http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2007/04/absolutely-anyone-can-play-and-profit-canada-makes-mapping-data-free-for-any-use/ A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to non-personal data about the UK and its citizens Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:05:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2007/04/absolutely-anyone-can-play-and-profit-canada-makes-mapping-data-free-for-any-use/comment-page-1/#comment-26860 serendipityoucity :: Free our Data The blog - Quoted :: April :: 2007 Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:37:39 +0000 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=118#comment-26860 [...] I am a big fan of the Free Our Data: the Blog by the Guardian in the UK. The Blog has been reporting Canadian initiatives 1 2 3 and I responded in an email to the Absolutely anyone can play and profit: Canada makes mapping data free for any use and well it got posted onto the Blog in the following article In print: Canada’s maps go free - but here’s more background: it’s not so simple.I talked to Michael from Civicaccess.ca some weeks ago that one of the things i would like to do in 2007 is some journalistic writing on the topic of access to data in Canada.  At the moment there is no journalism or editorials at all on that topic in this country.  After reading the Free Our Data: The Blog since it started, being all happy to see all that CANCon there, teaching a cartography course on the topic and well talking about this stuff for years, i think i am ready to move into that direction and this would be way better if done with other folks! There are some fantastic people in this country working on that topic, some NGOs who really need data, some hacktivists who want to play with data and make tools, young startup companies whose progress is impeded or big companies who want a data monopoly on some public datasets, government monopolies on the production and communities who just wanna study their neighbourhoods or propose new stuff but currently cannot as the data is just too darned expensive or accompanied with too restrictive a use.  I think it would be awesome to have intelligent interviews with these people and to feature some of the great initiatives and problems in this country at all scales and to speak to people on tons of topics like Creative Commons licensing, the copyright of databases, issues related to page scraping, mashup data sharing, community dbases/portals, postal code and MP finding, and to have debates from all sides on data as a public good.  The CivicAccess List is so rich with both tool builders, data geeks and policy wonks and it would be great for some of that content at some point to be in the public sphere.Lets see what happens!  Comments » [...] [...] I am a big fan of the Free Our Data: the Blog by the Guardian in the UK. The Blog has been reporting Canadian initiatives 1 2 3 and I responded in an email to the Absolutely anyone can play and profit: Canada makes mapping data free for any use and well it got posted onto the Blog in the following article In print: Canada’s maps go free – but here’s more background: it’s not so simple.I talked to Michael from Civicaccess.ca some weeks ago that one of the things i would like to do in 2007 is some journalistic writing on the topic of access to data in Canada.  At the moment there is no journalism or editorials at all on that topic in this country.  After reading the Free Our Data: The Blog since it started, being all happy to see all that CANCon there, teaching a cartography course on the topic and well talking about this stuff for years, i think i am ready to move into that direction and this would be way better if done with other folks! There are some fantastic people in this country working on that topic, some NGOs who really need data, some hacktivists who want to play with data and make tools, young startup companies whose progress is impeded or big companies who want a data monopoly on some public datasets, government monopolies on the production and communities who just wanna study their neighbourhoods or propose new stuff but currently cannot as the data is just too darned expensive or accompanied with too restrictive a use.  I think it would be awesome to have intelligent interviews with these people and to feature some of the great initiatives and problems in this country at all scales and to speak to people on tons of topics like Creative Commons licensing, the copyright of databases, issues related to page scraping, mashup data sharing, community dbases/portals, postal code and MP finding, and to have debates from all sides on data as a public good.  The CivicAccess List is so rich with both tool builders, data geeks and policy wonks and it would be great for some of that content at some point to be in the public sphere.Lets see what happens!  Comments » [...]

]]> http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2007/04/absolutely-anyone-can-play-and-profit-canada-makes-mapping-data-free-for-any-use/comment-page-1/#comment-26778 Free Our Data: the blog » Blog Archive » In print: Canada’s maps go free - but here’s more background: it’s not so simple Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:10:37 +0000 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=118#comment-26778 [...] A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens « Absolutely anyone can play and profit: Canada makes mapping data free for any use [...] [...] A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens « Absolutely anyone can play and profit: Canada makes mapping data free for any use [...]

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