Re: Stats Canada - Free Electronic Publications / Les publications électroniques gratuites

Posted by Russell McOrmond-2 on Mar 13, 2006; 6:21pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Stats-Canada-Free-Electronic-Publications-Les-publications-electroniques-gratuites-tp352p356.html


Joel Rivard wrote:
> Just thought the list might find this interesting...

   Does anyone have a connection to Statcan folks setting this policy?
If so, please forward the following questions.

   This release may be "interesting", but without specific details it is
hard to know if it will actually be useful to any of us.

   More important than the price they use to distribute the file is the
copyright notice put on the files.   It is far more important for the
license to be free/libre than the distribution to be free/gratis.

Excessive terms in Crown Copyright end-use license agreement
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1062

   I should be able to get a coalition together to purchase data from
Statistics Canada to pay for any publishing costs, and then publicly
distribute what I receive.  While it is quite legitimate that they may
require a non-commercial license (Like the Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ca/ license) so others
can't charge royalties, it doesn't seem appropriate to be using the
terms they are currently.

   For example, I want to get the PCFRF file, convert the data to
CSV/SQL, and distribute that publicly from my own site for free.  This
should be able to include having it as part of the Drupal release, which
is what we have been wanting to do to match what is available in the USA.

> Under Statistics Canada's New Publishing Model, *all electronic
> publications (PDF and HTML) on Statistics Canada's Internet site will be
> available for free as of April 24, 2006.*

   What about plain text files?

http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0193U

This product should be updated to be documented as being:

   a) a few formatted text files compressed in ZIP
   b) A few PDF files that document the format of the text files.

   The "System requirements" section of this page is invalid, as there
is no dependency on the brands of platforms documented.

--
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
  2415+ Canadians oppose Bill C-60 which protects antiquated Recording,
  Movie and "software manufacturing" industries from modernization.
  http://KillBillC60.ca    Sign--> http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/