There’s a new website for techie-minded walkers, bikers and runners who want to share their GPS routes with other users.

routeswap.com is a searchable site that enables lovers of the outdoors, who prefer to trust their navigation to George Bush’s satellites rather than a piece of paper and a magnetic needle, to download and upload favourite routes.

But there’s a catch. routeswap.com is one of a growing number of sites that insist on a ‘rights grab’ of any contributions. It’s a worrying development and one being forcefully resisted by professional photographers’ groups and organisations such as the National Union of Journalists.

In a nutshell, if you upload anything to the website, not only do you not get paid, which is fair enough for a sharing network, but you assign your copyright and intellectual rights to the website. In other words, you give away, forever, any rights for payment you might ever want. The website owners are free to sell on your routes, photographs, etc and make money out of them, while you will get nothing.

Furthermore, you have to indemnify them that there’s nothing untoward with your contribution, and if any legal action were to follow as a result, you’d have to pick up the bill. As a final slap across the creative cheek, you’ll be signing away what’s called moral rights – the right to have your name credited and to have final say on what happens to your work.

Doesn’t sound that great a deal then, eh? Picture-sharing sites such as Flickr insist only on you granting a licence to them for the period your material is on the site, and this lapses if you remove them. Other information-sharing sites such as Wikipedia operate under a GNU license (the idea originated among American software sharers, hence the American spelling) which enables free copying of content. Indeed, grough’s underlying software is GNU, as you can see at the bottom of each of our pages. We never try to snatch people’s copyright and always get permission before using other people’s material.

That said, if you’re happy kissing goodbye to any rights you might have had, you can upload GPS routes to the site. There are already some on the site. Expect more to come. Registration is necessary before uploading.