European Geographic Information Hijacked?

Seems the Council of European Union has formally adopted a common position on the Inspire Directive, which stipulates that Geographic Data collected by National Mapping Agencies all over Europe should be owned by such agencies and not by the Public.

This couldn’t be more wrong, state-collected Geographic Data is and should remain public property, if you take a look at the US for instance, there’s a lot of geo data-sets that remain available under a public domain licence. The questions, is a moral and technological one, on one side, is state should provided it’s citizens with the geographic information, since it’s collected with their money, on the other, by closing down the access to the geo datasets, their inhibiting the proliferation of such tools in Europe. The major league companies will still be able to get the information they need, you simply close down it’s use by the public in general.

If you like me, don’t agree with this situation, please subscribe the petition online and make your voice be heard!

1 comment March 24th, 2006