I think alot of this discussion has missed some basic issues regarding
why data has traditionally been considered intellectual property and
not open.
1) Scientists and others invest alot of time in creating data and do
not wish to lose control or lose credit for this investment. Many
scientists believe that open data allows others to come in and reap
the benefits (in terms of publications etc.) of their investment in
the data unfairly. They feel that they are at a disadvantage when they
have been in the field collecting data and doing all of the hands-on
work associated with this, compared with someone sitting in an office
who can cherry pick the best data and whip out an analysis or paper
quickly.
2) Those who "own" data are more willing to invest in expanding and
improving the data. Many believe that the public sector and open
community are not able to marshall the investments needed to fully
obtain the benefits of new data. The huge investments in road
navigation data and other geospatial data by Google and other private
companies have yielded significant new services and benefits that
probably could not have been made by the public sector--even though
the basic technology of GPS (satellites!) was enabled originally by
public sector investment.
3) Even public agencies that generate and distribute data want some
control over their data so that they can tell who is using them and
provide justification for their public investment. They may distribute
the data at low cost or for free, but are hesitant to make data
totally open due to this loss of ability to document use and benefits,
which could in turn jeopardize their funding. This is partly a
perception issue...e.g., when people mistakenly think the Weather
Channel can operate without NOAA's satellites or forecasts...but it is
a real concern.
4) Open data may also undercut other business models that have been
developed over time to support the necessary investment and
institutional commitment in data. For example, there are a number of
organizations based on membership or subscriptions that have
maintained large, very useful collections of data for widespread
academic use by providing access and services primarily to members or
subscribers. It is doubtful that these data would have survived in an
entirely open environment relying just on public sector support or
community volunteers. Moreover, in this era of government shutdowns
and stressed budgets, relying entirely on public sector support poses
major risks.
In summary, one of the biggest challenges for open data advocates is
to develop and demonstrate strong and sustainable alternative business
models for supporting the full life cycle of open data. At the moment,
I think this might be possible for some limited areas of open data,
where the benefits of open access are clear and stakeholders can be
convinced to commit resources, but I don't think this is true for most
data.
Cheers, Bob
*****
Dr. Robert S. Chen
Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network
(CIESIN), The Earth Institute, Columbia University
Manager, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 USA
tel. +1 845-365-8952; fax +1 845-365-8922
e-mail: [email protected]
CIESIN web site: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu
SEDAC web site: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu
On Tue, 8 Oct 2013, Mr. Puneet Kishor wrote:
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 15:00:39 +0530
From: Mr. Puneet Kishor <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list
<[email protected]>
To: Karsten Gerloff <[email protected]>,
Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] what are the arguments against open data
On Oct 8, 2013, at 2:33 PM, Karsten Gerloff <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 03:25:30PM -0700, Gene Shackman wrote:
Ewan Klein asked an excellent question on identifying specific demonstrations
of the benefits of open data. That made me wonder about a related question:
what are the arguments against open data?
In practice, the main argument I've heard against open data is
that it might harm privacy.
Individual human privacy and security, cultural sensitivity, and national
security come to mind as reasons against open public sector or individual
private data.
This is usually raised by people who
are new to the field, and is for the most part easily countered.
While I would not consider myself completely new to the field, I would love to
know the arguments that would counter the above reasons.
--
Puneet Kishor
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