Tag: border disputes

India Proposes Fines, Jail Terms for ‘Incorrect’ Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The government of India has long been obsessed with maps that failed to show its official and “correct” borders—i.e., maps that showed the Pakistan-controlled parts of Jammu and Kashmir as part of Pakistan, or Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin and Chinese-claimed Arunachal Pradesh as part of China. Maps for an international audience that showed the de facto situation on the ground rather than the Indian claim have been censored at the border. Now things have escalated: a draft bill proposes drastic penalties: up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to Rs 100 crore (about $15 million U.S.; 1 crore = 10 million) for publishing a map or geospatial data with the “wrong” boundaries. News coverage: Hindustani Times, Quartz India, Washington Post. [Stefan Geens/WMS]

Previously: India Censors The Economist’s Kashmir Map; India’s Mapping Panic Continues; The Survey of India Isn’t Helping; India Stamps Publications’ “Incorrect” Maps at the Border; Maps Must Be Cleared by the Survey of India; Google Earth, India and Security—Again; Google Earth: Indian Reactions.

Google Maps as Non-State Authority

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The problem with Google Maps becoming a de facto cartographic authority is that it isn’t a legal authority. As we have seen over and over again, this has implications, both for Google, which must often walk a fine line between countries’ cartographic demands (for example, China and India have laws mandating “correct” borders on maps that are mutually exclusive; the border Google shows you depends on where you are), and for Google’s users: a 2010 border skirmish between Costa Rica and Nicaragua was triggered by an error in Google Maps. A discussion of that incident begins Ethan R. Merel’s note published in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, which explores the problem of Google being thrust into a role it may not have expected.

Since Google is now producing the world’s most important maps, a task previously done by nation-states, the company is “getting confused with a nation-state, and not just any one, a really important one—a powerful one.”92 At first, Google reaped the benefits of waning state control over the practice of map making, but more recently, Google has started to face the criticism and responsibilities which accompany such possession of power.93

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