Isn't that a bit of a roundabout route to opening up the data? Surely
the only reason that companies house charges is to cover their costs? If
you bypass their method of covering their costs then they will have to
get more funding from government - or increase their charges. Might as
well just ask the government to cover their costs now and open up the
data properly?
Francis Irving wrote:
Here's something else related I'd like...
A collaborative place for buying company house reports.
The idea is that if you want the full accounts or return of a company,
instead of going via Companies House, you buy it via a gateway site.
The gateway site then stores the copy of the accounts, and gives it
not just to you, but also for free to anyone (including Google).
OR, to bootstrap it, you let people buy one. If somebody else
previously bought it, you make them choose a second company / report,
and they have to have that bought, and they get the first one for
free, in a chain as long as they like, but they have to buy at least
one.
When you've got enough, you then release it all for free. Or it
buys the full data set (which I believe you can) when a certain
trigger point is reached.
There are loads of variations on this idea, some of which might make
good businesses (you take a cut) and many of which will release lots
more info about companies into easy public access.
Francis
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