To expand, in the USA most (all?) of the data produced by the US Federal government is public domain (things like map data, nasa results etc.). In EU this is not the case. As a result lots of governments, say, map the country using tax payer money, then charge for access to this data. You can't make mashups or derived works.
Personally speaking, it seems horrifically absurd that we're paying for the information to be gathered for absolutely essential services, but then are expected to pay again for similar data collected from a separate source.
If I may play devil's advocate for a minute, it's also true that some of these access fees were originally introduced to recoup costs. The idea was that some of these services would pay for themselves, relying on general taxation only for funds necessary to bootstrap, then run "forever" with zero impact on public finances.
So, once we say that all public data should be free, we should also accept that the economic burden of creating that data will also be entirely covered by general taxation, year after year. Personally I'm not against the idea, but I bet a lot of people would be, probably even many of those now complaining that they're "taxed twice".
>probably even many of those now complaining that they're "taxed twice".
In this case I'm the one being taxed twice. I pay my taxes to the government which creates detailed maps that it then charges me to photocopy so I can submit their paperwork back to them.
A lot of the customers of this mapping data are other government departments! If you want to make a planning map of something, etc. you need to pay for a licence from the other government department.
The EU is making some surprisingly good decisions lately when it comes to matters such as data and "intellectual property". I'm glad to be living here.
Whilst this is positive, first we have to see that it is just a 'strategy', not an enforceable policy (i think the title of this article as 'EU mandates' is slightly misleading). Secondly, as a 'strategy', it is missing any pointed reference to the difficult issues - for instance QANGOs, which often hold much information that has been government funded, however can be resistant to releasing their data - sometimes for good reasons...
The idea is, of course, a good one - lets hope it filters down into real positive action soon....
