Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[Andy Waddington]

On Thursday 2006-05-11 00:49, Wookey wrote:

> If you think mapping data collected by public bodies should be available to
> the public for free

What these public bodies _collect_ are facts. Not original artistic or
literary creations. There can be no copyright in those data. No conceivable
argument about that.

What these agencies create, which _is_ intellectual property, are
representations of those data for public consumption - maps, charts,
tidal predictions, weather forecasts, river level/flooding forecasts
etc. But they do use public money to create that IP.

The UK government is particularly fascist about this IP, doing the sort
of accounting that looks at cash flows through bodies like the UKHO, the
OS, the Met. Office and so on, and not taking account of the savings to
other bodies that would result from free availability of the information.
Tidal predictions, for example, are regarded as a matter of public safety
by many countries, and the savings to search and rescue organisations
from making this info freely available exceed the losses of revenue from
not selling the information as is done in the UK.

It should be a simple matter of enlightened self-interest to make the
original data and a lot of the derived representations and predictions
available without charge.

> you need to sign the petition asking for this to happen, and ideally
> contact your MEP about it.

Hmm, 703 signatures as of mine being added. 700,000 might be enough to get
some notice taken ...

Andy