A few months ago, I wrote to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet seeking access to datasets published by data.gov.au including the PSMA Administrative Boundaries. The response was that "due to the large number of datasets on data.gov.au and, in some instances, obligations on the government due to its licensing arrangements with its data suppliers, we are unable to amend the licence terms, or provide exemptions on an individual basis."
Since clarification of OSM's requirements relating to data published under the CC BY 4.0 licence, I have written again asking if there is any possibility of reconsideration but I am not hopeful that the response will be positive. I also requested that the limitations of the CC BY 4.0 licence be addressed in the context of any future review of Government policy regarding community access to public data. If I receive any helpful response, I will share the information on the talk-au list. In regard to Commonwealth Government agencies, the best approach appears to be submission of requests to individual agencies - as has been done successfully with the Department of the Environment and Energy and with GeoScience Australia. In regard to the PSMA boundaries, it appears that the data owners are the respective state and territory governments. I think we have access to that data in ACT, NSW and SA and it will be necessary to get permission from the other state and territory governments for their boundaries data. The data owners are listed at https://www.psma.com.au/psma-data-copyright-and-disclaimer As far as I can ascertain, in the United States, the US federal government policy (adopted also by some but not not yet by all states of the US) is that data collected with taxpayers' money is published in the public domain without any copyright restrictions. Our government is keen to follow the United States in many areas, and I suggest keen Aussie mappers may like to send letters or emails to their local members of parliament, both federal and also in states where we don't yet have access to data, highlighting difficulties with licences such as CC BY and commending the American approach to copyright on government data, so that public data is truly open. You can point out that it won't cost them money - and while government would be making a compromise on attribution, most users will still choose to attribute the source in some way in order to attest to its authenticity and accuracy. It is unlikely to get immediate results but we can tell them now and tell them again at election time so that we are planting seeds that may germinate when the issue is reviewed at government level. When politicians come door-knocking at election time, tell them about OSM and how concerned you are about the current copyright restrictions on public data. That is, of course, if the copyright restrictions on public data bother you as much as they vex me. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
