On 12 Oct 2009, at 14:47, Duncan Parkes wrote: > Now you've taken the Tom Watson quote out of context here, haven't > you? In his next paragraph he says: > > "We live in tough economic times. I'm a realist. But I do hope that > you can apply your considerable talents to find an amicable solution > that allows the profit making direct-mail industry to pay their fee > for a postcode database licence, whilst allowing the non-profit sector > to flourish and innovate."
I was actually quite careful with what I quoted as I wanted to demonstrate that we have at least one MP who also believes the data belongs to the people and should be open for free use by anyone. The piece I quoted from was, of course, his letter to the Royal Mail where he suggests the same thing that the petition is asking for: a carve-out for non-profits. However, he is writing to the Royal Mail, the petition is to the government. There's a world of difference between the two. > I agree with you that the whole thing should be public domain, and > that's what I put in the letter I wrote to my MP. If you wrote to your MP to press for the postcode database to be in the public domain, why would you write to the government and ask for less? > In the short term > though, what Tom Watson is asking for, and what the petition started > by Stuart is asking for is a good start, and I don't think any good is > going to be done by not signing it. I still disagree; the petition doesn't represent my opinion and I think it makes it harder to argue the public domain case. Right now, what the Royal Mail have done is stupidly create a controversy that is bringing the problem to the attention of the media and politicians (it would have made better commercial sense for them to ignore ErnestMarples, but no-one accused Royal Mail management of being smart). If we get a carve-out, I don't believe there will be enough momentum left to get any further: big companies can afford the fee to get the database, MySociety gets it for free, everyone's a winner. Except, of course, all of the small companies and self- employed people for whom the database is prohibitively expensive. In my view, to ask for less than a public domain postcode database, just to allow sites like PlanningAlerts to work, is short-sighted. It would be better to leave it down with the prominent notice of why and a link to WriteToThem than to squander this opportunity to make the public domain case. Jonathan _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
