Is there a way to restrict easy copying of a Google Map?

July 18, 2018 2:29 PM

Made a map of local locations, about 400 of them, with the intent of sharing it with other locals, using Google Maps. But it seems anyone with the public link of a Google Map can easily copy the map and make their own. Is there anyway to restrict this, while still making it public, i.e. not force people give email addresses to see it?

Yes, I know it's possible to redraw the map or print it out based on my map or even download the KML. I'm just looking for an way prevent someone from easily copying it. If they wanna copy it, they should have to do SOME work, heh.

posted by Brandon Blatcher to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Do you want to prevent people getting the data, or do you want to prevent people lifting the map and claiming it as their own? The latter will always be a problem with Google Maps.

An alternative would be to represent the data in Leaflet (would need your own hosting). Mapbox provides hosting and is free for small projects.
posted by scruss at 3:28 PM on July 18, 2018

It won't prevent it from being copied, but you can add things to the map to indicate it was created by you, which might or might not discourage copying. How useful this is probably depends on why exactly you don't want it copied.
posted by yohko at 4:25 PM on July 18, 2018

Response by poster: Oh, mostly I just don't want someone (or a few specific someones) copying it and claiming it as their own.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:51 PM on July 18, 2018

I did some poking around and it looks like there isn't a way to do this in google maps other than selectively sharing to people you trust which you don't want to do. There are requests for this in their product forums, but they haven't gone anywhere.
posted by Kimberly at 4:59 AM on July 19, 2018

Use a different map provider? I was just reading some article on Hacker News about various Google Maps shenanigans, and they found that competition had caught up greatly over the years. And this was for custom maps of Poland!
posted by oceanjesse at 6:30 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]