740 15th St NW, Fifth Floor

Washington, D.C. 20005

8 August 2018

Comments on fee recovery/cost sharing for Landsat data

LandsatDataPolicy@usgs.gov

The following comments are submitted on behalf of Mapbox, a leading provider of map and
location services and large-scale digital imagery processor, in regard to the ongoing
investigation of the advisability of applying a fee recovery or cost sharing scheme to Landsat
data. We hope that these comments will prove useful to the Landsat Advisory Group (LAG) as
they pursue their work on this matter.

Mapbox processes petabytes of satellite and aerial imagery every day, including data from the
Landsat program. In addition to our commercial products we source and supply imagery for
humanitarian purposes and organizations, notably including Oxfam, the Red Cross, and the
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Our experience in this field has made us keenly aware of
the value of open imagery data and Landsat data in particular. We believe that attempting to
impose fees on access to Landsat data would be unwise for a number of reasons.

Landsat’s value is immense

The Landsat program is unique: no comparable remote sensing platform offers the same
archival depth, making it an irreplaceable resource for analyses of long-term trends. But
Landsat’s value extends far beyond its duration. To pick just one example, a 2012 USGS study
of Landsat’s impact on preserving water quality in Northeastern Iowa estimated the program’s
annual benefits to be in excess of $800 million for the study area alone1. This estimate concerns
a single use case in a relatively small area. Clearly, the total benefits produced by the Landsat
program are enormous.

Thanks to the Landsat Data Distribution Policy, many of these benefits accrue outside of
government. Landsat data is made available without charge to users of Amazon Web Services2
and Google Cloud Services3, two of the most popular cloud computing platforms. Imagery
derived in part from Landsat is also available to all of Mapbox’s users, who now number more
than 400 million per month.

1
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2013/3003/fs2013-3003.pdf
2
https://registry.opendata.aws/landsat-8/
3
https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/public-datasets/landsat
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Estimating the full social, scientific, and commercial value of the Landsat dataset is impossible,
but it is obviously very large. Indeed, when the Office of Science and Technology Policy
released the 2014 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations Report, the 300 subject matter
experts polled ranked Landsat the third most-impactful earth observation system out of a field of
1454.

Past attempts at monetization have failed

Any consideration of a change to the Landsat data distribution status quo must grapple with the
failure of past attempts to privatize or otherwise monetize the program’s data.

The Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act of 19845 allowed for the selection of a
contractor who would be empowered to collect revenue from the sale of Landsat data. It also
placed prohibitions on the unauthorized redistribution of that data by parties receiving it. Prices
rose substantially and data quality suffered6, necessitating another act of Congress to undo this
mistake: the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 19927, which noted as a supporting rationale
that “[t]he cost of Landsat data has impeded the use of [program data] for scientific purposes,
such as for global environmental change research, as well as for other public sector
applications.”

A related effort in 2002 attempted to convert the program into a public/private partnership, under
which data rights would presumably be held by private entities. Public details are scarce, but
this effort also faltered, reportedly due to a lack of commitment from the private sector​6​.

These failures are no guarantee that similar efforts would be unsuccessful. But it is reasonable
to expect that such a change would be at least as disruptive to the community of Landsat users
as past initiatives, and likely more so given the democratization of access to Landsat data as
transfer and processing costs have fallen. Similarly, the potential difficulty of remediating
another mistake is likely greater than it was in 1992, since passing bills in Congress has
become empirically harder. Given the possibility of failure and heightened stakes, it is
reasonable to insist that those proposing changes make a full account of past failures and why
their proposal would not result in a similar outcome.

Fees inhibit use

It is difficult to estimate how much productive use might be lost if fees were applied to Landsat
data. But it is instructive to note that USGS reports that when Landsat data first became freely
available, downloads increased a hundred-fold8. The actual impact on use would presumably

4
https://remotesensing.usgs.gov/2014_national_plan_for_civil_earth_observations.pdf
5
https://www.congress.gov/bill/98th-congress/house-bill/4836
6
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/ssbsite/documents/webpage/ssb_185421.pdf
7
https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-bill/6133/text
8
https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/LDCM_Brochure_Dec2012.pdf
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depend in part on the specific price level set for the data. But any fee is likely to lead to a
substantial reduction in use.

This is because of the significance of transaction and other indirect costs. Under a fee regime
users must pay not only the listed cost of the data, but the costs associated with losing the ease
and flexibility of the decentralized, payment- and license-free status quo. The significance of
these concerns should not be underestimated: the Landsat Advisory Group (LAG) has noted in
the past that “[data availability] without use restrictions and at no cost [is] an important
consideration for researchers and agencies relying on Landsat.”9 As will be discussed below,
the imposition of such costs is a necessary consequence of any viable fee system.

Charging for Landsat data may be impractical under current policy

Barring a statutory change, a proposal to impose fees to Landsat data would presumably be
governed by OMB Circulars A-13010 (“Managing Information as a Strategic Resource”) and A-25
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(“User charges”).

Circular A-130 states that “[a]gencies shall not, unless specifically authorized by statute,
establish fees [for public information] that exceed the cost of dissemination to the public.”
Circular A-25 states that “[c]harges will be made to the direct recipient of the special benefit
even though all or part of the special benefits may then be passed to others”12.

These policies are likely to complicate any fee proposal. Today, a large amount of Landsat data
use occurs in a decentralized fashion, through redistribution via intermediaries like Amazon
Web Services, which charges users for computational processing but not for storage of the
data. This is how Mapbox accesses Landsat data. It is clear from the language in Circular A-25
that if a fee structure were applied to this arrangement under existing policy, the government
could collect fees solely from redistributing parties such as Amazon and not from downstream
users; and, further, that those fees could only cover the cost of dissemination of the data to
Amazon, not a more expansive cost recovery or market price scheme. It seems unlikely that the
revenue recouped from such a limited number of parties could justify the costs associated with
such a change.

9
"Recommendations for Possible Future U.S. Global Land Data Collection Missions Beyond Landsat 9"
https://www.fgdc.gov/ngac/meetings/april-2018/ngac-landsat-future-missions-recommendations-paper.pdf
10
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/OMB/circulars/a130/a130revised.p
df
11
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Circular-025.pdf
12
Circular A-25 defines a special benefit as a service or privilege that accrues to an identifiable recipient
beyond those enjoyed by the general public. We believe that any plausible system by which fees were
charged in exchange for access to Landsat data would make that access constitute a special benefit
under Circular A-25.
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A fee system necessitates limits on redistribution

It is therefore more plausible that the government would be obliged to pursue a policy by which
steps were taken to become the sole, central supplier of Landsat data to end users, ending the
scheme by which parties like Amazon redistribute the data. This change would expand the
number of parties that could be charged fees, but it would carry significant implications and
complexities.

Landsat data users are unlikely to favor such a change. The status quo offers obvious cost
advantages. And path dependence--the phenomenon by which parties tend to favor existing
practices due to the costs associated with change--would be another significant factor in their
calculus. It is therefore unlikely that users would voluntarily abandon the present system of
Landsat data redistribution in favor of a centralized scheme that would make a fee system
viable. Some mechanism to affirmatively end the current system of data redistribution would
have to be pursued.

Landsat data does not currently include an intellectual property right that could facilitate an end
to redistribution, so one would have to be created. Creating such a right could potentially be
done via changes to the vendor contracts governing the Landsat program. It may be wise for the
LAG to review the existing contract(s) with a procurement expert. But given the precedent set by
the Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act of 1984 and its inclusion both of a revenue
right for contractors and a prohibition on data redistribution, it seems probable that statutory
changes would be necessary.

Limiting redistribution of Landsat data has undesirable consequences

Intellectual property protections are a kind of monopoly right. Their function is fundamentally
rooted in the restriction of use. Some reduction of use should therefore be expected to occur if
any meaningful IP right is introduced. Many of today’s Landsat use cases may be abandoned
due to incompatibility with these new restrictions, potentially including Mapbox’s own use. Many
important uses of Landsat data intrinsically include redistribution of the images or derived data.
Preventing redistribution would not merely impede all businesses that sell Landsat data, but
would make many of them impossible.

It is likely that similar dynamics would apply to noncommercial users of Landsat data. The LAG
has previously noted that “[the imposition of] substantial restrictions [...] on the distribution of
Landsat data to public agencies and research organizations [...] would invalidate many of the
Landsat benefits and run counter to the goals of the Sustainable Land Imaging program.”​9

Those users that remained would incur legal costs as the changed intellectual property
environment was necessarily scrutinized by lawyers. We encourage the LAG to consider, with
specific estimates, whether the resulting costs, including deadweight loss, are outweighed by
the gains enjoyed by the government under a fee system.

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Any such evaluation should also include the new indirect costs associated with ending the
current system of data redistribution via cloud platform providers. The availability of Landsat
data for direct processing on cloud computing platforms democratizes access to the data by
obviating storage and associated distribution costs, which are typically substantial due the size
of the Landsat archive. It also simplifies such processing by minimizing the time and technical
investments associated with ETL tasks13, which can be significant, particularly for institutions
that have not already made large-scale investments in imagery processing systems and
personnel.

It is unclear if a market exists to support charging for Landsat data

The LAG has previously noted that “demand for landsat imagery is overwhelmingly derived from
the research and public government sectors, and it is unclear if a large enough commercial
demand exists to support [applying access fees to Landsat data], especially when Sentinel-2
data is freely available and can be substitutes for Landsat imagery in many applications.”​9
Although this observation was made in the context of a hypothetical future Landsat
public/private partnership, the dynamics it describes are likely to be applicable to any attempt to
charge fees for access to Landsat data.

A fee regime would add costs to the Landsat program

Finally, we note that while shifting use from today’s rich system of data redistribution would
certainly reduce overall use of the data, it is also likely to greatly increase the number of data
transactions that the Landsat program must manage directly. This will result in new costs
associated with data distribution, accounting, customer service and transaction processing. We
believe these costs should also be thoroughly investigated and weighed by the LAG in the
course of making a recommendation regarding the imposition of fees. This is especially true in
light of Circular A-25’s requirement that “[e]very effort should be made to keep the costs of
collection to a minimum.”

In closing

We welcome the LAG’s attention to this matter and appreciate your consideration of these
comments. Landsat has resoundingly proven its value to the American people and the world.
While we believe that a fee or cost recovery scheme is the wrong path forward for Landsat, we
share the LAG’s primary goal of preserving the program’s viability, utility and vitality.

Thomas Lee
Policy Lead, Mapbox
tlee@mapbox.com

13
Extraction, transformation and loading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load
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