Free Our Data Campaing UK + New Guardian Article

[Tracey P. Lauriault-2]

Free our data
Ordnance Survey challenged to open up
The inventor of the world wide web wants access to Ordnance Survey data - and the freedom to manipulate it as he sees fit
http://society.guardian.co.uk/e-public/story/0,,1737011,00.html
SA Mathieson and Michael Cross
Thursday March 23, 2006
The Guardian

Another excellent article on the topic of freeing ordinance survey data.  The article refers to Berners-Lee speech given at Oxford last week, where he argued that to develop the semantic web one needs data!  The article can be found here:

See the new Free our Data Campaing for the UK:
Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/

Free Our Data: the blog
A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/index.php

[Daniel Haran]

This is amazing. Jo Walsh wrote to alert the people on the list of
geo-discuss about it too:
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/geo-discuss/2006-March/000142.html

He makes a very interesting point:

"""
  Noncommercial means that public geodata won't be able to generate
  added economic value through reuse. The late Peter Weiss' study on
  pricing public sector information is very strong on this point:
  http://www.primet.org/documents/Weiss%20-%20Borders%20in%20Cyberspace.htm

  Economic Potential of PSI in Europe and US
  In EUROs    EU    US
  Investment value  9.5 billion    19 billion
  Economic value    68 billion    750 billion
"""
(PSI here stands for Public Sector Information)

This to me is a very strong argument for making data free, even for
commercial uses. 750 Billion in economic activity should raise enough
taxes to recoup the investment by a wide margin. Even dividing these
numbers by 10 to reflect the Canadian economy's size, we could assume
following the US example would produce EUR 75- 6.8 (say, 7) = EUR 68
Billion dollars. That's how much economic growth we're missing out on
because of counter-productive cost-recovery policies. (We're not 1/10
of Europe, the growth is not automatic, etc... there's a lot of
factors but still, even if it's off by a wide margin, that's a LOT of
money).

For those of you interested in such matters, Jo is trying to round
people up to work on geodata licensing.

Cheers,

Daniel.

On 3/23/06, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:

>  Free our data
>  Ordnance Survey challenged to open up
>  The inventor of the world wide web wants access to Ordnance Survey data -
> and the freedom to manipulate it as he sees fit
> http://society.guardian.co.uk/e-public/story/0,,1737011,00.html
>  SA Mathieson and Michael Cross
>  Thursday March 23, 2006
>  The Guardian
>
>  Another excellent article on the topic of freeing ordinance survey data.
> The article refers to Berners-Lee speech given at Oxford last week, where he
> argued that to develop the semantic web one needs data!  The article can be
> found here:
>
>  See the new Free our Data Campaing for the UK:
>  Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them
>  http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/
>
>  Free Our Data: the blog
>  A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK
> and its citizens
>  http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/index.php
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
>
>
>

[Tracey P. Lauriault-2]

:-)
Daniel Haran wrote:

This is amazing. Jo Walsh wrote to alert the people on the list of
geo-discuss about it too:
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/geo-discuss/2006-March/000142.html

He makes a very interesting point:

"""
  Noncommercial means that public geodata won't be able to generate
  added economic value through reuse. The late Peter Weiss' study on
  pricing public sector information is very strong on this point:
  http://www.primet.org/documents/Weiss%20-%20Borders%20in%20Cyberspace.htm

  Economic Potential of PSI in Europe and US
  In EUROs	    EU		    US
  Investment value  9.5 billion	    19 billion
  Economic value    68 billion	    750 billion
"""
(PSI here stands for Public Sector Information)

This to me is a very strong argument for making data free, even for
commercial uses. 750 Billion in economic activity should raise enough
taxes to recoup the investment by a wide margin. Even dividing these
numbers by 10 to reflect the Canadian economy's size, we could assume
following the US example would produce EUR 75- 6.8 (say, 7) = EUR 68
Billion dollars. That's how much economic growth we're missing out on
because of counter-productive cost-recovery policies. (We're not 1/10
of Europe, the growth is not automatic, etc... there's a lot of
factors but still, even if it's off by a wide margin, that's a LOT of
money).

For those of you interested in such matters, Jo is trying to round
people up to work on geodata licensing.

Cheers,

Daniel.

On 3/23/06, Tracey P. Lauriault [hidden email] wrote:
  

 Free our data
 Ordnance Survey challenged to open up
 The inventor of the world wide web wants access to Ordnance Survey data -
and the freedom to manipulate it as he sees fit
http://society.guardian.co.uk/e-public/story/0,,1737011,00.html
 SA Mathieson and Michael Cross
 Thursday March 23, 2006
 The Guardian

 Another excellent article on the topic of freeing ordinance survey data.
The article refers to Berners-Lee speech given at Oxford last week, where he
argued that to develop the semantic web one needs data!  The article can be
found here:

 See the new Free our Data Campaing for the UK:
 Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them
 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/

 Free Our Data: the blog
 A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK
and its citizens
 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/index.php


_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca



    

_______________________________________________
CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
[hidden email]
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca

  

[Stephane Guidoin]

> See the new Free our Data Campaing for the UK:
> *Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them*
> http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/


This news has also been published in France :
http://www.internetactu.net/?p=6404

Stef