Google Earth Pro is now free... but there is something odd.

[Colin S]

tl;dr Version:
 
Here's a quick one: I have recently dealt with people who claimed that owning a copy of Google Earth Pro (until recently, $399/yr) would give you the rights to export and reproduce the imagery, in our cases for scenery development. However, upon reading the Google Earth Pro License I can find no such information. As far as I can tell, the limitations imposed by using Google Earth Pro are equal to those imposed by using the free version; the only difference being a few features not available in the free version.
 
If anyone can dissect the Legalese of the license and extract a piece of evidence pertaining to the redistribution rights of licensees, please post here with a direct quote of the Terms of Use.
 
For the first time, I'm not trying to nail someone with this. No, I'm not in the process of trying to prove that someone has created illegal scenery. I'm done caring about that. I'd simply like to understand the terms of use.
 
Thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help with this matter.
 
But more in depth:
 

1.5 Restrictions. Customer, except as expressly permitted in an Addendum, will not (and will not allow any third party to): (a) use or reproduce, modify, create derivative works, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reverse engineer the Products and Services or attempt to reconstruct or discover any source code, underlying ideas, algorithms, file formats or programming interfaces of the Products and Services by (except and only to the extent that applicable law prohibits or restricts reverse engineering restrictions), or incorporate the Products and Services into or with other technology; ( distribute, sell, sublicense, rent, lease to third parties or otherwise make the Products and Services functionality available to third parties except as set forth herein; or © remove or in any manner alter any Products and Services identification, proprietary, trademark, copyright or other notices.

 

 

Also, in the Google Earth Pro addendum:

 

5.1 General. Unless otherwise provided in the Documentation or agreed in advance and in writing by Google, Customer will not, and will not allow others to: (a) display any advertising in connection with its use of the Services; ( extract any Google Content to be used outside of the Services; © use, distribute, or sell any Google Content outside of the Maps; (d) incorporate or embed Google Content or components of the Services into any of Customer's products or services that it sells to third parties; (e) permit the sharing of End User accounts between End Users or (f) offer the Services, or any Customer products, services, or solutions based upon the Services, to End Users directly or embedded in another such product for a fee. Section 5.1(f) does not prohibit Customer from offering professional services to its customers in support of its Software implementation.

 

I enjoy reading this stuff, however this was one of those licenses that felt like a lot of circular reasoning was used and I often lost track of what I was even thinking at the time. 

 

Any help is appreciated

[hobofat]

Customer, except as expressly permitted in an Addendum, will not

 

Unless otherwise provided in the Documentation or agreed in advance and in writing by Google, Customer will not

 

The restriction offers the possibility of an addendum to the contract, i.e. an additional agreement between Google and the individual customer. The addendum you quoted is one such addendum. In this case, it does not alter the original terms away from the very clear "Customer will not" language. I am of the opinion that your opinion is correct.

[Jim Kallinen]

Its really no different then Google Earth the normal free version. The only way you will get pro features out of it is buy the plug-ins to get those features

[Captain_Jack]

I think anyone who has flown over the 3D city scenery in Google Earth on a high-end machine can't help but be impressed at the possibilities for sceneries, it's jaw droopingly realistic looking and it's good on frame rates. I mean it just blows P3D, XP, all of them out of the water. Exporting that into XP is the holy grail of scenery dev IMO.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Captain_Jack