[Openstreetmap] London locations

[Lars Aronsson]

Andy Robinson wrote:

> And here is the licence for boundary information from ONS. 
> Derived from the OS of course!
> http://www.statistics.gov.uk/Census2001/terms_and_conditions.asp

This legalese smells of standardized and overly broad claims, 
which are about the cheapest thing that lawyers will produce, and 
does not necessarily reflect the actual ability or will to enforce 
them.  Does anybody know if these terms and conditions have been 
tried in court?  That would be an indication that the Crown has 
the will to enforce this copyright (which I doubt) and that they 
consider it possible to win such a case (which I also doubt).

The will to defend the copyright is proportional to the amount of 
revenue that the HMSO, OS or ONS risk to lose if the data were 
free.  So has anybody read their annual report of earnings?

It could be interesting to just openly copy the entire thing, just 
to see how they would react.  Before doing so, it would be 
worthwhile to design the case so that their attack would reflect 
badly on themselves.  Say for example that you can show that these 
data need to be free in order to protect the subway against 
terrorists or in order to rescue flood victims.  If you then copy 
the data without permission and the HMSO goes to court with you, 
the newspapers will sympathise with you, and the government will 
tell the HMSO to hold back.  Something like that.  So the first 
task would be to find a righteous and honorable cause for which 
these data need to be free.  More than "it would be nice".

You are here, and your enemy is over there, and this is what you 
are fighting about.  Now, have you read your Machiavelli?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se