Defending Mountain Project and its contributors' content

In the interest of transparency, the text of a recent letter to the founder of OpenBeta can be found below. Questions can be directed to support@mountainproject.com.

As the COO of onXmaps, Inc., parent company of the Mountain Project, I am requesting your help in bringing a serious matter to a swift, amicable resolution.

It has come to our attention that your OpenBeta website (openbeta.io) is displaying content scraped from our Mountain Project website (mountainproject.com). The example below, one of many that we found, shows identical language in the description of Powell River in British Columbia.

https://openbeta.io/area/4624f40a-b644-5256-9287-aa19002ce00f/powell-river

https://www.mountainproject.com/area/106189297/powell-river

As you know, the climbing community is a remarkable and engaged group of individuals. Because their lives often depend on it, the climbers of the Mountain Project community–and Mountain Project administrators in particular–have dedicated an incalculable effort to ensuring that content on the Mountain Project website and app is accurate and effective.

When users contribute to the Mountain Project, they retain ownership of that contributed content. Contributors have the right to decide where their content is posted, and they have given Mountain Project a license to display it. This license does not extend to OpenBeta or to any other platform. In fact, various members of the Mountain Project community have shared their opinions on OpenBeta’s use of Mountain Project data here, openbeta.substack.com/p/ope….

Honoring the generous and invaluable contributions from the climbing community, onXmaps has devoted significant resources to curating, administering, and maintaining the Mountain Project website as a free resource for the climbing community. Accordingly, we have protected the content on our website as a database by registering it with the U.S. Copyright Office. A copy of the certificate of registration is attached for your reference.

Although the Mountain Project website is accessible without charge, it does not mean the content is free for the taking. Copying and republishing Mountain Project content without permission violates the copyright protections of both onX and Mountain Project contributors. Furthermore, your scraping of content from our website also violates our terms of use, which can be viewed here, adventureprojects.net/ap-terms. In particular, Section 8(g) states that users who access the website must not “use spiders, crawlers, robots, scrapers, automated tools or any other similar means to access the Service or substantially download, reproduce or archive any portion of the Service.”

We ask that you remove all Mountain Project content from the OpenBeta website and any related websites, databases, apps, or other resources by October 5, 2024. This request includes but is not limited to the descriptions of various locations and climbs. Furthermore, we expect that you will stop violating our terms of service and will immediately cease all efforts to scrape content from any of onXmaps, Inc.’s various websites, including mountainproject.com.

Please note that it is not our intent to shut down your OpenBeta website or otherwise disrupt your business. We simply seek to respect the rights of our contributors, honor the relationship between Mountain Project and its contributors, and protect the value of Mountain Project content.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, please confirm that you will comply with our requests, and let us know when you expect this work to be completed. If OpenBeta chooses not to address all of our concerns in a timely and complete fashion, onXmaps reserves all rights to resort to any and all legal and practical means to enforce its rights and interests.

Best Regards,

Joshua Spitzer, COO onXmaps, Inc.