Why Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016 is a disaster.
In what seems like a Deja vu of regressive policy making, the Ministry of Home Affairs has come up with a ‘Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016’. The good news is that bill is still in the draft stage, and the government has asked for the comments from the stakeholders; the bad news — is the bill itself.
The Intent
When I first heard about such a govt. regulation coming up, I thought the intent of this law would be to ensure that all maps, and aerial imagery circulated about India is accurate and updated. That kinda makes sense. However, as I started reading the actual draft, I was almost shocked. This not only seemed a very poorly written draft, with glaring loopholes but also, almost too draconian.
The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill
Let me break down the bill, and the outline the disastrous consequences it might have. Here’s what the bill states:
no person shall acquire geospatial imagery or data including value addition of any part of India either through any space or aerial platforms such as satellite, aircrafts, airships, balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles or terrestrial vehicles, or any other means whatsoever
Further, the govt. has defined geospatial imagery as:
geospatial imagery or data acquired through space or aerial platforms such as satellite, aircrafts, airships, balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles including value addition; or graphical or digital data depicting natural or man-made physical features, phenomenon or boundaries of the earth or any information related thereto including surveys, charts, maps, terrestrial photos referenced to a co-ordinate system and having attributes
I’m not sure from where to start, but let me list down the main concerns that I have:
Unrestricted scope of the bill:
My first concern is related to the scope of the bill itself. There are no bounds (probably, pertaining to the area or resolution), which is something unheard of. I can still understand if the bill would have been restricted to the military establishments or other such sensitive areas; but no — all of India is now restricted zone.
Not only this, this regulation doesn’t only make capture of spatial imagery illegal, but its reach also extends to dissemination, distribution and visualisation. Considering this, here’s what all could become illegal:
- Saving an aerial shot captured by NASA
- (Re)Tweeting a beautiful aerial shot of earth
- Geotagging yourself on Twitter or Facebook
- Creating a visualization of your evening run
License for everything:
So, the bill states that anyone engaged in capturing, sharing, or publishing the geospatial data needs a licence to do so. Aren’t we seem to be moving backwards, to the Licence Raj.
Any person who wants to acquire, disseminate, publish or distribute any geospatial information of India, may make an application alongwith requisite fees to the Security Vetting Authority for security vetting of such geospatial information and licence thereof to acquire, disseminate, publish or distribute such Geospatial Information in any electronic or physical form.
Killing the real-time maps:
Most of the maps companies (Google etc.) rely on crowdsourced data to keep their maps updated. This not only ensures that the maps are always updated but also helps millions of businesses and users that use that data everyday. Having such a regressive law would curtail the ability of companies to create real time data maps, and thus, hurt everyone. Not really sure what the people behind this were smoking while drafting this regulation. MediaNama in their coverage about this bill concludes, I could have said no better:
The people involved in drafting this have absolutely no clue about how users and businesses use geospatial data to make users lives easier, and how integral it is to every day life. Data is changing and increasing every single minute, and it is impossible to police it. — MediaNama
What you can do:
Read more about the issue, here are some of the brilliant links:
Geospatial Information Regulation Bill 2016 - Draft
MediaNama’s Article
Join the movement: Some folks are already on it to launch an initiative, join them on: www.savethemap.in
