Today in The Guardian: readers respond to the start of the campaign
Today’s Guardian Technology has a followup article based on readers’ responses to the previous article. Called “What price information”, it gives a picture of the reaction – which has almost all been favourable. Got a comment? Please go ahead.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Information World Review joins Free Our Data campaign (28 August 2007; score: 31.49%)
- Today in The Guardian: Berners-Lee talks; who should we be chasing? (23 March 2006; score: 28.15%)
- Locus trade association responds to Free Our Data (4 April 2006; score: 22.93%)
- PDFs are bad for open government, says Sunlight Foundation in US (7 November 2009; score: 21.89%)
- Infoworld writes on Free Our Data campaign; know about address data? (14 April 2006; score: 19.79%)
March 16th, 2006 at 10:39 am
This also highlights the need to abolish restrictive copyright.
See:
“Why we must cut the costly Crown Copyright”
http://www.yrtk.org/2005/costly-crown-copyright/
Cheers,
Heather
March 16th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
This is a noble cause and hope you include address information in with the campaign. After being involved in GIS for 20 years in both education and local government, I have always felt innovation and development has been stifled on the issue of Copyright. Then being involved with negotiations on the Mapping Services Agreement and the doomed National Spatial Address Infrastructure (NSAI), I found OS and Royal Mail stamping Intellectual Property Rights on data. The bureaucracy of form filling is amazing. Today I have to fill in a form, to OS, on how many visitors to the Council’s website used a search engine that queried address data (Address Point or any derived dataset), and then I will have to raise an invoice for £1.25. Inefficient throughout.
March 16th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
One suggestion – add a page/tab to this site, with an online petition.
Have a line near the masthead in the morning edition such as:
“have your say – sign the petition >>G2 P2″
Do the same in your ticker on the main page, and run with it for a couple of weeks. If you publicise it properly and make sure it’s not just pitched at developers you may be surprised at the amount of signatures you can take to the ODPM.
M
March 16th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Not to mention the numerous communities out there who would just jump at the chance to get involved. Try:
Adbusters Network (www.adbusters.org)
Indymedia UK (www.indymedia.org.uk)
Activist Network (www.activistnetwork.org.uk)
It’s not all tree-hugging, chained-to-downing-street stuff – this is the thin end of a wedge that prises open a larger issue, IMHO.
March 16th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
As someone who is in the business of working with earthscience and geographic information, i thoroughly support your campaign.
Rather than trying to attack the agencies that collect, use and release information sets paid for directly or indirectly by general taxation, it might be better to mount an attack based on commercial anti-competive practices legislation (UK and EU). At the root of this is the concept of Crown Copyright and the trading fund status of soem of the organisations in question.
Also, several of these trading funds and other governement agencies, enjoy special privelidges such as access, financial resources, and information not available to most other privately owned businesses.
An example is British Geological Survey and Ordance Survey personal undertaking surveying work having the legal right of access to all land in the UK, be that land private properety or not. No other organisiations, bar some major utilities, enjoy this right.
Enough for now
Weatherman
March 16th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
The reason why Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and Google open up their data via REST, SOAP or other APIs is simple.
They get to add value to data that would otherwise sit idle.
If someone comes along with a nifty new idea for using their data they benefit all ways.
If the website takes off the higher traffic means the website owners have to cut a deal to get the number of transactions per day they need.
If it doesn’t, then it might inspire someone else to re-hash the data in a way that is succesful.
Either way the companies that allow open data inspection through APIs get to cherry pick the best ideas on how to use their data – and they don’t have to spend a penny – the data is there, they have programmers to hack up the necessary interfaces, and they get to add value to their data.
Its got to be a win-win situation for everyone – data gets opened – data gets re-hashed in new ways – value is added to data – public get new services – some of which make more money for everyone concerned.
March 16th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
A very useful link to add to the site would be the United Kingdom (1988) Copyright Act
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_1.htm
Of Which the most relevant section is:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_11.htm#mdiv163
This is opinion only…but the 1988 Copyright Act is a is a double edged sword for organisations that enjoy its protection. Had these organisations been privately owned the information they have collected and products they have produced would have been in copyright for a very much greater period.
For government owned/controlled organaisations the critical clause is concenrs when Crown Copyright expires. ie 50 years after the end of the year of the date of first publication of the document/product.
With respect to the Ordance Survey
….a consequence of this is that much relatively modern, high precision, post-war mapping by the OS of the UK, is now or will soon be out of Crown copyright. Many OS Seventh 1″ to the mile and Provisional Series 1:25000 maps are merely reprints with minor revions of the initial version first published in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. For some sheets, the last revision was as late as the early 1970’s.
On many such maps the date of publication is given along with the date of the last revision (usually top right of mapo legend). In this case the date of publication indicated on the map, thus constitutes the date of =first= publication, even though the map may state that it shows information from later revsions.
A similar argument can be made wrt to the holdings of the British Geological Survey.
Obviously, an expert legal opinion would be required to persue this idea further. So, is there a commercial/copyright lawyer in the house?
Cheers.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
I suggest you add the NIMSA Annual Report to the articles list. It’s at http://www.iggi.gov.uk/publications/pdf/NIMSA_odpm_plan_039607.pdf
March 16th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Can I add a note of scepticism.
There seems a lot of scope here for the average citizen as taxpayer and consumer to lose out. Funding the data collection from the exchequer, rather than through trading funds, means that the burden of paying for the collecting and processing falls back on the taxpayer.
But then the plan is to give it free to private sector businesses – because you can bet it won’t be available in formats that the man in the street can utilise directly. In turn, businesses will provide lots of products that they will then sell to us.
This seems to me suspiciously like the ordinary citizen getting to pay for it twice, while private sector business doesn’t pay anything.
I would fully support the idea that business should get the necessary freedoms to use the data in innovative ways, and not be subject to unnecessary restrictions – but what is proposed here is not giving the information back to us citizens, it would be simply a government subsidy towards the “raw material” costs of some businesses. I fail to see why this sector should be favoured above any other.
In any event cheap raw material costs are rarely a stimulus to efficiency and innovation. It is countries where labour costs are high that have made the greatest investment in industrial robots and other labour saving efficiencies.
I think what these companies really need is not free data, but the freedom to use it in any way they wish once they have bought and paid for it.
Les J
March 16th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Excellent points, Les. One possible argument is that since many companies could access the data, the prices they could charge to end-users would be pushed down by competition. (We could hope.)
Also, one might imagine that the existence of the data would lead people – academics? – to write open-source programs (or cheap programs) to interpret it. It happened for web servers… geographic data… lots of things.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
The root problem is that we are subjects not citizens. Crown Copyright ought to be renamed Our Copyright & Ordnance Survey ought to be rechristened Our Survey.
Realistically this wont happen but I hope your camapign works if only because there must be a compelling business case that the cost of recycling government money – trading funds – around HMG, LA & Next Steps agencies at least equals any ‘profit’ being made.
Our American cousins have got it right with their freedom of information. This is direct off the USGS website (http://nationalatlas.gov/products.html)
“The raw data we use to generate maps can be downloaded for free. Vector files are available in Shapefile and SDTS-TVP formats. National Atlas geostatistical data are in DBF format. Our images are GeoTIFF files. We bundle and compress raw National Atlas data to facilitate delivery on the World Wide Web, so you’ll need decompression software.”
We need the same thing in the UK.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Les,
Re software to make use of datasets from oS and other sources.
Sorry. This is just not so.
You can purchase an incredibly powerful geographic information for $245 US dollars, see
http://www.manifold.net/
There are freeware and similar products from other manufacturers too.
There is now no longer any need to spend thousands or tens of thousands of pounds worth of software from ESRI, MapInfo or others to do the same as can be achieved for the price of a typical prosumer or small business Microsoft application.
If Manifold System GIS and other software is not affordable for the average computer owning person to use, then I dont know what is. Anyone who is willing to spend a £150 can now use geospatial data from the Ordncance Survey, USGS and many other sources. The world is your oyster.
So no excuses there i am afraid. :-)
March 17th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Industrial robots (or tractors or whatever) aren’t an innovative and efficient use of that expensive labour itself, but a substitute for it, so the comparison with information for which there is no substitute doesn’t make any sense to me. Furthermore, the argument that the man in the street won’t be able to utilise the data directly is tautologous, and though I don’t know much about GIS, as Charles Arthur suspected and weatherman has already partially demonstrated, it seems to be a rather redundant argument too:
http://grass.itc.it/
http://opensourcegis.org/
BTW, a similar debate was had in the US some time ago over access to the National Weather Service data:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/27/0216251
March 17th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
P.L Hayes alludes to meteorological information…
This is a rather different kettle of fish compared to conventional geospatial information sets. What makes meteorological information different is the volumes of observational data collected and weather prediction model output. It is probably fair to say that this is of the order of hundreds if not thousands of gigabytes daily, from each forecasting centre. Also, the file structures used, especially for trnasmitting for model output are highly structured complex (GRiB files) and are not generally read by most GISs. However, this should not be a barrier to the release of this information.
March 18th, 2006 at 12:49 am
I am considerably re-assured by the responses to my first posting.
It appeared possible that most of the benefits might accrue to businesses and few to the ordinary taxayer/consumer. So I wondered if the drivers behind this camaign were actually business interests and profit motives rather than a truly grass roots campaign.
March 18th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Les
I write as both a private citezen and as someone who is endeovouring to start a business supplying geographical, geological and meteorological information, products and services. At presnt the market in theis county is rigged against me providing such information for the UK, as it is not possible to compete with state-financed agencies or state-subsidised agencies that are run as if they are private businesses.
So, I fail to see anything wrong with businesses benefitting from the free availability of government information holdings, the collection and creation of which was funded by the taxpayer, be that taxpayer a private citizen or a business.
Moreover, the economic benefits to the nation from Government releasing its information holdings are one of the main arguments for it doing so, as it would provide the basis of a host of new businesses and allow existing ones to compete of a level field. These businesses would pay for the release of this information by adding value to this information, generating income and revenue from their taxation to the Treasury. If businesses were not permitted to benefit from such released information, there would be little justification for Government releasing it, as doing so would not be economic, since the facilities to store and provide this information on demand, are not likely to be cheap. Recouping the expense of transmitting this information through taxation is the only way that releasing such information would be economic.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
The irony of where we are is poignant to me.
The data is collected by the government, and then the government sells it to businesses through the OS and Royal Mail.
The OS is loss making, so in essence the general tax payers are financing the data for businesses, whilst giving Treasury some if it.
ALL GOE_SPATIAL DATA SHOUDL BE UNDER Freedown pof Information, ad hosted on a web server. It stinks currently.
March 19th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Geard I entirely agree!
As anyone who would like create or who runs a business providing or using geospatial and environmental information knows, the current status of the OS and other funholders is causing a gross distortion of the market place, as it has been rigged in their favour by legislation.
However, although the Ordnance Survey is one of the main offenders under discussion it is not the only one. So perhaps we should not get too focused on the OS. Insterad we need to attack the root of the problem, not the branches.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:05 pm
I know bashing OS may be fun for some people and this blog seems to be providing a good forum for that.
Surely there are a few people in the GI world who can articulate the benefits of the OS role in our industry? Speak up or the argument may be distorted by a few individuals or companies with their own axes to grind.
Can i suggest that it would be helpful if the individuals posting here indicated what their personal interests are so that readers can judge their opinions accordingly.
To start the ball off – I work for a GDC, GI solutions business working with many public sector clients. Most of our clients seem to be more concerned with improving the quality and currency of OS data than reducing the price that they pay.
Nothing is free – you just end up paying in a different way
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Steven,
This thread about the Ordance Survey is not about the Ordnance Survey per se, OS bashing a debate abouts its role as the national mapping agency of the UK. It is about its quasi-commercial status and the condtions under which it is forced to operate, together with the distorting and retarding effect this has on the geographic information industry in the UK.
I for one as a geologist and propretor of a newly formed business wishing to supply and use geographic information do not wish to see either the OS disbanded or privatised. Only a national agency can perform what the OS does.
However, I do resent the current situation, where taxpayers money directly or indirectly finances the OS’s operations as a so-called trading fund, and the fruits of its work are not made freely available to the taxpayer in return. For anyone else in the GI business, the current status of the OS is monopolistic and prevents other businesses supplying on a level playing field, the types of GI services or products currently supplied by the OS.
March 24th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Nicholas
We both agree that the work OS does is valuable – the discussion should be about funding models.
It costs a lot of money to have data collection at masterMap levels, this can be wholly funded by the tax payer and then given to all users foc, it can be partly funded by the treasury and partly through usage charges or wholly funded by usage charges etc. I think Bob Barr has proposed a further model based on the costs of updates rather than a license for the existing data.
I prefer models that do not leave OS budgets in the hands of the chancellor and thus subject to changing political. We need to distinguish between the NIMSA element of OS funding which is a central grant and the license fees received from LG and other public sector bodies for usage, I am sure that if the Locus group companies or some others had responsibility for national mapping they would want to charge the public sector for their products and services (as do ESRI, MapInfo et al)
March 24th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Steven,
I can appreciate your concerns about the funding for the OS being in the hands of the Treasury. But the way to ensure that the OS and other orgs are not subject to political financial pressures, is to show that the economics of financing the OS etc from central governemnt coffers, creates greater revenues to the Treasury via taxation of companies that profit from using this data, than the alternative(s).
March 27th, 2006 at 8:38 am
An Open Letter
19th March 2006
Dear Charles, Michael
Reference article: What Price Information? Published in the Guardian Thursday 16th March 2006 reference URL http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1731386,00.html
The statement reported in your article that:
“there are moves afoot within the European Union to entrench the concept that geographical data, in particular, should become the “property” of the government mapping agencies by which it is collected, and that they should be able to charge uncapped amounts for providing it to citizens”.
is misleading in that it is not factually correct and as such does not support your campaign. The campaign maybe improved by showing how Member State policy such as the UK policy on Information Trading of public sector data and the presence of Trading Funds influences policies and Directives at the European Union level. The position with respect to the proposed INSPIRE Directive is as follows:
The European Commission on the 23rd July 2004 published the “Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE)� which can be obtained from the following URL:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2004/com2004_0516en01.pdf
On page 2 within the explanatory memorandum, section 1. Introduction the European Commissions view is quite clear as to the objective of the proposal, which is stated as:
The Commission has therefore decided to submit to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union the present proposal to make interoperable spatial information readily available in support of both national and Community policy and to enable the public to access to this information.
The publication of the proposal initiated the European Co-decision process where by the both the European Parliament and the European Council (which represents the member States) consider the proposal and form their common positions. The first reading in the European Parliament was completed in June 2005. The European Parliament position shows strong support for the principles of openness. The Council of Ministers, which represents the Member States, adopted a common position on the 23rd January 2006, which limits the rights of access to data on grounds of Intellectual Property Rights, and the cost-recovery practices of data producers. The Council’s adopted position can be obtained from URL: http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/05/st12/st12064.en05.pdf
The European Commission published a communication concerning the common position of the Council on the 10th February 2006 which can be obtained from the following URL:
http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/06/st06/st06334.en06.pdf
The communication from the Commission to the European Parliament pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the adoption of a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE), states within Section 3.1 the following:
The Commission cannot accept the common position with regard to a number of issues. The most important of these issues include the following:
The Commission does not agree that intellectual property rights held by public authorities should be among the list of grounds for limiting public access to spatial data.
The Commission also does not agree that the possibility of limiting access should be extended to cover discovery services referred to in Article 18(1)(a) of the Commission proposal, since this would mean that the public would not even be able to learn of the existence of the data.
The Commission maintains that the view services referred to in Article 18(1)(b) of the Commission proposal should be made available free of charge, and cannot accept the Council position allowing public authorities to charge and license for these services under certain conditions;
The common position makes the obligation to avoid obstacles to data sharing, as well as the rules for ensuring harmonised conditions for Community institutions and bodies, subordinate to the right of public data providers to charge and license other authorities for their data. It is also vague about the obstacles to be avoided. It will therefore be ineffective in achieving one of the key aims of the proposal, and could even have the effect of increasing obstacles to the sharing of data.
Finally, while the Commission agrees that the provisions relating to data sharing do not affect the existence or ownership of public authorities’ intellectual property rights, it does not see the need for this to be stated in the text of the directive. If such a provision is to be included, it should be made equally clear that these rights must be exercised in accordance with the other provisions.
The proposal of the Commission will need to find the support of both Parliament and Council. The second reading of the proposed INSPIRE Directive is now underway in the European Parliament Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI) which will be considering 43 amendments on the 21st March 2006 in Brussels. A good number of these amendments if accepted will restore the proposed directive almost to what it was in June 2005 when the European Parliament adopted its common position at the end of the first reading. The European Parliament is scheduled to complete the second reading in June 2006 after which Council will then consider the proposed directive. It is the position of the Council, that is the national governments, that is currently limiting potential access to information on legal or economic grounds.
Here in the UK the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is the lead Department on the proposed INSPIRE Directive. Unfortunately DEFRA to-date has not been open or transparent with respect to the proposed INSPIRE Directive. The House of Commons Select Committee on European Scrutiny in its fifth report published in October 2005 at section 24 sets out the UK Government position. The Select committees report can be found at the following URL:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/newhtml_hl?DB=semukparl&STEMMER=en&WORDS=draft%20directive%20establishing%20an%20infrastructure%20for%20spatial%20information&ALL=&ANY=&PHRASE=%22Draft%20Directive%20establishing%20an%20infrastructure%20for%20spatial%20information%20%22&CATEGORIES=&SIMPLE=&SPEAKER=&COLOUR=red&STYLE=s&ANCHOR=muscat_highlighter_first_match&URL=/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmeuleg/34-v/3426.htm#muscat_highlighter_first_match
Minister’s letter of 6 September 2005
24.6 We have now received a letter of 6 September 2005 from the Minister, in which he says that, in the period following the submission of his supplementary Explanatory Memorandum, officials had made considerable progress in negotiation over the UK’s key concerns, which had been addressed in the political agreement reached by the Environment Council on 24 June. In particular, this had involved ensuring that the proposal was compatible with UK government policy on information trading by public authorities and fully respected intellectual property rights (including those of public authorities themselves); did not compromise public security, national defence, or international relations; was compatible with the existing legal framework;[75] and was built on and complemented Member States’ infrastructure, rather than replacing them with a disproportionately expensive harmonized model.
24.7 The Minister adds that, at its first reading on 7 June, the European Parliament had adopted 49 amendments, many of which were intended to improve the clarity of the Commission’s proposal. However, the UK was unable to support four of these amendments, which, although intended to secure a first reading agreement with the Council (and acknowledging that public authorities can obtain financial compensation from those using their data), did not cover its concerns sufficiently. He says that it will be necessary to work closely with the Parliament during the second reading, but that it is very unlikely that this will take place under the UK Presidency.
Conclusion
24.8 Whilst it would have been better if the information now supplied by the Minister had been provided in his letter of 20 June, we are content to clear the document on the basis of this explanation.
75 Including directive 2004/4/EC on public access to environmental information, and Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, competition and intellectual property law.
© Parliamentary copyright 2005 Prepared 27 October 2005
The above extract clearly shows that the UK Government policy on information trading has influenced the proposed INSPIRE Directive. As such it is the UK Government amongst other Member States that have similar information trading policies that need to be persuaded to change their position with respect to the proposed INSPIRE Directive.
The above I hope clarifies the situation and that it shows how UK Government policies are reflected at the European Union level.
In respect to the other point made in your article, quoting those who oppose the directive because it is not liberal enough, (which effectively puts them in the same camp of those national data producers who oppose it because it is perceived to threaten their business model) that:
Businesses and citizens whose lives are affected by spatial data services every day, have had no voice in the creation of Inspire,
I would suggest that the track record to-date of the European Commissions over the past three years during the process of developing the proposal and defining its details has been open and included a public consultation in 2004 as well as the engagement of hundreds of stakeholder organizations representing local and regional interests, the public and private sector, self-organising their contributions through spatial data interest communities. These communities are in fact through their experts helping the Commission in drafting the details of the proposed Directive, and these drafts will also be open to public consultation. This level of stakeholder participation has been welcomed by many across Europe, and is a far cry from the impression conveyed by the statement above. If one compares this to the position here in the UK and the DEFRA track record of openness then the statement may well hold especially if one considers that in the absence of openness requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 seeking information on the UK Government position on INSPIRE have also resulted in little or no information being divulged.
The full details of the Commission proposal, Council position, and participatory approach being used are available on the INSPIRE web site http://inspire.jrc.it
Regards
Chris (Corbin)
Brighton
East Sussex
The above was originally emailed on Sunday 19th March 2006 and copied to the European Geographic Information Policy forum (EGIP – european-gi-policy@jrc.it ) and copied to the European Parliament ENVI Committee INSPIRE rapporteur Ms. F. Brepoels and the European Commission INSPIRE Rapporteur Mr.P.Wicks