Mapping Hacks

Heather Brooke of Your Right To Know wrote an excellent article for the Times Law section recently, on Why we must cut the costly Crown copyright, a growing campaign on both left and right to repeal the obsolete laws of Crown Copyright that cover most state-produced information in the UK and in many ex-Commonwealth countries (notably Canada and Australia). Of course, this includes national mapping information in the hands of the Ordnance Survey.

The restricted availability of Ordnance Survey data is perhaps the most contentious, thwarting everyone from pro-democracy groups that need to discover electoral boundaries to private companies such as the AA that require mapping for road atlases.

The commentary from James Boyle and from Rufus Pollock, both quite right-wing economist types, is particularly heartening:

“The free information primes the pump of the private sector, just as free roads allow more economic activity and tax revenue than a patchwork of toll roads,” says Boyle. “On this issue, the empirical evidence is fairly clear. And it points squarely against Crown copyright.”

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