Hi all, I am not an OSM mapper myself but have followed previous discussions on this list, about licensing of address data, that overlap with my interests. I've had recent conversations with some of you about my ongoing project to request Council Tax address lists from local authorities (mainly in England) and obtain permission to re-use that information as open data under the Open Government Licence.
The good news is that 35 local authorities have now released their Council Tax address data on this basis. I am maintaining a list at https://www.datadaptive.com/addr/. (A few of these datasets were unlocked by other requesters or published proactively by the councils.) Not so good news: Ordnance Survey and GeoPlace have started to push back. Yesterday I received an email from an OS solicitor setting out their position, which has been endorsed by DSIT. I've published the email, and GeoPlace's accompanying guidance for local authorities, in a new blog post: An Ordnance Survey lawyer has been in touch about open address data released by UK local authorities https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr44.htm If any of you are making practical re-use of the Council Tax address datasets for OSM work or other purposes, please review the OS correspondence in my blog post. OS/GeoPlace's "working assumption" is that the vast majority of Council tax address datasets will contain the intellectual property rights of Ordnance Survey, GeoPlace and Royal Mail. They will be "following up individually" with all the local authorities who have released their Council Tax addresses, "as listed on datadaptive.com", to ensure that they "understand the intellectual property and licensing position, and have not released the data in error." I think OS's assumption overstates the case – my understanding is that many local authorities maintain their Council Tax lists separately from their LLPGs and it is quite plausible that the address data is "Authority Owned". The quality of the address data in the Council Tax datasets that have been disclosed to me is variable. So far OS/GeoPlace have not communicated to me any specific claims of IP infringement. None of the listed local authorities have contacted me to withdraw OGL permission or tell me that the disclosed information contains third-party rights that the authority did not have permission to license. If that position changes, I will update the list of datasets and any relevant blog posts. I have blind-copied a few people individually. If anybody wants to discuss the above issues, either off or on the Talk-GB list, please do not hesitate to contact me Owen Boswarva [email protected]
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