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JoshD's Diary

SmartZip real estate mailers using OpenStreetMap

Posted by JoshD on 24 March 2012 in English.

Today in the mail I got yet another real estate mailer, trying to get me to sell my house in this fantastic market. Just before tossing it in the recycling bin, I did a double-take. The map they used to show the location of a recent sale included my neighborhood, and it was the OpenStreetMap.org Standard (Mapnik) rendering! These are produced by SmartZip, a company which does targeted marketing, directing recipients to SmartHomePrice.com which then directs them to the real estate agent which paid for the listing. So presumably thousands of others are receiving similar mailers.

Three things:

  • There is no attribution
  • The data is quite old (at least a year)
  • Very cool!

Photo of SmartZip mailer using OpenStreetMap (full size photo can be seen here on imgur.com

Location: Powells Landing, Burke, Fairfax County, Virginia, United States
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Discussion

Comment from JoshD on 30 March 2012 at 19:53

I sent the following email to the company:

I recently received a mailer for SmartHomePrice.com, and noticed the map you use comes from OpenStreetMap. I’m glad to see you using it! I happen to be the one that edited the details for that map, and thus am a copyright holder for the map. That map is licensed to you (and anyone else) under the Creative Common CC-BY-SA license, which requires users to show attribution when the map is used. Read more about the OpenStreetMap copyright details here: osm.org/copyright

I wrote about this on my blog here: osm.org/user/JoshD/diary/16538

Again, I’m glad to see you using the OpenStreetMap data, I just want to make sure that it is credited properly. Thanks!

The responded today and said they’ve contacted the company they use to print the maps, and they have already started adding attribution to OSM!

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