The Commission to the European Parliament has come out in favor of open access to publicly-funded geospatial data. (Thanks to Public Geo Data.) Excerpt:
The overall aim of the proposal is to improve the way in which spatial data held by public authorities supports environmental policy, by improving the harmonisation of spatial data and the interoperability of spatial services and ensuring greater sharing of the data between public authorities and on-line access by the public....
The Commission does not agree that intellectual property rights held by public authorities should be among the list of grounds for limiting public access to spatial data.
The Commission also does not agree that the possibility of limiting access should be extended to cover discovery services referred to in Article 18(1)(a) of the Commission proposal, since this would mean that the public would not even be able to learn of the existence of the data.
The Commission maintains that the view services referred to in Article 18(1)(b) of the Commission proposal should be made available free of charge, and cannot accept the Council position allowing public authorities to charge and license for these services under certain conditions;
The common position makes the obligation to avoid obstacles to data sharing, as well as the rules for ensuring harmonised conditions for Community institutions and bodies, subordinate to the right of public data providers to charge and license other authorities for their data. It is also vague about the obstacles to be avoided. It will therefore be ineffective in achieving one of the key aims of the proposal, and could even have the effect of increasing obstacles to the sharing of data....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/20/2006 09:32:00 AM.
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.
