Should all imagery be free? Or more freely available?

Satellite image data is free because we get it for free on Google Earth, right? Wrong. We pay with our attention, so says Michael Blakemore of the University of Durham in the UK. He views this as an indirect payment system because our attention is diverted to see advertising.

This is fine with Matt O’Connell, CEO of GeoEye who says that, "A more compelling issue should be that imagery should be more freely available." O’Connell is trying to figure out how to crack the huge Indian market for satellite imagery. "The demand is high because India has a high familiarity with geospatial information." And when GeoEye-1 is launched this summer yielding .41meter panchromatic and with accuracy within three meters without ground control points, the satellite will be collecting over 700,000 square miles per day. GeoEye will have to outsource the production capability because their existing facilities do not have enough capacity even with their combined facilities from Space Imaging that now include St. Louis, Washington DC, and Denver. GeoEye is in discussion with companies in India to acquire more capacity.

And Michael Jones, CTO of Google Earth?" To Google, geography is simply better context to foster human understanding. But in the Indian marketplace, they’ve run into some sensitive issues. There are certain security concerns. Yet the country badly needs freedom to access image data. "India is forced to deal with reality; it doesn’t have time to wait for style," says Jones. "Our job is not to display the world’s geographic information; it is to display the world’s information and use geography as a context."

But neither is Google waiting for the Indian government to grant them permission to display data. Have you checked out the road network for Hyderbad or the rest of India? Go to maps.google.com and type in this lat/long: 17.47320°N 78.37330°E. It doesn’t come from the Indian government. "I can’t tell you how we did it…but we did it," says Jones.