
List of Datasets on the Web - pskomoroch
http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web.html
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weel
I don't want to spoil the fun too much, but if you are subject to EU law (and
don't ask me whether that depends on whether the data is European or on
whether you are in Europe; I am not a lawyer) you cannot simply grab data of
the net on the theory that raw data is not a creative work and thus not
copyrighted. Just in case anybody gets it into their head to do innovative
things with web-accessible databases of facts, Brussels has given us the
wonders of the EU Database Directive, which makes raw data copyrightable.
Phone books, registries of commerce, postal code databases, train timetables,
and other such things that cannot be copyrighted in the US do fall under a
copyright-like _sui generis_ IP regime in the EU.

Not that there isn't a case for sometimes just ignoring the fancy details of
the law and going with "do first, ask permission later."

But I thought maybe you should know.

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pskomoroch
Good point, some of these datasets are open/free...others are not. If anyone
is going to use a "seemingly-free" data set in open source code, try to get
permission under the appropriate license. There is a good overview of the
difficulties here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Data>

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jmzachary
Thanks for passing this link along.

