Not only that, but all that street data you get on your automobile GPS NAV systems is digitized vector files of municipal Emergency 911 address databases, (used for fire/police/ambulance dispatching) which my team used to maintain as basemaps for almost every cadastral and thematic mapping application used in the county. This data is produced at public expense, so we provided it to the public free of charge, and the GPS companies snap it up and sell it to you consumers for a profit, something the cities are not allowed to do because it would be "unfair competition for private enterprise". These guys have no ruths.

The same thing happened to a lot of our other data products, like aerial photos we would pay contractors big bucks to provide. We had to pay for them, then publish them for public use, and private companies would pick them up and sell them back to the public. We published the data, but were not allowed to market it to help defray our expenses and help out the taxpayer, because...you guessed it, "unfair competition for private enterprise".

I would estimate about 80% of the true cost of all commercial mapping applications, both digital and paper, are paid for by government geographers and cartographers. That industry would not exist without this massive hidden taxpayer subsidy.

BTW, Pod, check your msgs, I sent you something about KK.