
Tim Berners-Lee unveils government data project - jacquesm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8470797.stm
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benwerd
It's huge. I just wish they hadn't released the data under Crown Copyright,
and that they'd remained impartial rather than sticking a great big Twitter
advertisement on the side.

This post is a great analysis in my opinion:
[http://paulclarke.com/honestlyreal/2010/01/welcoming-data-
go...](http://paulclarke.com/honestlyreal/2010/01/welcoming-data-gov-uk/)

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ZeroGravitas
Someone at your link, in the comments (edit: just realised that it's you),
claims the Crown Copyright means re-use is reliant on a revocable licence. Is
that true? How can that be compatible with Creative Commons as they suggest
here:

<http://data.gov.uk/terms-conditions/>

I'm a bit more worried by "you must ensure that you do not distort, mutilate,
modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the information".

I don't even want them to restrict _distortions_ , _mutilations_ or
_derogatory actions_ (whatever the hell that might mean in relation to the
location of public loos, or government spending figures). However, "ensure you
do not ... _modify_ ... the information" seems to defeat the whole purpose of
the project.

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legooolas
> However, "ensure you do not ... modify ... the information" seems to defeat
> the whole purpose of the project.

If you could modify the data then you could essentially make stuff up and
claim that it's based on data from data.gov.uk. Wouldn't _that_ rather defeat
the purpose of the project?

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jacquesm
Nothing a digital signature can't take care of.

~~~
arethuza
You don't even need a digital signature - just have them publish a hash value
for the files.

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smiler
Of course, the two most useful datasets are not yet there...

1\. Postcode data 2\. Mapping data

~~~
cabalamat
3\. the BBC's back catalogue

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chrislo
A lot of metadata around the BBC's archives are available through /programmes
in a variety of machine-readable formats, including RDF.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/developers>

For example, Eastenders

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m86d>
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m86d.rdf>

Older programme data is added continuously, but TV catch-up is limited to UK
users within a 7-day window.

