Talk:Geography of Western Australia

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[edit] Image:WAClimates.jpg

Hi John. You describe the image as your own work using Powerpoint. Unfortunately, I don't think that that will stack up against the copyright experts here who will take a strict line in that the map is clearly based on a presumably copyrighted map previously published elsewhere. Hence it is a derivative work. Unless you genuinely are the creator of the base map (in which case you need to clearly state this on the image page), I am afraid that it'll need to be redone using a "free" base map. Some free maps of WA are at commons:Category:Maps of Western Australia and Category:Maps of Australia. A Köppen classification map for Australia has been done at Image:Australia-climate-map MJC01.png which could be cropped I suppose to show WA only. Sing out if you need a hand or more guidance. —Moondyne 07:23, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Moondyne. The base map I scanned in from an old tourist base map of the state that I had. I then drew the outline for the climatic regions myself and coloured them manually, and added the key and the title in powerpoint. I drew the blue line marking the summer and winter rainfall regimes and coloured this too, before saving it from powerpoint as a jpeg file. Surely this classifies as a non-copyright map. John D. Croft 08:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it. The bottom line is that someone, somewhere owns the copyright to that old tourist map. And the Wikimedia Foundation has decreed that it will not publish copyrighted materials, including derivative works. Per US Copyright Office Circular 14: Derivative Works: "Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work." —Moondyne 08:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

WHat a pain that is - i bet some lawyer somewhere has the high paid job in tracing impossible to find copyright holders SatuSuro 09:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Copyright covers the expression of information, not the information itself. The geographical information in an old tourist map is not copyrightable; only the way in which that information is expressed is.

For example, the makers of that old tourist map had to decide upon a projection and coordinate system for them map. They had to decided whether or not to distinguish between different classes of road, and if so how. They had to decide which features to list and which not to. For roads, they had to choose between full, broken or dotted lines; they had to select a line thickness and a line colour. They had to do the same for railway lines and rivers. They had to select background shading colours for ocean, land and lakes. They had to decide upon icons for features such as bridges, hills, etc. They had to choose a typeface and font size for place names. All of these things represent creative decisions about how to represent geographic information, and all of them are copyrightable.

But the geographical information underlying the map is not copyrightable. If John extracted the geographical information from the map, e.g. by tracing it, but independently made his own decisions on colour schemes, font, iconography, etc, then the resultant creative work is his and his alone. I don't think that has happened here though; I think this map reuses the original map's iconography etcetera. So we have a problem.

Hesperian 11:28, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

OK Gents, leave it with me, I'll try to redraw the outlines and recreate the map - unforuntanely the way I have done my maps in the past have been using Powerpoint (the only map making package I have - if someone has a better system and was interested I'd gladly pass it over to them. It would be good if the new map includes the sites mentioned in the climatic texts. John D. Croft 23:12, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I created a new one based on a cropped version of the Australian map. See Image:Western Australia-climate-map.png. —Moondyne 06:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

New map with sites mentioned in text included has been uploaded. John D. Croft 09:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Climate Change and Global Warming section

"... for Australia as a whole produces about 27 tonnes per person ..." List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita shows Australia at #12 with 18.0 tonnes (below the US at #11) in 2003. —Moondyne 06:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually 18.0 seems to be a typo. The source [1] actually says 18.8, not 18.0. Also, another series [2] shows all greenhouse emissions as CO2 equivalents with Australia coming lucky last at 26.11 tonnes. —Moondyne 06:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The State of the Environment Report for Western Australia (released July 2007) suggests that the total for Australia is just under 27 tonnes per person. The recent National Greenhouse Inventory, which breaks these figures down per tonne show that Tasmania produces the least and Western Australia (with 34 tonnes per person) produces the most. Thank god we have only 1/10th of the Australian population). John D. Croft 08:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)