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Download Responsibly

https://blog.geofabrik.de/index.php/2025/09/10/download-responsibly/
55•marklit•2h ago

Comments

holowoodman•1h ago
Just wait until some AI dudes decide it is time to train on maps...
M95D•21m ago
Map slop? That's new!
jbstack•8m ago
AI models are trained relatively rarely, so it's unlikely this would be very noticeable among all the regular traffic. Just the occasional download-everything every few months.
cadamsdotcom•1h ago
Definitely a use case for bittorrent.
john_minsk•47m ago
If the data changes, how would a torrent client pick it up and download changes?
hambro•41m ago
Let the client curl latest.torrent from some central service and then download the big file through bittorrent.
maeln•14m ago
A lot of torrent client support various API to automatically collect torrent file. The most common is to simply use RSS.
Klinky•11m ago
Pretty sure people used or even still use RSS for this.
extraduder_ire•7m ago
There's a BEP for updatable torrents.
Gigachad•58m ago
Sounds like someone people are downloading it in their CI pipelines. Probably unknowingly. This is why most services stopped allowing automated downloads for unauthenticated users.

Make people sign up if they want a url they can `curl` and then either block or charge users who download too much.

userbinator•54m ago
I'd consider CI one of the worst massive wastes of computing resources invented, although I don't see how map data would be subject to the same sort of abusive downloading as libraries or other code.
Gigachad•50m ago
This stuff tends to happen by accident. Some org has an app that automatically downloads the dataset if it's missing, helpful for local development. Then it gets loaded in to CI, and no one notices that it's downloading that dataset every single CI run.
aitchnyu•37m ago
Can we identify requests from CI servers reliably?
IshKebab•13m ago
You can identify requests from Github's free CI reliably which probably covers 99% of requests.

For example GMP blocked GitHub:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/28/microsofts_github_gmp...

This "emergency measure" is still in place, but there are mirrors available so it doesn't actually matter too much.

rossant•49m ago
Can't the server detect and prevent repeated downloads from the same IP, forcing users to act accordingly?
jbstack•10m ago
See: "Also, when we block an IP range for abuse, innocent third parties can be affected."

Although they refer to IP ranges, the same principle applies on a smaller scale to a single IP address: (1) dynamic IP addresses get reallocated, and (2) entire buildings (universities, libraries, hotels, etc.) might share a single IP address.

Aside from accidentally affecting innocent users, you also open up the possibility of a DOS attack: the attacker just has to abuse the service from an IP address that he wants to deny access to.

aitchnyu•39m ago
Do they email heavy users? We used Nominatim free api for geocoding addresses in 2012 and our email was required parameter. They mailed us and asked us to cache results to reduce request rates.
crimsoneer•37m ago
I continue to be baffled the geofabrik folks remain the primary way to get a clean-ish OSM shapefile. Big XKCD "that one bloke holding up the internet" energy.

Also, everyone go contribute/done to OSM.

omcnoe•15m ago
It's beneficial to the wider community, and also supports their commercial interests (OSM consulting). Win-win.
teekert•18m ago
Whenever I read about such issues I always wonder why we all don’t make more use of BitTorrent. Why is it not the underlying protocol for much more stuff? Like container registries? Package repos, etc.

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