A geolocation enabled selfie from your phone camera, a photographer taking a photo of the hills from a helicopter, a start-up using Google Maps to deliver food or offer taxi services – all of them would need a license, and vetting by a security agency to be legal in India if a draft bill becomes an act.
The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016 (Draft) could affect every single person or entity who might make or use geospatial data – inside or outside India. And the proposed penalty for noncompliance is between one crore to a hundred crores ($155,000 – $15.5 million).
Its definition of geospatial information is broad.
Geospatial imagery or data acquired through space or aerial platforms such as satellite, aircrafts, airships, balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles including value addition; or graphical or digital data depicting natural or manmade physical features, phenomenon or boundaries of the earth or any information related thereto including surveys, charts, maps, terrestrial photos referenced to a coordinate system and having attributes.
It’s a bill that has industry, internet organisations and civil society worried stiff. Many of India’s fastest growing start-ups rely on geospatial information – to deliver food, packages, and other services. Government institutions from the Union Ministry of Water Resources to the Bangalore Police have all used mapping technologies to aid their functioning.
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