Mapping Hacks

Today, the Proposed INSPIRE Directive on establishing a spatial data infrastructure in Europe began the process of second reading in the European Parliament. Within one to three months, INSPIRE’s provisions could become law.
Many European citizens and small businesses will be negatively affected by a license, copyright and protection oriented policy towards sharing geographic data inside Europe.

The time is now to let MEPs hear that there are better models for distributing geodata than charging the public to use it in order to “recover” a narrow idea of “costs”, at the expense of economic and social innovation. The expansion of the value creating “market” for open source software, and the extension of open standards into more different kinds of mapping and spatial analysis software: these things hinge on the availability of state-collected geographic information in the public domain.

PublicGeodata is a new “awareness campaign” site which i have been involved in setting up along with Benjamin Henrion. At http://petition.publicgeodata.org is a petition to MEPs to reject the INSPIRE Directive as it stands, to think harder about what is at stake here.

PublicGeodata is also a wiki set up to encourage the sharing of research, collaborative creation of lobbying messages, providing HOWTO and reference guide information for people who might want, over the coming few weeks, to talk to their MEPs directly about how much is at stake in establishing a spatial data infrastructure.

Work on the documentation and research side is very much in progress, following a “release early, release often” mantra; we hope to expand to include more narratives from national mapping representatives, and testimonials from business users of geodata, soon.

We need to get people from all across Europe to sign the petition to reject the INSPIRE Directive, especially at this early stage: we need to get it moving to show the mainstream it’s worth taking seriously. If you’re in Europe, please sign it; please encourage your peers on non-geo or even non-technical interest groups to sign it. Why sign the petition?. If you read a map, travel on public transport, vote, or want to caretake your local environment, then INSPIRE will affect you, and you should think about signing the petition.

Posted in data |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.