I took part in the Forum on Open GeoData hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation at the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research.
At the forum I spoke about our collaborative partnership with the Research & Innovation group at Ordnance Survey and mentioned our aim to develop a model for free, non-commercial access to the OS's GIS data for projects like Urban Tapestries. The recent announcement by the BBC, Channel 4 & the BFI about the adoption of a Creative Commons license for non-commercial access to and use of their Creative Archive project coincided with Proboscis' submission of a first draft Creative Commons license to the Ordnance Survey for consideration. It seems that now is an excellent time for developing public policy positions and lobbying central government for wider public access to data owned and collected by public agencies and entities owned by the government.
Contributing to the establishment of public access to GIS data has been one of Urban Tapestries' (and now Social Tapestries') project goals and was the foundation of our agreement to collaborate with the OS back in 2003. In drafting up the license I had the benefit of advice from Programme in Comparative Law at the University of Oxford, who led the project to harmonise Creative Commons with UK Law.
An MP3 recording of the forum is available here.
Posted by Giles Lane at April 15, 2005 05:48 PM