> 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.
>>
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