elections canada
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> see: http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/ProjetsCiviques
> > Shall i start up spot and some notes about visiblepolitics.org on the > civicaccess wiki somewhere? yeah! I have to go offline shortly and wont be back online till Monday. h. > > cheers > t > > Hugh McGuire wrote: >> If I read this page correctly: >> http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0193U >> >> it costs $500 to get a list of postal codes sorted by electoral >> ridings (not sure how you can then use that data? ... but surely such >> "data" isn't copyrighted? it's just the formatted data right? I mean >> you can't copyright "the list of Canadian postal codes sorted by >> federal ridings," can you?) >> >> also of note, I am sure many of you know about it, the "data >> liberation initiative" of statscan: >> http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/dli.htm >> >> This is my favourite part from their documentation: >> "When the cost of Statistics Canada data increased in the 1980's, >> researchers, students and instructors at Canadian post secondary >> institutions made increased use of American, British and even Chinese >> data. This cheaper foreign data did not always reflect the Canadian >> situation, and there were often gaps in the data." >> >> and I sent them this email: >> >> "Hello, >> >> Do you have any plans in the works to liberate all that data to the >> rest of us? Why only post-secondary institutions? What about citizens >> of Canada? >> >> Thanks, >> etc." >> >> >> On Feb 2, 2007, at 3:30 PM, Cory Horner wrote: >> >> >>> Daniel Haran wrote: >>> >>>> Well, I first checked the copyright, which seems OK for non-profit >>>> use. >>>> Second, I tried to replace the postal code parameter in the URL, >>>> but >>>> no dice. Non-geek translation: they make it difficult to check >>>> different postal codes. Since no list that I know is public domain, >>>> you'd have to more or less try each one to find the 500,000+ >>>> that are >>>> valid. Could take a while. >>>> >>>> d. >>>> >>>> >>> Hey folks, >>> >>> I'd like to move howdtheyvote/quivotequoi in this direction too. >>> Since >>> we're already becoming a storing house for political information, >>> why >>> stop at votes? >>> >>> In the past i've aggregated US zip codes from a web form -- doing >>> the >>> same for Canada wouldn't be difficult. One of the things high on my >>> queue is hooking up geocoder to the geogratis electoral districts >>> shapefile; this means we can return the electoral district / mp, etc >>> when given a postal code or lat/long coordiates (and gives us the >>> opportunity to find a location by clicking on a map). >>> >>> The main question is what can we redistribute? I think we are safe >>> just >>> providing these things as a service (with a big disclaimer at the >>> bottom >>> outlining the limitations of reuse, pointing at the backwards >>> policies >>> of the source data). Allowing people to download the whole thing is >>> probably okay, but we might have to attach a big ugly license to it. >>> >>> If people are willing to help scrape the information, i'm willing to >>> host/present it. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Cory. >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess- > discuss_civicaccess.ca |
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In reply to this post by Daniel Haran
Daniel Haran wrote:
> Second, I tried to replace the postal code parameter in the URL, but > no dice. Non-geek translation: they make it difficult to check > different postal codes. Since no list that I know is public domain, > you'd have to more or less try each one to find the 500,000+ that are > valid. Could take a while. There have been various screen scraping techniques over the years, aimed either at http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&source=sm or http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/FindED.aspx With parl.gc.ca you need to have a second database that matches their "magic numbers" for what they are using for ridings to electoral district ID's. This is easy enough to build, but changes each time the MP changes. The elections Canada site does use EDID's, but is also deliberately trying to make it extremely hard to screen scrape. They also randomly change the site from time to time to kill off older tools. The Lobby module for Drupal has a screen scraper in it, but because of changes on government sites it would need to be tweaked to work. It uses the "http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&txtPostalCode=" script, which doesn't often work during elections. http://drupal.org/project/lobby Because the US doesn't have crown copyright, this type of data is in the public domain and can be included in core modules of CMS's such as http://drupal.org/project/location I get a question about what we are doing on the digital-copyright.ca site every once in a while, and my most recent answer is at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/6575 Shortform: I'm using a database purchased (by a customer of mine) from Statistics Canada. I even set up a meeting with them, and they weren't interested in trying to have this information released. I've written letters to MPs, but received no reply. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/search/node/PCFRF This is a very tiny database that would be very appropriate to have released, but it requires some political will. Statistics Canada folks told me that Elections Canada is not a customer of their product, meaning Elections is duplicating effort because of this nonsense "cost recovery" scheme. Both are based on information they have to purchase from Canada Post which links postal codes to geography, and then match that to electoral districts. When doing screen scraping or using the database it is important to realize this is not a one-to-one mapping. A postal code can match anywhere from 0 to 6 different electoral districts given overlap. Details are at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1607 -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" |
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In reply to this post by Stéphane Zagar
Stéphane Zagar wrote:
> Arg, I was about to write the same :p This is great. Follow the thread. They will direct you to Statistics Canada which will point you to http://www.statcan.ca:8096/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0193X "Latest issue: June 2003 $2,900.00" It comes with a draconian EULA that doesn't allow you to share, even in a not-for-profit way. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1062 Hopefully this will get more recent documentation on the issue. I also hope we can turn this into a petition and letter writing campaign, or part of a larger one, given it is quite embarrassing that this isn't freely available to the public! -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" |
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In reply to this post by Russell McOrmond-2
Russell, did you get any reply for your 2005 letter?
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1060 Oh, and you've been doing amazing work on this. Thanks. On 2/3/07, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote: > The Lobby module for Drupal has a screen scraper in it, but because > of changes on government sites it would need to be tweaked to work. It > uses the > "http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&txtPostalCode=" > script, which doesn't often work during elections. > http://drupal.org/project/lobby Nice. I just had a browse at the souce; looks like parl.gc is easier to access than the elections.ca website. Still, what a mess of HTML (that's more a sign of incompetence than malice though). Given the number of possible postal codes, it would take 14 days and 2 hours to try each one if trying one per second. Gives us plenty of time before the next election, I should think :) Technically, rather than keeping this kind of module in drupal, it seems to me that this should live as a web-service. The database wouldn't have to be complete for it to become useful, since missing postal codes could be dynamically fetched. Opening up the web service for non-profits and keeping the requests to a trickle should be consistent with the elections.ca TOS (I couldn't find anything for parl.gc.ca). Does that sound reasonable? Are there any NGO's that would use this? d. |
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In reply to this post by Stéphane Zagar
The contributors tables available at Elections Canada site do not
contain the same set of data that is available for each contributor. In other words, I can download a table which will list the names and amounts of all contributors to political parties but I cannot put a postal code or city to those contributors. But if I click on Elections Canada for information about an individual contributor, I can retrieve postal code, address and city. I have asked EC about this and they say they do not provide the geographic data about each contributor, not out of respect for privacy laws, but because they believe telemarketers would find such information useful. EC staff have never objected when I asked for the more complete tables of contributors. As the EC main office is a few blocks from mine, they've been happy to provide it on CD and actually walk me through the table layout. So my message would be: If you want some data from EC -- ask them for it! They're pretty easy to work with and they want to be pro-active in making this data available for non-commercial use -- at least that's been my experience. On 2/2/07, Stéphane Zagar <[hidden email]> wrote: > Hugh : for the finance data, if you ask for data per contributor, you can > have, for example, all data for all parties (only parties, not election > finance rounds), for all periods (2005-2006) in one file (something like > 9.5MB with means many many data). You can do the same for each general > election : ask for contributor for all parties, all ridings. > > If we have to retrieve 1 set of data for each quarter and each general > election, it,s not that bad. > > Cocnerning the tool for the ZIP code/riding, same conclusion as Daniel, no > obvious way to retrieve that for what I can see. > > > On 2/2/07, Daniel Haran <[hidden email]> wrote: > > On 2/2/07, Hugh McGuire <[hidden email]> wrote: > > > > For the other elements, I don't know. A mapping zipcode/riding > > > > would be very useful for example > > > elections canada provides this search tool: > > > http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/FindED.aspx?L=e > > > > > > so the data is there... can we get it out tho? > > > > > > > > > > h. > > > > Well, I first checked the copyright, which seems OK for non-profit use. > > > > Second, I tried to replace the postal code parameter in the URL, but > > no dice. Non-geek translation: they make it difficult to check > > different postal codes. Since no list that I know is public domain, > > you'd have to more or less try each one to find the 500,000+ that are > > valid. Could take a while. > > > > d. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 > > -- David Akin ------------------- http://www.davidakin.com |
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In reply to this post by Daniel Haran
Daniel Haran wrote:
> Russell, did you get any reply for your 2005 letter? > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1060 No. He's obviously not in the same position since the election, and I haven't been re-sending all my letters to the new people as they get the position. The Minister responsible for democratic reform has changed a few times in the last year+. > Oh, and you've been doing amazing work on this. Thanks. On the radio (Montreal, but streaming online) in an hour to talk about Vista, Net Neutrality, and copyright reform. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3678 > Given the number of possible postal codes, it would take 14 days and 2 > hours to try each one if trying one per second. Gives us plenty of > time before the next election, I should think :) What I did in the past was just cache the data whenever a lookup was done. That way I wouldn't be hammering the server (which could get you into trouble), and the requests would be spread out over time. The downside being that no 'new' data could come if they modify rules/etc to shut me down. Check out the 'ectools' subdirectory in the CVS for http://sourceforge.net/projects/campaigntoolz/ . It uses XML-RPC to separate a server that does the caching/scraping from a client which would be part of the website. It's old now, but might be worth looking at to start from. I don't want to discourage you from doing this, but --- make sure you are prepared for any legal complaints. Copyright is a funny thing in that it matters what the source is. While it is true that the information you are gathering are 'facts', that doesn't mean that there isn't a copyright on the specific database of facts. The fact being not under copyright means that they can't complain if you come up with the information yourself (buy the Canada Post geographic data, do your own matching to Elections Canada geographic data, etc), but they can complain if you get it from them (directly or indirectly). Politically it would be stupid for the government to sue you for this because of the bad publicity -- but I doubt you would get any lawyer to give that type of advise. The side of me that spends time with lawyers wants to warn you, but my political activist side wants to strongly encourage you! BTW: I don't republish what I am using not because I'm worried about being sued, but because it wouldn't be me that would be sued if I did given it is my customer and not me that is the one who purchased the data. If I was the one that purchased it, I'd make it available to others via an XMLRPC call. Where I have defied what I'm told the law is comes from republishing the results of ATIP requests http://www.flora.ca/A-2004-00246/ . I'm told the law isn't clear about whether I'm allowed to do this, and most likely I'm infringing crown copyright. To be honest, I think it would be a sad state if the Government of Canada sued private citizens for infringing crown copyright on ATIP requests. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" |
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In reply to this post by David Akin
David Akin wrote:
> So my message would be: > If you want some data from EC -- ask them for it! They're pretty easy > to work with and they want to be pro-active in making this data > available for non-commercial use -- at least that's been my > experience. When I was looking for the postal code to EDID lookup table I started with Elections Canada. They said that since Statistics Canada offers this publicly, they can't "cut into that business" and offer it themselves. Next time you speak with them, is it possible to try to steer them away from that policy? If EC was offering their version of this database freely (Just share it with us -- we'll then publish it to others at no cost to them) then that would solve the problem. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" |
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In reply to this post by Russell McOrmond-2
is anyone else struck by the idiocy of having to spend so much time
and energy trying to extract such innocuous data as a list of postal codes referenced to electoral districts? methinks civicaccess.ca has a lot of work ahead! On Feb 5, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Russell McOrmond wrote: > Daniel Haran wrote: >> Russell, did you get any reply for your 2005 letter? >> http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1060 > > No. He's obviously not in the same position since the election, > and > I haven't been re-sending all my letters to the new people as they get > the position. The Minister responsible for democratic reform has > changed a few times in the last year+. > >> Oh, and you've been doing amazing work on this. Thanks. > > On the radio (Montreal, but streaming online) in an hour to talk > about Vista, Net Neutrality, and copyright reform. > > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3678 > >> Given the number of possible postal codes, it would take 14 days >> and 2 >> hours to try each one if trying one per second. Gives us plenty of >> time before the next election, I should think :) > > What I did in the past was just cache the data whenever a lookup > was > done. That way I wouldn't be hammering the server (which could get > you > into trouble), and the requests would be spread out over time. The > downside being that no 'new' data could come if they modify rules/ > etc to > shut me down. > > Check out the 'ectools' subdirectory in the CVS for > http://sourceforge.net/projects/campaigntoolz/ . It uses XML-RPC to > separate a server that does the caching/scraping from a client which > would be part of the website. It's old now, but might be worth > looking > at to start from. > > > > I don't want to discourage you from doing this, but --- make > sure you > are prepared for any legal complaints. Copyright is a funny thing in > that it matters what the source is. While it is true that the > information you are gathering are 'facts', that doesn't mean that > there > isn't a copyright on the specific database of facts. The fact > being not > under copyright means that they can't complain if you come up with the > information yourself (buy the Canada Post geographic data, do your own > matching to Elections Canada geographic data, etc), but they can > complain if you get it from them (directly or indirectly). > > Politically it would be stupid for the government to sue you for > this > because of the bad publicity -- but I doubt you would get any > lawyer to > give that type of advise. > > The side of me that spends time with lawyers wants to warn you, but > my political activist side wants to strongly encourage you! > > > BTW: I don't republish what I am using not because I'm worried about > being sued, but because it wouldn't be me that would be sued if I did > given it is my customer and not me that is the one who purchased the > data. If I was the one that purchased it, I'd make it available to > others via an XMLRPC call. > Where I have defied what I'm told the law is comes from > republishing > the results of ATIP requests http://www.flora.ca/A-2004-00246/ . I'm > told the law isn't clear about whether I'm allowed to do this, and > most > likely I'm infringing crown copyright. To be honest, I think it would > be a sad state if the Government of Canada sued private citizens for > infringing crown copyright on ATIP requests. > > > -- > Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> > Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property > rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ > > "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware > manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or > portable media player from my cold dead hands!" > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess- > discuss_civicaccess.ca |
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> methinks <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://civicaccess.ca/" target="_blank">civicaccess.ca has a lot of work ahead!
It's the least we might say.... If someone could help me to sum up (I'm not sure to understand everything in the previous mails) : What's the real problem with district localization (ZIP and EDID) - is it because it's covered by a copyright that make it impossible to use even if we get it ? - is it because they do everything they can to hide it but if someone figure out how to get we could use it ? Let's say we find a way to build a mapping database (district/edid/zip), do we risk anything ? Steph |
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Stéphane Zagar wrote:
> What's the real problem with district localization (ZIP and EDID) > - is it because it's covered by a copyright that make it impossible to > use even if we get it ? Zip is US, and in the USA there is no crown copyright and thus they don't have that problem. In Canada the problem is that Statistics Canada has crown copyright on the data and a "cost recovery" scheme where they sell the data under a draconian EULA. Elections Canada has their own version, but doesn't publicly release it because Statistics Canada sells it. > Let's say we find a way to build a mapping database (district/edid/zip), > do we risk anything ? If we did our own work of matching the geographical database, we can then release the information under any license we want (or dedicate to the public domain). This would become the third known group creating this mapping (Elections Canada, Statistics Canada, and then us). Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely distributing the results of our work. The most efficient thing to have happen is for one of the two government departments to make their version available under a royalty-free license. Charge if they want to send the data to us, but one organization could fund that and then freely distribute it to everyone else. -- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media player from my cold dead hands!" |
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On 2/6/07, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do > this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a > fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely distributing > the results of our work. When I asked Canada Post about it, they said they wouldn't allow the creation of such a derivative data-set. If that's not a good legal interpretation (any lawyers here?), we would be able to buy Canada Post's data, and if there's someone with GIS knowledge that can process that data against the parliamentary district boundaries, we could put the postal code to electoral district database in the public domain. Sadly, postal codes change quite often- but that solution would still be cheaper than buying a single license for makepovertyhistory. d. |
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from the start it seemed to me that civicaccess.ca needed some very
specific, small projects to work on. This one (postal codes and electoral districts) seems very interesting for many reasons: 1. simple: everyone understands what this data is, and why it might be useful to citizens 2. crazy: everyone in the world will think it crazy that this data is not freely available to citizens 3. press: it is so simple and crazy that I bet there could be a good tizzy of press created about this - certainly on the web: no doubt boing boing will be interested, but others as well, hopefully some papers in canada 4. given 1,2,3 it is an ideal test-case for why civic access to data is important, and why canada needs to update its stupid policies I have sent out a number of emails to various Canadian agencies in the last few days, with some answers I'll share with you guys soon. I got a call back from Elections Canada, and I will ask about liberating financial data - and I will ask too about the postal code data. I'll keep y'all posted. Longer-term, one thing civicaccess.ca could do is try to start these little discrete data liberation projects, and then get them all linked together through one aggregating site (ie. a revamped civicaccess.ca). cheers, Hugh. On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Daniel Haran wrote: > On 2/6/07, Russell McOrmond <[hidden email]> wrote: >> Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do >> this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a >> fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely >> distributing >> the results of our work. > > When I asked Canada Post about it, they said they wouldn't allow the > creation of such a derivative data-set. > > If that's not a good legal interpretation (any lawyers here?), we > would be able to buy Canada Post's data, and if there's someone with > GIS knowledge that can process that data against the parliamentary > district boundaries, we could put the postal code to electoral > district database in the public domain. > > Sadly, postal codes change quite often- but that solution would still > be cheaper than buying a single license for makepovertyhistory. > > d. > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess- > discuss_civicaccess.ca |
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In reply to this post by Russell McOrmond-2
has anyone thought of using an Access to Information request to get
at this data? On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Russell McOrmond wrote: > Stéphane Zagar wrote: > >> What's the real problem with district localization (ZIP and EDID) >> - is it because it's covered by a copyright that make it >> impossible to >> use even if we get it ? > > Zip is US, and in the USA there is no crown copyright and thus they > don't have that problem. > > In Canada the problem is that Statistics Canada has crown copyright > on the data and a "cost recovery" scheme where they sell the data > under > a draconian EULA. > > Elections Canada has their own version, but doesn't publicly > release > it because Statistics Canada sells it. > >> Let's say we find a way to build a mapping database (district/edid/ >> zip), >> do we risk anything ? > > If we did our own work of matching the geographical database, > we can > then release the information under any license we want (or dedicate to > the public domain). This would become the third known group creating > this mapping (Elections Canada, Statistics Canada, and then us). > > Note: I believe we would have to purchase data from Canada Post to do > this, but given we wouldn't be redistributing this data it would be a > fixed fee and not something that would impact on us freely > distributing > the results of our work. > > The most efficient thing to have happen is for one of the two > government departments to make their version available under a > royalty-free license. Charge if they want to send the data to us, but > one organization could fund that and then freely distribute it to > everyone else. > > -- > Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> > Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property > rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/ > > "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware > manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or > portable media player from my cold dead hands!" > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess- > discuss_civicaccess.ca |
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