Slashgeo

markusN writes "The Petition on Public Geo Data has reached more than 6000 verified signatures today. The petition aims at amending the INSPIRE Directive to guarantee that European citizens and businesses can download and freely re-use Geographic Information collected by European governments."

The President's Message of the OGC Newsletter discuss the OGC position on the free vs for fee debate and GeoDRM. From the newsletter: "As a staff member of the Consortium, I'm mindful that OGC's role in this debate is not to attempt to solve this policy issue. Rather OGC's role is to support a process that helps advance a flexible standards framework that meets the needs of organizations whose policies and representatives' standards requirements fall on all sides of this issue. [...] The Geospatial Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM) Working Group of the OGC Technical Committee brings together a diverse group of experts who recognize the need to build a policy neutral framework that supports the full spectrum of data sharing arrangements and business models." Meanwhile, there's a GeoDRM presention at the FOSS4G2006 conference (via import geography).

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.

Vector One and Spatial Sustain blogs share their thoughts on the role and value of National mapping organizations. From Vector One: "It is the seed for developing land use developments, managerial strategies for environment, land use, population and other national policy initiatives. Without such data, a country is a collection of places with no real understanding, no basis for national decision making relative to land resources and has no consistent and useful means for protecting and understanding itself. How do you put a value on that? In recent times national mapping agencies have come under debate. More often than not this has originated from those who would like all their data to be free." From Spatial Sustain: "The advent of GIS, with map making tools for the masses, contributed significantly to the downfall of centralized map making. With the advent of GIS, federal agencies each undertook their own mapping initiatives that specifically met their individual objectives." See also related stories below.