Interesting: ’severable improvements’ and derived data and Ordnance Survey
An interesting blogpost by cloudsourced about “Why OpenSpaces and GeoVation Vexes Me So“, talking about the key question – generally – about trying to build stuff using the Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace API: why does OS want to demand that what you build with it becomes OS’s property?
Derived Data. The single most stifling element of the Ordnance Survey’s licensing regime is the practice of claiming copyright over any data derived from an OS base map. This has massive implications to anyone in a public sector body, or anyone who wishes to use their data. Any geographical data created by a public sector body (who almost exclusively use OS data) is not their’s to do what they like with, it is claimed by the Ordnance Survey under their copyright. Local authorities cannot share the location of its rubbish bins with the public, does this sound absurd to anybody else? Derived Data stops dead any effective sharing of public geographic data, and any innovation that would come from it.
This is a topic we’ve gone over and over. Interestingly, cloudsourced links to the terms & conditions of the OpenSpace API, which goes like this in section 5.4 on Derived Data:
5.4.1 You may create Derived Data, and You may permit End User’s to create Derived Data, in connection with Your Web Application. In the event that You or any End User creates Derived Data, such Derived Data shall be owned by Us
Flipping heck! Same old rubbish. But hang on, what’s this?
save that if any Derived Data is created which is a severable improvement (as defined by Commission Regulation (EC) No 772/2004, known as the Technology Transfer Block Exemption) of the Ordnance Survey Data then such Derived Data shall be owned by the person or entity creating the same.
Now the “severable improvement” bit caught my attention suddenly. Never noticed that before. But what is a “severable improvement”? It’s explained a little by crschmidt, who links to a discussion on the OpenStreetMap mailing list, where Richard Fairhurst describes it as
In practice, then, I read that to mean that if you use the Sustrans webmapping to find out where the routes go, this information is solely copyright Sustrans (who might be more willing to give permission) and not OS, even though it’s delivered through the medium of a derived work. So, if you had the wiggly lines already (whether mapped by GPS or NPE), you could tag them as NCN routes if Sustrans were ok with that.
My reading: if you’ve got something that didn’t come from OS, and which you can stick onto one of its maps wholesale, and remove wholesale, then it’s not – and cannot be – claimed as derived data by OS. But that doesn’t help if you don’t have it in some separate form; if you use OS as a base, then it’s derived data.
As Ed Parsons (formerly OS, now Google) points out in the comments
There is a relatively simple way to define derived information, and that is to ask what is not… If i create a new feature that is not represented as a feature on the original map/dataset it cannot be derived from it. If the OS would just agree with this it world more things forward.. but then we have been asking for this for years… At some point you have to move beyond cock-up territory to conspiracy…
We like Ed’s definition. It makes sense. I wonder quite what the effect on OS would be of adopting that definition. How sizeable a reduction in licence fees?
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Trading Funds report: is PSI the new electricity and roads? (14 March 2008; score: 19.35%)
- Departments weigh in on select committee Ordnance Survey enquiry (23 July 2007; score: 14.68%)
- Power of Information blog suggests what should be freed up; Geographic Strategy seems to agree (28 November 2008; score: 13.76%)
- ...and APPSI comes out swinging (11 March 2010; score: 12.94%)
- Are the Show Us A Better Way winners safe from Ordnance Survey? (12 November 2008; score: 11.38%)
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
Ed’s definition of derived data still does not help all us poor local authorities who’ve been busy for the last 20 years creating data derived from OS Mapping. The main issue is that we have no way just to license this derived data on it’s own…ie without requiring a full blown OS license as made available to us in the Mapping Services Agreement.
I was one of the few lucky local gov’t people involved in the steering of how the new UK Map product went. As a product it contains everything and more that the current mapping services agreement provides (only for authorities in urban areas at the moment..granted) but as an Authority we are unable to use it until we’ve got some mechanism to license our historic derived data.
Up until a while back we had no choice in mapping. Now we have a choice from OpenStreetMap for smaller scale mapping (although parts of ours are now looking like 1:10,000 scale maps) through to UK Map for large scale mapping. Whilst we have no way to license historical derived data from the Ordnance Survey, they effectively have a monopoly which in light of the new products available which we could use, is now a case of being anti-competitive.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Ok, so is something emerging from this blog post and for Chris Osborne’s post (linked above).
1. Blatant plagiarism of OS maps should not be allowed – it should be illegal for people to use OS data to creative competing non-OS street maps.
2. It should be possible for 3rd parties to associate their data with map features from the OS dataset and publish that data in relation to the OS map and a 3rd party should be able to view that data in the context of an OS map without concern from the OS (Richard Fairhurst’s point). We believe this is the meaning of the ’severable improvements’ clause. In effect this is saying that a 3rd party information can be associated with a TOID and treated as separate from OS content associated with the TOID (geometry, name, road classification etc). I understand from a conversation in the past with an OS director that this is acceptable to them – possibly it needs to be clarified by them.
3. 3rd parties should be able to geo-code their own data an OS map and derive a locations from it (Ed’s point) so long as the consequences of doing so are not to create a new mapping dataset that is in competition with the OS. The resulting geocodes should be the property of the 3rd party. Geograph seems to have (sort of) got that agreement from the OS for their 1 million ccbya geocoded photographs. http://blog.dixo.net/2006/10/23/geograph-creative-commons-and-ordnance-survey-revisited/ There is greyness here, but a lot of good healthy uses would be allowed that are currently apparently illegal.
4.Point three should be retrospective (Jame’s point), allowing parties that have knowingly or unknowingly derived data from OS products in this way should be be no doubt that they are free to use the data and license it as the see fit.
5.All of the above points are in the context of the current trading fund model and should be sorted as a matter of urgency – longer term and wider debates about ‘freeing data’ are separate and have a longer time-frame and should be kept separate.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
[...] still continued resistance to openness, though the gap between the two extremes of FreeOurData and the UK Government’s Cabinet Office is closing and closing fast. Of course, [...]