Blog postings and mailing lists don't change laws, Ministers do. A campaign revolving around Intellectual Property and Public Data should involve meetings with Ministers at the Department of Business and Skills. This requires being organised and credible. There wasn't a single reference to Public Data in the Hargreaves consultation:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview/ipreview-documents.htm A webpage written in the third person by Ernest (and I can see his old constituency of Wallasey from my window as I write) isn't really citable in a consultation. The current government's objectives centre around growth and private sector jobs. I can also see the Land Registry office (in Birkenhead) from my window and I guess they are trying to shed some "headcount" there. I don't like this personally, but it's the reality of now. Someone, or some organisation needs to do a "bit of lobbying" to the right people (Ministers and MP's) about how to both cover the costs of maintaining the data but also making the data available for non-commercial use. I use Kyoto Cabinet for software that I'm involved with and I like the author's attitude to this problem: http://fallabs.com/license/ Free for non-commercial use and really quite expensive for commercial use (mixi.jp use it commercially). We all know how messy data is and how much work it takes to clean it up. There is always going to be human effort involving in keeping datasets up to date and accurate. This needs to be taken into account when trying to get access to data for free. The creation of jobs require salaries. I assume everyone on this list enjoys being paid for their work (unless they are lucky enough not to need an income). Realistic costings have to be presented and income streams planned for. This might all sound very commercial, but I'm fairly sure people who are doing "a bit of lobbying" are putting a lot of time into such planning and are probably getting a good hearing down at BIS. I'm not trying to start an argument, just saying that something along these lines is possibly what will "get the contract". Cheers, Donny. On 24 October 2011 19:21, Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > On 24/10/11 19:13, Chris Taggart wrote: >> elevator-pitch > > "It's all C, no D for the P." > > - Rob. > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/donovanhide%40gmail.com > _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
