Slashgeo

Directions Mag host an article named Why Europe Needs to Provide its Own Public Geodata. From the article: "The national mapping agencies (NMA) of Europe sometimes seem to be living in the colonial past. Public geodata are kept under lock and key, through copyright and commercial licensing terms that are prohibitive to ordinary citizens and spare-time, free-software enthusiasts who want to undertake amateur GIS projects." This is closely related to this previous story on the INSPIRE directive.

The GeoData Alliance released their report on Geospatial Digital Rights Management. From the PR: "The 98-page report includes an introduction to digital rights management (DRM) and why the geospatial case is unique, and it places GeoDRM in a technical and policy context. The report also documents the accomplishments of a cooperative agreement executed by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and the GeoData Alliance."

Ed Parsons express his thoughts about the Free Our Data campaign in UK and the Ordnance Survey. From the blog: "For me a key point that I personally think needs clarification is the difference between business models and licensing frameworks, in relation to the OS in particular. There remains an active and valid debate around the business model of OS which actually boils down to who pays - taxpayer or user and which model would provide the greatest benefit to UK PLC. [...] My personal views around this are quite clear and well known, in that I believe the user pays model is best, primary because it establishes a direct link between the beneficiary of data and the supplier."

A colleague sent me a link to a text arguing why government spatial data shoud be free. The text focuses on the Canadian government spatial data policy. While it does not look up to date and seems rather one-sided, it still includes very interesting arguments. From the intro: "Since the 1980's the general trend has been towards cost recovery of [the Canadian] government information. At first glance, this policy appears to be a good way of sharing the costs of a government service among those who benefit from it, like a toll booth on a bridge or a user fee on an ambulance. However, there are significant problems with this approach." The same colleague pointed me to DataLibre.ca, a blog on the subject. Below I included links to numerous previous stories related to INSPIRE in Europe, OGC and GeoDRM, Canadian new free data and more.

The import cartography blog reminded me of this post on the OSGeo mailing list about Creative Commons's take on GeoDRM. From the post: "The very quick story is that they don't believe copyright can be applied to any geospatial data. Thus creative commons licenses don't work, since they depend on copyright. So people providing data have two options - public domain or make a contract that completely restricts it. [...] They are launching a 'facts are free' campaign soon to get across to the world that one can't copyright scientific data." See also numerous related stories below. Related to Creative Commons, the Brain Off blog tells us UK's Ordnance Survey now releases administrative geography under CC.

Ed Parsons, the UK's Ordnance Survey CTO, wonders if GeoDRM will ever work. From the post: "This raises a more fundamental question in my mind, are such protective technologies really worth the effort, sure they reduce the perceived risk of data leakage in the mind of the data owner, but as DVD Jon has proved such systems can nearly always be broken." And part of SteveC's comment: "We think the natural tendency is for producers to worry too much about protecting their intellectual property. The important thing is to maximise the value of your intellectual property, not to protect it for the sake of protection."

The Geowanking list have been discussing GeoDRM for days now. There are numerous posts of interest with interesting viewpoints and arguments. See also related stories on GeoDRM.

All Points Blog links to a Times Online article written by Gervase Markham who works for the Mozilla Foundation about the for free for fee geospatial data models comparing the US and the UK. From the article: "A study in 2000 estimated that, although the US Government spends twice as much on data collection as the EU countries, but the economic value generated by businesses using it was more than ten times greater – €750 billion. [...] A further irony about the short-sighted "cost recovery" policy is that, again using the Ordnance Survey as an example, 60 per cent of its data sales are back to the Government itself."

The import cartography blog offers his views on digital rights managements for geospatial data. Links to interesting reading is provided. From the post: "My conclusion is that it won't happen for at least four reasons. GeoDRM, as proposed, is: Overly complex, Backwards-looking, Poorly researched, Unnecessary. [...] The report summary asserts that GeoDRM will benefit end users, but doesn't make any case for this other than the usual hand-waving about "markets". There is extremely little reference to dissenting views about the need or efficacy of DRM." See also related stories below.

Mikel Maron writes "The bill sponsored by Rep. Solorio, would close public access to public GIS basemap data. The bill is currently set for a hearing in the Governmental Organization committee on April 16th, and in the Local Government Committee on April 30th. The best time to stop a bad bill is when it is in committee. So the time to act is now. If you live in California, now is the time to contact your rep, and the members of the committee. More info here and here." Some related stories copied below.