Re: elections canada

Posted by Hugh McGuire on
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p852.html

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