[Openstreetmap] Please Help Petition for Public Access to Geodata in Europe

[Preben Mikael Bohn]

Dear Jo

> Please sign the petition: http://petition.publicgeodata.org/
> Yesterday the INSPIRE Directive on European "spatial data infrastructure"
> began its second reading in the European Parliament. Within a few
> weeks or months it may entrench a policy of charging European citizens
> to access public information they've already paid to collect. Members of
> the European Parliament think this an obscure and dull technical issue;
> but free public access to geographic information is essential for economic
> innovation and civic co-operation.
>
> Benjamin Henrion and I are starting the above petition to MEPs to
> reject the current draft of the INSPIRE directive. It's all rather
> last-minute; we may have as little as a month before the Directive
> gets through its second reading; so it's important we try and get as
> many signatures as we can, as soon as we can, and get the word out.

Could ypu please explain _exactly_ where in the actual proposal - located
at http://inspire.jrc.it/proposal/EN.pdf - you find arguments for the
above mentioned sentence: "entrench a policy of charging European citizens
to access public information they've already paid to collect"?

I am simply curious; I have just browsed through the proposal and can not
find anything resembling that point of view (however I did not use that
much time). I did, however, find something interesting:

"(16) Experience in the Member States has shown that it is important, for
the successful implementation of an infrastructure for spatial
information, that a minimum number of services be made available to the
public free of charge. Member States should therefore make available, as a
minimum and free of charge, the services for discovering and viewing
spatial data sets."

Best regards Preben