I have a large amount of data (thousands of polygons) that I want to share with people through my site. I want them to be able to view the polygons, and due to the large amount of data, I am not worried about them stealing this data through the displayed google map. However, since the kml file must be accessible to google, a proficient coder could discover the url of the kml files and simply download the entire file. Is there any way to restrict access to these kml files only to google so no outside people can get to them. I have tried .htaccess, but I can't figure out how to restrict access to everyone but google. Any ideas?
[GIS] protecting kml access to google only
google mapskml
Best Answer
You could provide as a WMS layer in which case the end users will only have a picture of your data. And with 1000s of polygons it will be faster to download too.
Otherwise I don't think there is any way to display the KML on Google with out allowing general access to your data.