

Does Government GIS Data Belong to the People? - xbryanx
http://www.cadalyst.com/gis/does-government-gis-data-belong-people-14283?no_cache=1328735997

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andrewpi
The commonsense definition of data should prevail here. Since taxpayers
originally paid to compile the data, the county should put all of their GIS
data on the web, free to all. If hosting costs are a concern, they should look
into creating a torrent.

~~~
brudgers
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of government in the sunshine and half a
million dollars is asinine and not in the public interest. However, the your
argument appears largely unsupported.

Just to play devil's advocate, if the county builds a stadium for the local
high school team, are citizen's entitled to free admission?

If they build a performing arts center, are citizens entitled to use it for
free?

~~~
forkandwait
The marginal cost to produce a nights worth of stadium use is nonzero --
staff, performers, and depreciation if nothing else. So the users should pay
that.

The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil -- hence the
price should go to nil as well. THe only reason for a society to force the
cost to be non-zero via licensing is to incentivize the creation of the data,
but the government is going to do that anyway, since they need the data to
function.

(The marginal cost thing is why we need copyright and patents -- we need to
impose _non-market_ controls, because otherwise price and profit go to nothing
and there is no incentive to create things which have marginal costs of
nothing like sheet music and new molecular compounds. Yes, there is some irony
whenever a capitalist argues for intellectual property -- save my market by
non-market rules!)

~~~
brudgers
> _"The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil"_

Nonsense, GIS data typically found in municipal datasets requires going out to
field and physically locating items such as underground utilities and stream
edges, as well as, verifying data pulled from other sources.

The cost of reproducing that data is low, but then again, the cost of
unlocking a stadium is equally low...roughly equivalent to the cost of quality
assurance measures one might take before distributing a copy of municipal GIS
data, or the cost of maintaining adequate bandwidth to distribute data sets
the size of a county GIS database containing 6" resolution aerial photography.

~~~
dmethvin
Once the GIS data has been collected, there are no additional costs beyond
some simple file copying which the requestors were willing to pay. Letting
someone use a stadium involves many additional costs beyond someone turning a
key in a lock, including insurance, utilities, and security.

~~~
brudgers
There are significant costs with GIS data, maintaining and insuring the
accuracy of the data as changes are introduced among them.

Keep in mind that GIS data is constantly revised as ownership of parcels
changes, infrastructure is added or improved, properties are rezoned or
receive variances, or when the aerial photography base layer gets updated.

Much of that data is legally binding (e.g. zoning districts) or critical to
protect the public (e.g. fire hydrant locations) or important for
environmental planning (e.g. wetland locations). Municipal GIS data isn't just
some mailing list mined from magazine descriptions.

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abruzzi
The funny thing is if you put in an IPRA (Inspection of Public Records Act)
request at the county where I work, you'll have the entire parcel layer in
three days for the cost of a blank DVD. Counties need this data to do their
job, there is no reason to see it as a further profit source. If people
stopped asking for the data, we would still keep and maintain in. Of course,
I'm not in California were people seem to get overcharged for everything.

~~~
frankydp
Free online in all the counties around me in georgia also. This is simply a
beuracracy issue nothing else, pretty standard for california and new england.

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polemic
It's great to see serious traction on opening up government data in the US.
Central and local governments around the world are beginning to recognize the
economic and societal benefits of releasing data back to users for little or
no charge.

In New Zealand, the Geospatial Office estimated that the government could
expect to see financial returns of $NZ 100 - 500 million from reducing
barriers to GIS data access[1], and in 2010 the New Zealand government issues
directives encouraging data to _"standardise the licensing of government
copyright works for re-use using Creative Commons New Zealand law licences"_
[2]. Mid last year Land Information New Zealand released the "LINZ Data
Service" (<http://data.linz.govt.nz>) to make it incredibly easy to get hold
of national GIS datasets.

Similarly, the Australian Government disbanded the Commonwealth Copyright
Administration, and _"agencies are now required to release copyright public
sector information under Creative Commons BY-licences or other open content
licences, wherever possible."_ [3] Throughout Europe we're seeing the same
trend.

It's a sign of how far things have come - and how far some have to go when you
hear things like:

> _The County's logic was that GIS includes software and data (citing ESRI's
> definition of GIS as "a collection of software and data")_

It is shocking that this would be used as a defence - not so much because of
the clear and obvious (to technical literate people) difference between a data
format and the software you might or might not use to manipulate it - and
nevermind the plethora of FOSS GIS tools that are available - but that the
County believes it's in the best interests of their constituents.

1\.
[http://www.linz.govt.nz/sites/default/files/docs/geospatial-...](http://www.linz.govt.nz/sites/default/files/docs/geospatial-
office/cabinet-paper-capturing-benefits-of-location-based-information.pdf)

2\. [http://ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/information-and-
da...](http://ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/information-and-data/nzgoal)

3\.
[http://www.ag.gov.au/Copyright/CommonwealthCopyrightAdminist...](http://www.ag.gov.au/Copyright/CommonwealthCopyrightAdministration/Pages/default.aspx)

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twelvechairs
It is a difficult issue, as often government data can only compiled because
money comes from its sale.

A good comparison example is the UK's Ordnance Survey, who now release all
high-level data for free
([http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/os-
openda...](http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/os-
opendata.html)) however the detailed data is only free to government
institutions and their contractors. Private users of the detailed information
pay alot of money for it (generally for site-location plans toward planning
applications), which I assume is generally used for updating the database.

This all works quite well generally, though arguments could be made from
either side as to more or less information being publicly available.

The key really is - if we want more government information to be free, we have
to fund it more...

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Why do you think it works quite well? It's only just happened after years of
arguments and the OS itself fought against it, most independent groups fought
for it to go further and we've ended up with a compromise.

If governments limit themselves to doing things that can be sold on the open
market then there would be no need for a government. Instead they should be
catering to the market failures like generating mapping data that can then be
used by government and business alike at marginal cost i.e. free.

~~~
twelvechairs
I think it works well because the free data covers much of what the public
could want to use (I have used this many times myself), whilst I can't really
think up a case in my mind where non-businesses would want to use the more
detailed information (aside from councils who are provided this for free).

More important to me than free OS data would be if the UK govt could create a
GIS database of land ownership. This is where they lag behind the USA and
Australia to my mind...

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kylemaxwell
Reminds me of the case a few years ago when some locality wanted to copyright
a law, because they'd literally purchased the rights to the text from some
industry group.

That argument didn't go over well with the courts.

~~~
brudgers
Perhaps you are thinking of:

Peter Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International

Veeck put the Standard Building Code as adopted by several local jurisdictions
online.

SBCCI sued because the model code was protected by copyright.

[http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/Veek_vs_Southern_Bldg_Code.ht...](http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/Veek_vs_Southern_Bldg_Code.htm)

[http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/99/99-40632.cv2.wpd...](http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/99/99-40632.cv2.wpd.pdf)

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lwat
GIS? What's that?

~~~
gvb
Geographic Information System
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system>

"A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store,
manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically
referenced data."

Open Source: Quantum GIS <http://www.qgis.org/> and GRASS
<http://www.osgeo.org/grass> are good places to start.

