Discussion: Mapping - Copyright

I've been trying to figure out if a map made using LiDAR and aerial imagery constitutes a 100% original work is a derivative work for formal copyrighting purposes. Obviously, the mapper doesn't create the LiDAR or take the pictures (implying derivative work), but the result also doesn't contain any LiDAR or photographs (implying original work), so I'm finding this a little tougher question than I'd hoped. I'm not an atty, and I don't play one on TV.

I thought to go search the US copyright catalog to see how those (c) marked NRE maps in my collection were registered and guess what - I've not been able to find any of a small sample of them. The only maps I found were from decades ago, and was explicitly based off a topo map or some other preexisting map, and thus plainly a derivative work.

- Does anyone in the US O-mapping world actually formalize their their LiDAR + imagery + fieldwork map copyrights with the copyright office?
- Do they do so as original works or derivative works?

Thanks.

Hardly anybody formally registers the copyright of anything. I could be mistaken, but my understanding is that it's not necessary. Very, very different from the situation with patents.

Professional mappers usually work under contract to a club or state organisation, and it is the latter that would hold copyright if it were registered. Although one mapper tried (unsuccessfully) to convince my state association that the map we paid him to produce was his copyright and therefore we couldn't update it without his permission. Not a good deal since he was based 4000kms away!
I'm not aware that any club or association in Australia has registered copyright for an O map, however my association usually puts a copyright statement (eg 'This map may not be reproduced without permission.') on our maps.

I know of a similar story of a paid mapper who won't hand over the OCAD copies to the club and therefore is the only one who can update them. Makes it hard when he's a slow responder to requests to do so or he's not available.

What constitutes a "professional mapper" in Australia these days? I posit that a good proportion of paid mapping jobs have a significant component of voluntary contribution.

...and what is the point?
The comments above address the problematic revision issue, and there have been very few problems in the last 40+(?) years.
I''l suggest that even the most egregious violation of trust or ethics is still a net positive for promotion of the sport.

Beware of people asking for a single copy of the map with no course on it.
Our club had a map copied and distributed to a group that held an unauthorized event.
When things went wrong and emergency services were called, the park manager was not happy. He saw our club logo on the map and decided that orienteering was not the kind of event that would be welcome in this park.

I always put a copyright statement on every map I produce. Remember most of the lidar and aerial imagery used is in the public domain and not copyrighted. When you put it all together and add field work you have an original work of "art".

The only problem we have is when a third party wants to wants to update a map. As an example when the club makes a map of a private property (Scout Camp) usually the owner/copyright holder is the party paying the mapper. If they want to use the image they need to ask permission which we gladly give them for permission to hold events on the property.

If they go ahead and pay to update the map they would have to get permission to use our map as a base map for the new map and then it is usually considered joint copyright ownership.

Most of the time the third party does not have the capability (OCAD) to update the map so it is a mute point.

you don't say

No comment here.

I used to think OCAD18 and its subscription business model was the solution to map versioning issues. Then I started using OOM.

I find myself bouncing between OCAD and OOM depending on what I need at the time. The two programs are not mootually exclusive.

First off, I am a mapper not a lawyer. NOT a Lawyer, got that ?

Copyright law varies greatly around the world according to local legal jurisdictions but there are some constants; ask before incorporating somebody else's work.

dofishman is right to say that O maps are works of art. A mapper might choose to draw a map the 19th century way by banging a datum pole into the ground and hand measuring everything from that point; in that case the copyright work in the map would all be that of the mapper/artist. In order to vastly speed things up, modern mappers tend to use layers of digital information obtained as the result of somebody else's work. The sources of this information might be some local government LIDAR agency, Open Street Map, Google Earth Pro, and similar. Organisations such those I have listed tend to have clear copyright statements; Google Earth's can be found here https://about.google/brand-resource-center/product... and OSM here https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright . Most online LIDAR sources will have a copyright policy displayed on their website somewhere, or bundled in the zip file download, and if they don't it might be a good idea to email them and ask before publishing anything based on their stuff.

Before commissioning a new map from either an amateur or professional mapper make it really clear where you expect the final copyright to reside. The mapper can confer copyright on the club. An amateur might to do that happily, the professional will want a reasonable payment to give up copyright. Agree that before any work is done.

A club map with several sources of information on it might carry a statement like;
"This map is copyright property of CLUB NAME.
The map was surveyed and drawn by Mrs Madeupname.
The map contains data derived from;
Fictional County LIDAR,
© OpenStreetMap contributors,
Google Earth Pro.
This map is for non-profit sporting and educational use only.
This map is not for resale.
Possession of this map does not confer any access rights
to the area described.
First surveyed in 1846, latest update Spring 2350".

It might be increasingly worth while for O clubs to encourage amateur mappers to contribute to their local effort. Using freeware makes that a lot more feasible nowadays.

Did I mention that I am not a lawyer ?

Many good comments above, and above above.
I don't disagree with anything. It's all worth putting on the map
I'll even give an extra strong second to the "possession... access..." note.

But what wrongdoing does any of this prevent? I think the answer is very close to nothing.

Sorry, but in striving for the technically legal route, the up front effort, along with the potential cost & aggravation of enforcement, strike me as way out of whack wiith the reality of the problem.

And this barely touches on the very real and serious intra-orienteering problems that this issue actually creates.
Any Badger people want to comment?

edit- Oops, I overlooked one already posted

tRicky. I perhaps was a little too obtuse on my comment about versioning.
Back in the day when OCAD 5,6,7,8 were widely pirated, there was a club with a map that was used several times each year. The map had an ever changing track network. Every course setter seemed to make their own correction on the digital file. There were multiple versions floating around and no-one quite knew which was the most recent. Until recently, OOM was unable to read OCAD18 files. This solved the versioning issues for a while if maps were made available to setters in OCAD18 format. Then OOM gained the ability to read OCAD18 files. The versioning issue rears its head again.
And yes, I use both OCAD and OOM on all map projects. Neither tool has all the features I wish to use.

I made that comment in the pursuit of a joke, but yes that's why I also still use both programs because both have their limitations. It's the same reason why I still have to use both the desktop and online version of MYOB AccountRight. Despite the developers wanting to move everyone online, they seem to have left off features with the online version that are only available - or else are easier to use - in the desktop one (and vice versa). I realise OCAD and OOM are designed by different developers, which makes it all the more bizarre that AccountRight has differing features between the two designs and yet both function complementary to each other.

Weird indeed.

@EricW

The issue with the Badger Orienteering Club was NOT an intra club issue. It was an inter-club issue. A guy from the Chicago club who was NOT a Badger Club member at the time was trying for years to get his hands on the Cat Maps. He had asked me for permission to use the maps on many occasions and I had told him he was welcome to set up Badger Club events there, but not CAOC events. He refused to set up those events as Badger club events . After a while of him continuing to ask, I bluntly told him I wasn't going to let him set up events there ever.

That apparently upset him and he started looking for ways to get access to those maps by getting around me. He talked to someone else in the Badger Club and they started working on a way to remove me from running the club. At that time I told them that it didn't matter what the Badger Club wanted with regards to the Cat Maps, since I owned the maps.

Once I said this the Chicago guy started claiming the maps weren't mine and the Badger club then decided they could use the maps without my permission. They scheduled an event and I said Whoa!!! Cease and desist. I wasn't denying the Badger Club access to the maps as has been stated by some. I was asking the club to get permission for use of the maps, just like the adventure racing group that used the maps did. There's a big difference between denying access and requesting that they ask for permission to use them.

The issue here was that the Chicago guy knew that if the Badger club agreed that the maps were my possession, that I wasn't going to give him permission the use them for a CAOC event. So, he was campaigning against me with regards to map ownership.

Side story....

A few years ago a friend of the guy from Chicago said to him that the Cat maps were great and there should be another national event there. What did the Chicago guy say? He replied yes, but it should be the Chicago Club that organizes it, because they would do it better.

This Chicago guy is actually still trying to get access to the maps for a CAOC national event, I believe. We'll see if he's able to pull off his plan in the future. Or will he do the right thing and help the Badger Club host another fantastic event in that area?

Side story 2....

The story of the making of the first two Cat maps is that when I made them(2004-2006ish), the club had no money to pay me to make them. I decided to keep them in my possession, so that another club( like CAOC) or some other group(like adventure racers) wouldn't be able to use them without paying, and also because it was my legacy( and I'm proud of having brought those maps to the community).

When Ivar came over in 2008 to field check two more Cat maps in the area, the club once again had no money to pay him. I paid all of his field checking fees out of my own pocket. I didn't think that charging the club a small map fee was an unreasonable thing to do, so that I could at least get back a little of the money that I had spent having the maps made. I was charging the club $5/map so they could use them for local events and they never had to pay anything upfront for the maps to be made. In most cases, I didn't even collect the $5/map fee, since the club hardly had enough money to operate. I've never made back the thousands of dollars I paid Ivar for his field checking.

@acme: I have one very large sprint map (covering about 12 sq km) of the Hvaler archipelago island Asmaløy. For this particular map I got access to the original lidar back in 2012, along with topo data from the local community, but only because my request was routed via the nearest orienteering club, Fredrikstad SK.
We could have applied for (partial) government funding, but I preferred to not do so, since that would allow me to use the map for all sorts of experiments. It is my copyright on the finished map, but unlike you I have always given free access to the actual OCAD file (https://tmsw.no/asmaloy/ ) and I encourage anyone who wants to to send in updates and corrections.

I did not understand the details of acme's post or even what a cat map was but I found the story compelling.
The history of the Badger Orienteering Club and the timeline of their mapping is laid out on part of their website here. I hope they are able to work it out and without enriching any lawyers.
But what any orienteering mapper has to keep in mind is that freely available map starters and LiDAR have made it possible for almost anyone anytime and almost anywhere to make a basemap and then gps technology can make most of those people competent field workers. The days of getting paid thousands for an orienteering map are numbered.

gps technology can make most of those people competent field workers

LOL

Better than you, anyway.

The Cat maps, if you haven't figured it out, are some maps that have the word "Cat" in their names (I haven't been on them, but it's something like Cat's Claw, Cat's Pajamas, Cat O' Nine Tails, or whatever). From what I've heard, they are excellent.

I once loaned out an orienteering map I made for our state association (unpaid) to a local adventure racing crew for use in one of their events on the proviso they included 'Orienteering WA' on the finished product. They covered up the logo with other advertising instead claiming there wasn't room for it elsewhere. I wasn't overly happy about that.

Freely available textbooks and online lectures can make most people competent nuclear physicists.

A useful addition to the metadata on the map is hours of fieldwork/drafting and distance walked whilst mapping. Helps potential users understand the copyright statement.

First of all a lot of what Acme said in his posts can be extremely false. I’m the Chicago club guy he must be referring to.
My update is, yes I asked for permission to use the cats map for events since the badger club /would not put on any meets for at least two years. I asked acne if he wanted to set a course one day and I the next for a two day event. He refused and still would not put on a meet for badger, maybe burn out etc?? Since he didn’t want to host a meet, he didn’t want anyone else hosting a meet, so he took his map with him.
The few old members wanted to host events, but acme refused.
He used lawyers to stop the current badger club from using the 14 year old map.
The club asked acme if he still wanted to be part of the new club and he refused again. Thousands of dollars to our laywer later he was forced to return O club equipment that belonged to the club. Once again he found a laywer to stop the Badger Club from using the cats maps. He wanted a ton of money from his old club to use the cat maps.
We told him we the club would not pay for the outdated map and would rather spend thousands making a new map called Greenbush east and west.
The club has no association with the former club president. The club has successfully made or updated some other maps, new bylaws, have new epunch, new board members and host 6 meets a year. The club is small and with the new Greenbush map I would like to see a two day national meet there. Just have to get the other club members to agree. I have been a member of the Badger club and Chicago since mid 80’s
Last thing is, acne did collect money made from the 2009 national meet, and many local meets after.

I would assume the Chicago area club has maps of their own that you can use to put on a National Event.

If not you can probably get permission to use the Rhodes-France orienteering map just outside Pana, IL.

SLOC has several nice orienteering map you can use if you are looking for a place to put on a national event.

Chicago area cannot get permission from cook county Forest preserve to host a meet.
It was never about Chicago club hosting a meet, it was about getting Badger to host a meet.

I am at a loss to understand the issue here. Old maps do not live forever and making one map of a park does not mean someone else cannot come along right behind you and make another map of the same park.
The club seems to have moved on and made a new map called Greenbush. Also held at least three events there in the last 14 months.
I would look forward to participating in a national event in Wisconsin terrain. I hope Soupbone gets it done.
Except they deserve to have more people coming to their events Badger is one of the several truly up-and-coming orienteering clubs I see around America. (Witness how they hustled to get enough funds to purchase an SI set.)
Best wishes going forward Charlie, Susie Madden and others.

For those unfamiliar with the terrain of the subject maps, this is some of the best in the country, assuming the vegetation hasn't changed for the worse.
It was used for the 2009 US Champs, to great acclaim, as I remember.
It is kettle moraine/ negative/ sand-gravel/ depression terrain, deserving to be on most people's bucket list.

Badger Club fought hard with the previous president/owner of the club over the map.
The map is still excellent and made new by Jon Torrance.
Local meets take place twice a year. Thanks for the positive recommendations and good thoughts of the club moving forward.

If you do have an NRE there, make sure it's in the fall so I can once again run through a world of completely yellow woods. It is such a beautiful memory.

So, I got sucked down a rabbit hole ...

Greenbush - Nice looking maps and terrain. I don't think I've orienteered there, but did a 50-Miler there in 2002.

The odd thing is the 2009 maps were actually copyright "Badger Orienteering Club". But, in 2023 the "Badger Orienteering Club" can't use them. I'm sure there is a lesson here for club/map management.

More info (including links to results and maps, including Routegadget) here.

The rule we enforce here in Norway is that a map created by a particular club makes that area the property of said club. Anyone else can still make their own map of the same area, from scratch (obviously not using any info from the existing map), but they will not be able to apply for any public funds for that second map.
If a map is abandoned, which means no published updates in well over 10 years, then a second club can in fact apply to the Mapping Commission and if we find that the original owner has no intent/interest/funds to update/maintain it, then that second club is free to apply for Lottery and/or Community funds to create their new map. Usually in such situations we try to suggest that the old and new club cooperate and that the new map will have shared ownership.

Public funding... ha... definitely not an issue in the USA. What is an issue is the relationship with the landowner (or park managers). If a club has a relationship to have permission to hold events, it can be confusing or worse to have a different club asking for permission, with the risk that permission gets shut down for everyone.

A copyright claim can only be filed in a court of law IF the party claiming copyright has registered the work with the U.S. Copyright Office. You can write "copyright" all over the map, but it's unenforceable unless the work been registered.

The Badger Club retained an intellectual property attorney when the issue of the mapmaker's "cease and desist" order surfaced. There was never any determination of who "owned" the copyright, because the Badger club (on our attorney's advice) decided it wasn't worth tens of thousands of dollars to argue our case in court. The club may indeed have prevailed that lawsuit, but it was preferable on many levels to hire a re-making of the map instead. And as Charlie said, that has been accomplished. We will never have a need to use Acme's map again. Incidentally, the maps are now named the "Greenbush" maps, to reflect their location. The "Cat Map" name is no longer relevant.

The main lesson learned from our experience is that it's essential to establish an agreement in writing between a mapping contractor and the hiring authority ("work for hire"). In Badger's case, the club was so loosely organized for so many years, that nothing was in writing, and there was very little in the way of financial records. The mapmaker did indeed get paid for his work, albeit indirectly and with poor record-keeping. (The mapmaker was also the club President and a signer on the club bank account.)

My personal opinion about copyrighting of maps in general, is that it's a tricky subject. Information derived from publicly available sources are definitely not copyrightable. For that matter, many of the features on an o-map aren't original work -- they are simply data collection: Here's a boulder. Here's a fence. This isn't original thought, and facts are not copyrightable. Furthermore, the ISOM standards define for the mapmaker how to categorize and symbolize terrain/vegetation features. So although there are elements of artistic expression in the way those boundaries are drawn by the mapper, I wonder if this information would qualify as original expression, given the guidance being followed.

Bottom line -- only a judge can determine whether a copyright has been infringed upon, and only people with a lot of time on their hands (and money to risk) would be wise to pursue a case in court. I sincerely believe that if the Badger club had gone to court on the copyright issue, we might have prevailed. But what a stressful and expensive hassle that would have been!

Orienteering Ontario has a Map Policy, developed in consultation with clubs, that is more about the area than the map. We have a Map Registry where clubs list details of their “complete and incomplete” maps. Except in rare situations, only one club is permitted to register a particular area.

A map is “incomplete” from the time the club registers their claim to an area until the map is completed. They have two years to do that and they can apply for a 1-year extension in special circumstances. Otherwise, their claim expires and another club can apply to register the area for mapping. This addresses a past problem; big plans used to keep too many areas unavailable for mapping for years.

If members of two different clubs notify the Map Registrar that a map is seriously outdated, the map could be returned to “incomplete” status with the same 2-year deadline to update it.

If a map hasn’t been used for orienteering in 10+ years, another club can apply to take over the area as an incomplete map. This doesn’t mean that the new club can take the map file - just that they can map the area with OOA’s blessing. The hope is that this would happen in a cooperative way, with the first club acknowledging that they have no plans to update it soon and passing on their map file but that is their decision. Alternatively, the original club could commit to updating it within the timeframe for an incomplete map.

These policies arose from specific situations that had caused conflict between clubs. It’s largely a friendly agreement among Orienteering Ontario clubs that keeps peace. It carries no legal weight but OOA does get to decide whether a club can be affiliated and access the national insurance policy, so if a future club goes rogue and refuses to respect OOA’s policies, there is possible recourse.

Since the policy was implemented more than a decade ago, the Map Registrar hasn’t been asked to settle any disputes, nor have clubs invoked any of the policies to take over another club’s area. There have, however, been friendly agreements between clubs to work together or transfer registrations. The Map Policy seems to have helped by establishing the base rules and letting clubs know that an arbitrator is available if things go south.

Aside from peacekeeping, this collection of map information is leading to other benefits. Matt Barrett, the Map Registrar, has created a map of Ontario club maps.
https://www.orienteeringontario.ca/maps

He has just started collecting information about club map file backup policies. Although maps belong to clubs, they also “belong” to the wider orienteering community who helped to pay for them and in some cases even worked on them before moving on to different clubs. In some cases, there was outside funding that assumed these maps would remain available to the O community. We know of important club files that have been lost because they were stored by only one person who left the sport or lost their hard drive, or were stored on websites that were replaced, so we want clubs to give this serious thought.

For that matter, many of the features on an o-map aren't original work -- they are simply data collection: Here's a boulder. Here's a fence. This isn't original thought, and facts are not copyrightable. Furthermore, the ISOM standards define for the mapmaker how to categorize and symbolize terrain/vegetation features. So although there are elements of artistic expression in the way those boundaries are drawn by the mapper, I wonder if this information would qualify as original expression, given the guidance being followed.

This makes it sound like an orienteering map is a scientific plot rather than a painstakingly created work of art. Get a few different mappers to map the same piece of terrain and it will be clear pretty quickly that there is a lot of individuality in how an area is represented, even if all follow ISOM guidelines. Definitely not a copyright expert, but I don't think it can be argued good orienteering maps are not creative pieces of art.

I totally agree that there are elements of orienteering maps that are original expression and should be copyrightable.

Let's say a person imports the outline of an area for mapping from Open Street Map to OCAD and pays nothing except the cost of the OCAD subscription.
Then adds free LiDAR information obtained from NOAA or USGS and with a minimal amount of prompts is able to get contour information plus hill shading and slope gradients that will clearly outline the location and shape of many streams, trails, buildings, knolls, depressions, stone walls, etc and height and location of trees.
Then can get further free information courtesy of Strava Heatmaps and freely available air photos.
Should that person be able to claim a copywright of the map?
Should someone who adds a bit of fieldwork get control of the map? I know many do claim it but I generally do not like it.
Not in my view.
The only control comes from controlling the OCAD (or OOM) file.
In short, worrying about a copywright is a waste of time. Getting paid for a map due to the fieldwork and drafting: that is fair game and between the mapper and the contracting club.

For the most part, in the USA, there have been few conflicts (between orienteering clubs) that I've been aware of. In most places there's little to no overlap of the geographical areas where clubs operate, so that reduces opportunities for clashes. I'm aware of some cases where one club wanted to host an event on a map made by a neighboring club, and there was an easy agreement wherein the club putting on the event pays some amount per map used to the club that "owns" the map.

A more common concern has to do with clubs that are not part of the Orienteering USA community (e.g. commercial adventure races) putting on events for which they charge substantial fees, using orienteering maps, and paying nothing to the club that expended substantial money and/or effort to create the map. (I can't point to any specific examples of this, but I suspect that others can.) Or people just copying the orienteering maps and selling them to hikers or whatever.

There's perhaps some irony that the the part of an orienteering map that is in some ways of the least interest to us may be the part that's the easiest to get a solid copyright on, that being the layout (legends, borders, and overall design).

Ontario has 4 clubs with overlapping geography so our situation is probably unique. (There were 5 overlapping clubs ten years ago.)

We have considerable overlap and cooperation between orienteering and adventure racing so we don't have the issue of adventure races using O maps without permission. When I first got involved with Orienteering Ontario in 2005, there was mistrust between the sports but it didn't take long to get us all on the same team.

Before my time, a Dontgetlost (GHO) map was apparently borrowed by people who made a commercial map of a popular recreation area and included an error from the O map. That one was upsetting.

Gordhun, I can't believe you are serious

Notice in CompassCoyote's original post, the fundamental difference between:
-map derived from LiDAR & imagery
-map derived from LiDAR, imagery, and field work.

What gordhun describes creates a basemap. It's a bunch of automated processing of LiDAR, imagery, and other sources (OSM, Strava Heat Map, tax parcels/boundaries). There are various software tools to help: OCAD, OOM, KP, QGIS. Anyone making an orienteering map then begins extracting stuff from this pile of data. A novice takes a lot in raw form, like jagged contours that may miss features falling between the contour interval. The more experienced the mapper, the more they can pull out of all this data--whether from an aerial image or from a some LiDAR output.

Regardless, it is a process of diminishing returns on the time invested. How much better are smoothed contours than jagged ones? Adjusted contours & formlines vs "precise" ones? If a novice pulls out 90 "things" (trails, stone walls, cliffs, ditches, etc), how important are the 20 additional "things" that come with experience? Some of this can make a big difference in the end product. Every mapper will admit that those last few hours of desktop work probably made little difference and with hindsight, they wouldn't bother...

For some terrain and some purposes, this is good enough. Base map = final product. Good enough for a navigation challenge turned into a sport (aka orienteering). You can do a perfectly good orienteering event (aka navigation challenge) on a USGS map, any old trail map, or if you can find one in a dusty heap, a map ripped out of a phone book. Remember those:)

Who in 2023 signs up for lots of events on USGS maps with some hand-drawn major cliffs and some trail adds? From my understanding, that was US orienteering in the year I was born. We've been doing better than that since the 80s.

In other terrain types, this basemap, even compiled by an experienced O-mapper, is inadequate if the goal is that experienced competitors do not detect errors/omissions _at competition speed_. In this type of terrain and for more-experienced navigators, the hours needed to adequately field-check (and draft modifications & additions) are an order of magnitude (or two) beyond the time for (automated+human extraction) basemap prep.

It seems to me that this additional data, collected then displayed by the field checker, is the valuable addition. From earlier in this thread, it seems copyright might not be the right mechanism to protect the "value" of this data. I laugh when writing that because the market for boulder clusters, stony ground, and vegetation density/corridors for human runners is admittedly pretty niche. But whole segments of the modern economy build value out of collected data.

I spent years building experience to find full employment as an orienteering mapper. I'm actually hopeful that the right advances will make me irrelevant and under-employed again. I've run at perfectly good events using autogenerated maps (e.g. KP maps) with little or no fieldwork beyond good course setting. Course setting 101 is to avoid areas with map problems. But, I think for top-level events with top-level competitors, I've got job security. For the complicated terrain that top-level events gravitate toward, and top-level competitors find interesting, autogenerated basemaps plus little or no field-checking are still nowhere near the level of "error-free at competition-speed."

Copyrights & map file control, clubs vs mappers, value of maps, etc are all luring me to post other long thoughts, but instead, I think I will dump some hours into map detail & nuance that I may, with hindsight, later regret:)

+10000 to cmpbllj

In addition to fieldwork, there's also the drafting. I've primarily focused on sprint maps, where my drafting time >> field time. In my opinion, there's a big difference between poorly drafted and well drafted maps, especially sprint maps. Not unrelated, but I was exposed to so so so many excellently crafted sprint maps in Vancouver early in my orienteering career.

Much of the "art" of map making comes in the crafting of contours. Maybe the different views expressed above partially reflect the contour complexity of local terrains? I am currently working on an area using a 10m DEM base. The correspondence between the base and the final contours is very limited. The previous map the base contours required minimal adjustment. The art was in the vegetation.

Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer and being a mapper I have a biased opinion.

A lot of time is spent creating a map so I view it as something that should be copyrightable. I second CMBBLLJ comments.

In terms of our Club (Quantico Orienteer Club), maps are the only tangible things we own (other than equipment). For years "selling the map" at orienteering events is what allowed the club to collect money at events in National Parks. I have always been very much against having the maps be freely/universally available, especially to someone who is making a profit off our map. The club should benefit from those who wish to use the map. There have been numerous cases where people/groups want to use our maps for free or at a reduced costs. This is basically asking our club to support/finance other groups (sometimes this may make sense but often it doesn't).
A number of years ago, one of our maps (Rock Creek Park) was included in published book without club permission. Now we aren't allowed to orienteer in that park anymore. (Full disclosure, us not being allowed to orienteer there now has nothing to do with the book but it sounds better that way). When we found out about the book there was little that could have been done without expending a lot of money and likely getting nothing in return.