Posted by
Russell McOrmond-2 on
Feb 06, 2007; 9:09pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p860.html
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
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