Battleangel

Boing Boing notes that the EU INSPIRE directive has become a way for greedy corporations to make citizens pay for access to geo data that they have already been taxed for. Not so unlike what has been proposed in the U.S. with regard to NOAA. Besides being a neoliberal insult and a ripoff, it also bars access to basic data, which in turn imperils the idea of modern democracy and an informed electorate. The conspiratorial among us would claim that this is also the intended effect.

Read the Open Letter and sign the Petition!

We are writing to convey our concerns regarding the current draft of the INSPIRE directive on establishing a common framework for sharing geographic information in Europe. This is an important issue as it is estimated that fully 80% of all information collected by government has a spatial component and geographic information is needed for environmental, census, and transport purposes among many others. Moreover state-collected geographic information is a public good and, as demonstrated by several studies, open access to it is the only way to realize its full social and commercial potential for Europe.

However since the first draft of INSPIRE, a set of amendments have been introduced which restrict the rights of the public to access, or even know about the existence of, geographic information that they have paid to collect. Thus in its current form, as found in the Council’s common position, the directive not only fails to promote open access but risks doing the very opposite.

This would be a disastrous outcome and one which ran against the very purpose of INSPIRE. As the Commission itself, has stated in this regard: “the common position could have the effect of reducing rather than increasing the availability of spatial data. … The text of the common position leaves too much scope for data providers to refuse to give public access to their data and share it with other authorities.”