Posted by
Michael Lenczner on
Feb 11, 2007; 11:11pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/front-de-liberation-de-codes-postal-tp884p897.html
responses inline.
On 2/11/07, liss jeffrey <
[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Stephane:
>
> Yes I think there should be a write up of what you did and perhaps others
> might also contribute.
> Let's anticipate here: the ban by Google Earth, would that be because they
> did not want a mass mailer or spammer using their service to harvest such
> info?
I think they're trying to prevent abuse of their computing resources
and they want the value to be on their system, not on a competing
system. So that means keeping the data to themselves. They pay lots
of money to assemble their setup, and don't really want poachers.
> Do they have policies against scraping and are there reasons?
> Is that what's going on with Stats Can? I saw no reference to this in
> anyone's posts and I sincerely do not know.
> This is very different, obviously, from cost recovery.
>
I don't think that's the issue with Stats Can
> David Mason and I had a very good response from Hansard ( but again, we did
> not go beyond the fact finding stage because he got too busy and my project
> is civic engagement in democratic life, not scraping and coding the scraping
> per se. I am not looking for extra projects as I am quite busy ( as is
> everyone else,) but David as you know Stephane , is a lead developer with
> our citizen engagement platforms including the foreign policy dialogue, and
> a director of the eCommons/agora, and mutual support is how we always
> operate.
> Scraping is a means not an end and it's that end of shaping civic engagement
> ( not only access) that I am interested in and competent to produce. One of
> many rules in our byDesign eLab was always 'no geek ghettos' meaning that we
> all had to find ways to reciprocate and participate in one another's
> universes, a flattening of the divide between developers and producers you
> might say.
> I do not start from a position of thinking government is evil or incompetent
> ( not saying others do, but it is a tempting position and I think mistaken),
> and we will be stronger IMO if as you suggest Stephane we consolidate what
> we propose to do, the reasons why we want to do this ( as is happening now
> in civic access wiki and on list), summarize what people have tried to do so
> far and the outcomes, give a list of successful projects elsewhere ( UK,
> USA, elsewhere??), establish our legitimacy and intentions, and then go find
> out how to remove the obstacles to democratic action.
>
I'm not sure if you're specifically refering to the subject - freeing
postal code info - or the more general open civic goals.
But in general that's why we created Civic Access. To have a space to
do that work. We've already done a pretty good job on some of it.
see:
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/ - for proposal and reasons.
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/WhatIsCivicDatahttp://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Resources - a place for people to list
sources of public data in Canada on a per provice and per city basis.
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Tech - definition of technical terms that
pop up when talking about civic info projects.
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/ProjetsCiviques - listing of civic projects
(doesn't have any international ones yet, but someone could add them).
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Launch/PublicAnnouncement - drafting of
public letter.
> I am doubtless missing lots, and while hardly naive may well be overly
> optimistic, but the way in can be through the front door and not just the
> back door. In any event (1) to get genuine support we have to try these
> steps.
> In any event (2) the alternative has not yet produced the result we seek.
> One plan is to have a strategy ready by Feb. 24 so that's 2 weeks to get the
> arguments assembled.
If you're specifically referring to liberating postal code info, I
invite people to use the wiki to do this work. There's already good
content there. And what I like about it is that CivicAccess is
started by no one person or organization. So there shouldn't be any
problems with people feeling like they are contributing to "someone
else's" project - which can sometimes reduce people's interest to get
involved.
I
> Other ideas?
I guess I'm just wondering what if you're looking for content
specifically about the postal codes, or about civic projects in
general. I'm willing to help gather some resources or write something
up about similar efforts elsewhere in the world and I'm sure that we
could write up a public letter asking the feds for electoral / postal
code info, but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. Also,
the strategy you're talking about. I'm unclear who it's for.
sorry for the basic questions. I'm interested though.
Mike
> DrJ
>
>
>
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