Groupe Chronos

Who owns the world?

Hundreds of thousands of players return several times a day on a map of the end of the world as they participate in the Virtual Regatta. They play on their PC and mobile. As Tamagoshis need food, the boats need a captain - 300,000 players check their card race, set the sails, the correct speed. Love of mapping, however, is not an original concept. Open Street Map was launched in 2004 in the UK - it is a Wikipedia map, where each user can edit a common base map. The growing success of the project lies in its philosophy, a project now 80,000 contributors strong. The maps proposed by OSM are completely free for use. The latest growth prompts even bigger changes. For example, Google launched last June Map Maker, so that users can edit the non-or poorly mapped. But these maps remain the property of Google, to the dismay of supporters of the Open Source and despite the cries for respect for privacy that is looming in the background. "The crown jewels don't belong to anyone," states Gilles Barbier, director and co-founder of DisMoiOù. But who does own the mapped data? Who, users or operators, will be the owner of the world, "he who holds rights on the map of the globe?"

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