Apologies to any and all if I have already forwarded this message about
free access - and unlimited use/re-use - to certain Canadian geospatial
data. However, the message arrived while I was at the excellent INSPIRE
2008 Conference in Slovenia (congratulations to the organisers and the
EC), and I am not sure that I actioned it. Thanks also to Mick Wilson at
UNEP in Nairobi for bringing it to the attention of the SDI East Africa
mailing list (see
http://www.ungiwg.org/sdi-ea/?q=about) and Steven
Ramage at 1Spatial for passing it on to me.
The two most important IPR phrases from the GeoGratis web site (see
http://www.geogratis.ca/geogratis/en/index.html) are:
<begins>
2.0 LICENCE GRANT
1.
Subject to this Agreement, Canada hereby grants to the Licensee a
non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty-free right and licence to
exercise all Intellectual Property Rights in the Data. This
includes the right to use, incorporate, sublicense (with further
right of sublicensing), modify, improve, further develop, and
distribute the Data; and to manufacture and / or distribute
Derivative Products.
2.
The Intellectual Property Rights arising from any modification,
improvement, development or translation of the Data, or from the
manufacture of Derivative Products, effected by or for the
Licensee, shall vest in the Licensee or in such person as the
Licensee shall decide.
<ends>
See
http://www.geogratis.ca/geogratis/en/licence.jsp;jsessionid=485E161DDE73636143DFAAA3BF8430D2for the full license terms.
Well done, Natural Resources Canada!
Kind regards
Roger Longhorn
co-Chair, GSDI Association Legal & Socioeconomic Working Group
ral@...
----- Original Message -----
From: Mick Wilson
To:
sdi-ea@...
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 4:32 PM
Subject: [SDI-EA] [SDI East Africa] Benefits of Open Access Data Policies
Tom hammond at IUCN Canada posted the following to the Conservation Commons mailing list today. It describes the measurable impact felt when Canada opened up access to what had previously been fee-based access to standard framework national data sets, and you'll see that the result is impressive.
What I will be more curious to see is what effect this has on the quality of these data once they're being used more by more people in more different applications - more aggressively perhaps - and the Government starts getting specific feedback about inaccuracies, omissions and required updates. A key component of the "Better Data Sooner" mantra is that community-driven feedback is the best driver for custodians' continuous improvement of their data products and services.
Perhaps the Canadians are providing a real-world laboratory in which to test this theory.
" The HYPERLINK
http://www.cits.rncan.gc.ca/cit/servlet/CIT/site_id=01&page_id=1-005-002-001.html National Topographic Data Base (NTDB) comprises digital vector data sets that cover the entire Canadian landmass. This product includes thirteenlayers such as hydrography, hypsography and the road network.
" The NTDB is a complete and uniform product that can be highly useful in a broad range of activities such as planning, research,conservation work,and private sector development. For example, it can be used for preparing thematic maps and makes it suitable for geographic information system (GIS) applications because the NTDB and its attributes make it possible to use a variety of spatial analysis techniques.
" Downloads of NTDB data during the government fiscal year ending in 2007, when a fee for use policy was still in place, numbered under100,000. A change of policy was enacted during the current fiscal year making the NTDB an open access resource during which downloads jumpedby a magnitude of 54 to well over 5 million."
HYPERLINK
http://www.thinkwell.ca/cgdi-icdg/libraryDocs/FeevsFree.pdf<message ends>
EGIP Archive:
http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/
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