Jared bought electronic copies of 56,000 topological maps from the U.S. Geological Survey. These maps are in the public domain but were not yet OA. Or more precisely, not all were OA and not all the OA maps were OA from the same site. Jared's project was to raise $1,600 to cover his expenses and then give the maps to the Internet Archive for permanent OA hosting. Yesterday he met his fund-raising goal and the 300 GB of data are on their way to the IA.
Comments.
The UK Free Our Data project likes to point to the US as a country that provides open access to publicly-funded data. While the US does have a commendable track record on this score (as opposed to OA for literature based on publicly-funded research), there are still many pockets of data funded by US taxpayers available only to those willing to pay a second fee. Kudos to Jared Benedict for identifying one such pocket and liberating it, and kudos to the Internet Archive for its assistance.
I doubt that the USGS will object to this project. The maps are not copyrightable; the (slight) diversion of traffic from the USGS store to the IA should trigger a (slight) reduction in agency expenses; and I've found that most US government agencies sincerely support the principle of public access for publicly-funded information even if various regulatory or political obstacles prevent them from fully implementing it. However, the USGS' business partners, through which it sells most of its priced products, might object. I'll follow this and blog what I hear.
Jared raised the money by selling DVDs of the data he was trying to liberate. This is a beautiful model for any data unencumbered by copyright. Instead of needy taxpayers paying a public agency again and again for the same public information, benefiting only themselves, a small cohort pays the same price for the same information in order to liberate it once and for all for everyone.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
