's no licensing issue. Conveniently, you've already completed the work for #5 & #25 when the vector/polygon data is taken from the rnaturalearth package.

Can you push those changes (before you began hacking on them further to enable use of GADM data) to the unstable branch on the GitHub remote?

[bryce-carson]

@ashokkrish, while we wait for a reply from the people who administrate and contribute to GADM, we should consider switching all of our vector data to use the rnaturalearth package. I read a small, limited blog post about various terrestrial vector data packages, and it looks like rnaturalearth has the benefit of being fully open source so we don't need to worry about a licensing issue.

Although, we are Canadian, so we're afforded some extra protections by our copyright laws; however, using GitHub, a U.S.-based company, to redistrubute the GADM files may pose some issues. Can you speak with the copyright office at Mount Royal to get some advice?

The simplest solution is hope we're given license by the GADM people, and have @Toby-exe resolve #5 and #25 with rnaturalearth only. The next simplest solution is to let @Toby-exe continue to hack on his solution to those issues and present one that will work without the rnaturalearth package. The most complex solution is to change all of our spatial vector data sources to rnaturalearth.

[bryce-carson]

@ashokkrish Any response from the GADM folks yet?

[bryce-carson]

I took a look at OpenStreetMap, and it has rather details administrative boundary data for the DRC, at least. It's license is compatible. We could use their database, which has an open license. It's a huge file, however. We could filter the database down to only what we need and redistribute that, perhaps.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

[bryce-carson]

https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository