On 6 February 2013 21:43, Rob Nickerson <[email protected]> wrote: > In regards to public rights of way and the relationship between Local > Authorities and Ordnance Survey, see my recent blog post: > > http://opendatauser.posterous.com/loacal-authorities-in-bed-with-the-ordnance-s > > I would be interested if anyone with knowledge of the legal system has an > answer to the question posed in the "A ray of hope?" section. If not, I > might just have to get in touch with Defra.
Not about the "ray of hope" section, but something else that might be useful. The "Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations" [1] contain a clause designed to ensure a level playing field for potential data users. I think the effect is something along the lines that unless there's some overriding public interest in an exclusivity agreement, if an Authority offers data to one use under certain terms, then they must also offer it to anyone one use who wants to use it for a similar purpose under the same terms. So whatever license / terms an LA provides its PRoW data to OS under for making their maps, they may be required to offer it to OSM under too. However, things will be complicated by the fact that OS itself has rights in the data (since it's required to be drawn on top of OS base maps). LAs don't need to offer OS any rights to use OS's IP in data as it's OS's already. But I don't know if it's possible to split IP rights in a derived work like that, and say "I give you a license to use my part of the IP, but not OS's". If it is, then it's not clear that getting rights to use the LA's IP is that helpful. If it isn't then the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations may not apply, since there's an exclusion if the IP in the requested information is owned by someone else. So maybe not that much use after all. However, the intention of the Regulations is clear, and it might be possible to use that to encourage LAs to apply for permission from OS to release the full data under the PSMA. Robert. PS: I think it would be great if OSM could get listed as a "prescribed Organisation" and get copies of all the modification orders. I'd have thought that getting in touch with Defra (as you've already suggested) would be the place to start. If we were sent the orders, we'd need to establish some sort of local network of mappers for processing them though... We would also still have the question of re-use rights to deal with. [1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1515/contents/made -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
