> I believe that Drew's primary point is that BA is republishing this and therefore, more or less standing behind it as their position as well.
Not necessarily. I flew on Emirates a couple of months ago and when opening the flight map there was a disclaimer saying that the company used third-party map services and that they did not necessarily reflect the company's position on territorial disputes.
This makes sense in terms of PR: if the company did edit those maps, it would need to take a position on certain issues that might please some passengers but upset others.
Well you can "not necessarily" all you want, but Drew was not flying Emirates, did not find any disclaimers whatsoever, and Drew spells it out in plain language for their blog entry:
Given that British Airways is the proud flag carrier of the United Kingdom I assume that this is indeed the only off-the-shelf copyrighted material included in this display, and everything else was developed in-house without relying on any open source software that might require a disclosure of license and copyright details. For similar reasons I am going to assume that all of the borders shown in this map are reflective of the official opinion of British Airways on various international disputes.
Now this may indeed not be the case for British Airways, but I think Drew's point is clear that whatever they're publishing on their maps is going to be taken as "what they believe" at the very least, and yes, a disclaimer may stave off some sort of legal challenge to that, but disclaimers are rather weak in the face of more compelling evidence.
Not necessarily. I flew on Emirates a couple of months ago and when opening the flight map there was a disclaimer saying that the company used third-party map services and that they did not necessarily reflect the company's position on territorial disputes.
This makes sense in terms of PR: if the company did edit those maps, it would need to take a position on certain issues that might please some passengers but upset others.