Content Copyright

[EdwardSmathers]

Hello,

I have a fairly non-unique subject that I am accumulating location information about (New York State Waterfalls). I know that a good part of the content is unique to my "survey". Other content I researched and included in the citation, even though we personally fact checked the information after collecting the initial point information (waterfall name and coordinance).

My question would be:
Once I decide to make this survey public, how do I protect the data from being mined by a "competitor" for their gain? I do not plan on financially gaining from this project, but I have a team of people that have placed decades of work into this survey and I wish to keep them cited for their work.

I am aware of the meta that can be added, but this only serves as a warning... I would like it to be known if anyone has used the data from my specific survey.

A second question would be:

How do I share the content, but restrict access to the "private" locations (posted or inaccessible)? I would love to build a layer only seen by my team and Accademia.

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

So you only want your organization to see the data? add it to AGOL and set the appropriate sharing properties. 

[EdwardSmathers]

Thank you, Joe!

The premise is that I will create a "public" facing map using a separate feature layer so the posted locations do not get accidentally shared. Once this map is published to the public I fear that the data can be easily mined and the citation stripped. How do I protect it so that my company and the persons involved with the survey are kept properly cited and the data not "stolen"?

I currently have a map published to www.DigTheFalls.com and wish to use ArcGIS embedded in the future.

On the flip side, the complete survey would only be made fully available to those of which would use it for research and other activities.

[XanderBakker]

Hi Edward Smathers ,

If I understand you correctly, you want to protect the locations and photographs? For the photographs you could burn your logo into the photo, which will make a bit less attractive to use your content. For the locations, you should follow the suggestion provided by Joe Head , by creating a group (Create groups—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS ), add named users for your colleagues to that group (Own groups—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS ) and share the locations only with the people in that group (Share items—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS ).

When you share locations (a hosted feature service) publicly, this content could be extracted by anyone using tools like the one described here: https://community.esri.com/docs/DOC-6496-download-arcgis-online-feature-service-or-arcgis-server-fea... . I have seen services that did not have the "query" capability enabled which could be a solution, but I'm not sure if that is possible in ArcGIS Online. 

[EdwardSmathers]

Hello xander_bakker‌,

You have confirmed my fears that, like anything on the internet, the data is not protected once it is shared publicly. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed Fusion Tables so much...

I will have to research a bit more and possibly even team up with other industry professionals to be sure the work is properly attributed moving forward so that even if the data were mined there would be multiple locations using the citation.

[XanderBakker]

I am tagging KGerrow-esristaff‌ and dlaw-esristaff‌ to see if they may have suggestions for you.

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

you can disable the features ability to be extracted, queried. however there are other means of users exporting the data from your web map but its more difficult. if you want the data to be open to the public then you have to understand its also open to being mined. 

[KellyGerrow]

Hi Edward Smathers‌,

There are a few ways to prevent your public data from being mined by others, such as disabling the ability to extract data and protecting the rest url so that it can only be connected to via a specific app: Limit access to public layers - Crowdsource Reporter | ArcGIS for State Government 

That being said, if the data is available and queryable by the public, someone with a lot of time on their hands could query and copy and paste the data. If you are looking to just visualize your data and not provide vector information like attributes or geometry, consider publishing a tiled service without a corresponding feature service. This will provide visualization without access to the feature data.

Publish hosted tile layers from files—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS 

Additionally you can use sharing settings with other ArcGIS Online users to ensure that only authenticated users of your choosing can view the data:

Share items—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS 

Thanks,

Kelly

[EdwardSmathers]

KGerrow-esristaff‌ - Thank you for the information. If I am understanding correctly, the tile layer would essentially be a set of "pictures" of my data, but would not allow clicking points to show the pop-up data box?

I want to be sure I can offer data about each point, but I still really like your option! Thank you so much for the suggestion. I will take it to my team to see if this will work for us.

Best regards,

ES

[KellyGerrow]

Hi Edward, 

If feature data isn't published than it can't be queried and displayed in a pop up. Check out what your exact requirements are and there may be some type of hybrid approach you can take, or use group sharing to ensure security of the data.

-Kelly