FAA/Aeronav Digital Product Changes

That's pretty common nowadays. The NPRM process for most Federal rule making is just a final check to see if they accidentally ****ed off a Senator's funding sugar-daddy somewhere they forgot about.
 
So I have to ask. How do digital chart "products" work in the boating community? How about topographic land charts?
 
Jim Logajan said:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/staff/charts.htm

http://nationalmap.gov/
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This is probably most relevant - and Aeronav may wish to do something smilar with regard to IFR usage for example:

NOAA RNCs® may be redistributed, but redistributed NOAA RNCs® are NOT considered official NOAA RNCs®, and do not meet federal chart carriage regulations for regulated vessels. This official status attends only to the original downloaded files. NOAA has established a program under which distributors be certified to redistribute NOAA RNCs® such that the RNCs will retain their official status and meet applicable chart carriage regulations.* The RNC agent agreement can be viewed at http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/dist_require.html.

NOAA RNCs® and their geoTIF versions (future) may not be used to print commercial products. Individuals may print the NOAA RNCs® or their geoTIF versions for personal use, but the result is not a NOAA chart, and may not be used to meet federal chart carriage regulations.*

Copying of the NOAA RNCs® to any other server or location for further distribution is discouraged unless the following guidelines are followed: 1) this User Agreement is displayed and accepted by anyone accessing the NOAA RNCs®, and 2) a reference to this Web site is included so that anyone accessing the NOAA RNCs® is advised of their origin.*

If these NOAA RNCs® are incorporated into any other product in a form other than as provided by NOAA, the producer of that product assumes full liability.*
​
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/download_agreement.htm
 
SCCutler said:
Bear in mind that a few years back, they substantially restricted the number of outlets allowed to sell the paper charts, depriving many small FBOs and fllght schools of the ability to sell charts, and making charts substantially more difficult for pilots to buy. How much in the way of sales did they lose as a result of this decision?
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Not sure what your point is. FAA's allowed to recover costs by selling charts, but not allowed to turn a profit. If they were originally printing more charts than they could sell, and thus losing money, but then figured out how to "rightsize" their distribution to more accurately match supply and demand and get revenue to more closely match costs, then isn't that an improvement in efficiency, and a good thing?
 
Jim_R said:
Not sure what your point is. FAA's allowed to recover costs by selling charts, but not allowed to turn a profit. If they were originally printing more charts than they could sell, and thus losing money, but then figured out how to "rightsize" their distribution to more accurately match supply and demand and get revenue to more closely match costs, then isn't that an improvement in efficiency, and a good thing?
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You make a goodly number of assumptions there, necessary predicates to your conclusion.

My point was clearly stated.
 
Thanks for the NOAA info Jim. So my real question is does NOAA charge those "certified redistributors" for the charts?

Basically what I'm getting at here is if boaters get free charts ...
 
Jim_R said:
Not sure what your point is. FAA's allowed to recover costs by selling charts, but not allowed to turn a profit. If they were originally printing more charts than they could sell, and thus losing money, but then figured out how to "rightsize" their distribution to more accurately match supply and demand and get revenue to more closely match costs, then isn't that an improvement in efficiency, and a good thing?
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They raised the minimum annual sales for chart outlets from $500/yr to $5,000/yr. This is why you cannot find charts at your local smalltime FBO when on a XC flight anymore. We're not all that "smalltime" being in the Los Angeles basin with 400 based planes, and we were only selling $2,500/yr worth.

I do not think there was ANY expense related to shipping to smaller operators. The ordering was computerized, the shipping was computerized. Instead, I believe they chopped out the small timer to incentivize their direct-to-consumer ordering system which they much-ballyhooed at the time (and I'm sure was not cheap to implement). The number of authorized chart dealers fell from 1,200 to 120 or so with that stunt.

For a system that was so stable, it has really gone schizophrenic in the last 4 years. I have no idea what problem they've been trying to fix. I suspect they've been trying to justify the "business development" position that Abby fills.

I've been pricing out bandwidth for our servers, which are very well hosted and capable, and am contemplating giving away the digital products, or charging a small gateway fee ($2 per year or something). Their bleating about expenses just makes no sense to me -- bandwidth is cheap -- and the Boeing/Jepp conspiracy theory makes the most sense to me. :)

Dec 13 will probably be no surprise to anyone. Nobody will ask how much they paid for the implementation and maintenance of a proprietary DRM technology to secure public domain chart data from the public -- all under the guise of safety. Faugh.
 
You know, I've been yelling and writing and hollering that FAA should have a long-term funding bill for a long time now.

But I'm starting to think its time for a complete reset on all this ass-hattery.

I think I'm tiring of being a supporter of an organization that keeps choosing not to support me. Especially when I pay their salary and bought the server farm.
 
denverpilot said:
You know, I've been yelling and writing and hollering that FAA should have a long-term funding bill for a long time now.

But I'm starting to think its time for a complete reset on all this ass-hattery.

I think I'm tiring of being a supporter of an organization that keeps choosing not to support me. Especially when I pay their salary and bought the server farm.
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Agreed... They need to get back to "promoting" as well as "regulating."

Ryan
 
Jim Logajan said:
This is probably most relevant - and Aeronav may wish to do something smilar with regard to IFR usage for example:
NOAA RNCs® may be redistributed, but redistributed NOAA RNCs® are NOT considered official NOAA RNCs®, and do not meet federal chart carriage regulations for regulated vessels. This official status attends only to the original downloaded files. NOAA has established a program under which distributors be certified to redistribute NOAA RNCs® such that the RNCs will retain their official status and meet applicable chart carriage regulations.* The RNC agent agreement can be viewed at http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/dist_require.html.

NOAA RNCs® and their geoTIF versions (future) may not be used to print commercial products. Individuals may print the NOAA RNCs® or their geoTIF versions for personal use, but the result is not a NOAA chart, and may not be used to meet federal chart carriage regulations.*

Copying of the NOAA RNCs® to any other server or location for further distribution is discouraged unless the following guidelines are followed: 1) this User Agreement is displayed and accepted by anyone accessing the NOAA RNCs®, and 2) a reference to this Web site is included so that anyone accessing the NOAA RNCs® is advised of their origin.*

If these NOAA RNCs® are incorporated into any other product in a form other than as provided by NOAA, the producer of that product assumes full liability.*
​
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/download_agreement.htm
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For part 91 operations, there are no chart carriage requirements, so it would take a change of the regs as well. For the commercial operators it would be an issue, but less so for us, right?
 
Let's see the balance sheet. GAO audit of pre-killing of paper vs today. Where'd the "savings" go?
 
Just got an email from Seattle Avionics, which is weird becuase I've never gotten an email from them in the past. But, they're holding 2 "webinars" tomorrow if anyone is interested at 3pm and 6pm Pacific.
 
chartbundle said:
I suspect they plan to get around the fact that it's public domain data not by copyright but by licensing it. So, anyone who wants the data at all has to sign the agreement and pay the fees. One item will surely be that whoever you give/sell the data to is also bound by the same agreement.
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Without copyright, I don't see how any licensing mechanism could work. If some third party started to distribute digital charts for free, FAA/Aeronav could not charge them with violating a license to which the FAA is not a party. Even if the FAA could figure out the second party involved that it did execute a license with that distributed the charts to the third party, it couldn't do anything to them since the second party did not violate the license. The only way the FAA could get at the third party is by an onerous license clause effectively making all the second parties somehow responsible for third party violations.

That kind of onerous licensing just wouldn't fly - and I imagine would be contested in court as an attempt at pseudo-copyright.
 
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