Protecting Contents of KML files

[Nick_Russill]

Does anyone know if it is possible to somehow protect the contents, specifically the latitude / longitude inside a kml file?

The reason is that we have spent a long time researching a geospatial database of locations and do not want to make it widely available in its raw format to people stripping out the data from the KML file.

I know the kmz format is binary and not readable, however it is possible to <save as> kml and then see the raw data for the placemarks.

Thanks to anyone who can help!

Nick

[Red_Rover1]

I think you’re stuck. You could try to encrypt the KMZ which is just like a ZIP file but then I don't think Google Earth (GE) would be able to recognize it. Like you hinted, if they did each one by hand they could recreate your data also but it would be harder.

Maybe someone else has some ideas.

[Latitude64]

Quote:

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The reason is that we have spent a long time researching a geospatial database of locations and do not want to make it widely available in its raw format to people stripping out the data from the KML file.

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While I can understand your sentiment, it's sort of a mute point, people can just write down the coordinate of your placemark even if they wouldn't somehow have access to the raw data.

If you are indeed this concerned, then you have the option to only make the KML/KMZ accessible to selected few people, or you could implement a scheme to charge for KML/KMZ access through your web site.

There is currently no way to encrypt KML/KMZ files so that the end-user has no access to the raw data.

[mcshea98]

FYI,

KMZ files are readable. They can be opened with WinZip, PKUnzip, etc...

[Nick_Russill]

Thanks for the comments so far. Our databases contain up to 8000 locations that we spent a long time compiling, so the thought of releasing all the coordinates in a kml or kmz file is not so desirable!

I see the point that it's possible to write them down anyway so I guess if there is no solution to my question yet, it is unlikely to be one.

If anyone else has any ideas though, please let me know.

Nick

[oneiros]

I think you're out of luck Nick. While it's certainly possible to encrypt the contents of a .zip file (and thus a .kmz file) GE provides no support for this and to be honest, it's probably against the spirit of the project.

If you're worried about people abusing your data then I think you'll just have to restrict access to it. I suspect this is not what you want though; presumably you'd like to let people view your placemarks but not retrieve their actual locations en masse...

[PenguinOpus]

To be fair, it's not really against the spirit of the project. If data suppliers have proprietary data they want/need to give to their customers, as long as the suppliers are licensed Google Earth Pro users (and/or Fusion) then we would like to enable them, but... the current client version doesn't really have any support for restricting the ability to save/share the data (but then, neither do web browsers).

Workarounds include providing limited versions of your data:
- render an image overlay of the information for the local area.. sharing one image won't scrape your whole database (but limits what info you can provide)

- offer a VBR network link that only refreshes the points in the current view (and doesn't offer all of them when you zoom out (require some limited view before offering points)). This would limit scraping/sharing to the points in the current view or the user would have to maually save a bunch of different folders to try to accumulate more of your data.

- link out via a URL in the balloon description to your password-protected website/database for the deeper information

Obviously, these make it somewhat harder to use for your end user, but if the choice is between that and nothing...