[euopendata] Study says charge for public data...

[James McKinney]

Some great arguments in favor of no fees. As I see it, charging for
non-commercial use has one, clear advantage (revenue), but has many,
possible disadvantages, largely in terms of opportunity: Would the
commercial market around the data have grown more quickly without the
fees? Do fees significantly increase the consumer price of a service
using the data, whose adoption would have been beneficial? Are the
fees high enough to be a serious barrier to entry for some desirable
businesses?

In terms of the issues concerning intra-government transactions, the
license can exclude these bodies from fees. Also, there are a few
arguments here that are good arguments for why there shouldn't be fees
on all uses, but that are not great arguments for why there shouldn't
be fees on commercial uses specifically.

But as the French paper points out, if an agency wants to release
data, but doesn't have the funding for it, it may want/have to
consider non-commercial fees.

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com> wrote:
> Have also put up a new-item about the study on ePSIplatform.eu
> http://www.epsiplatform.eu/news/news/french_study_on_charging_for_commercial_psi_re_use
> -------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
>
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> as my original post is held for moderation due to the mentioned
>> attachment, I am sending this again as text only.
>>
>> On Saturday, January 15, 2011, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> > As this thread has been mostly talking about pricing in general, we seem
>> > to be forgetting that the trigger was a specific study in France for APIE as
>> > to pricing which said that for commercial use an 'optimal' pricing policy
>> > was possible without restricting adoption of re-use.
>> >
>> > Peter posted a link to the management summary in English. The entire
>> > report (in French) can be found
>> > at https://www.apiefrance.fr/sections/acces_thematique/reutilisation-des-informations-publiques/etude-economique/view as
>> > a link to a PDF file at the bottom of the page.
>> >
>> > In the attachment to this e-mail you find a Google translated version in
>> > English of that PDF.
>> > I have sent an e-mail to the researcher listed as contact person to
>> > request more info on the method and process of the study. It seems at first
>> > glance to be a literature/thinking excercize but I may be wrong.
>> >
>> > My first impressions are the study isn't strong on semantics. 'Value
>> > added' seems to mean the effort put into releasing the data by the public
>> > institution. And using the data-information-knowledge ladder is never a good
>> > sign to me (with my knowledge/change/complexity background), as it implies a
>> > linear hierarchy that isn't there. Yet that exactly is the basis they use
>> > for suggesting 'optimal pricing', as the steps up the assumed ladder are
>> > used as measure for value added.
>> > And in this case they also seem to not realize that what constitutes
>> > information or knowledge to the gov publisher of data may be simply raw data
>> > for the re-user (as is e.g. the case with the EP's documents that Google
>> > Translate uses to train their algorithms.)
>> >
>> > Will come back with more after reading the report more.
>> > best,Ton-------------------------------------------
>> > Interdependent Thoughts
>> > Ton Zijlstra
>> >
>> > ton at tonzijlstra.eu
>> > +31-6-34489360
>> >
>> > http://zylstra.org/blog
>> > -------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Peter Krantz <peter.krantz at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > https://www.apiefrance.fr/sections/acces_thematique/reutilisation-des-informations-publiques/economic-study/view
>> >
>> > "The authors conclude that in times of tight budgets, the optimal
>> > policy may be to charge for commercial reuse at reasonable rates
>> > designed to cover the cost of the added value. This policy rightfully
>> > shifts a share of the costs of producing PSI from taxpayers to those
>> > who obtain a commercial benefit from using it outside its primary
>> > purpose. Significantly, this approach would not diminish the overall
>> > economic equilibrium of PSI reuse. For non-commercial reuse, setting
>> > rates equal to the marginal cost of making the information available
>> > would be optimal in most cases, as the willingness to pay for this
>> > type of reuse is generally low. The study did not specifically address
>> > the case where public entities competes with private operators and/or
>> > are required to self-finance part of its budget."
>> >
>> > European Commission tweeted this with the hashtag #opendata:
>> > http://twitter.com/infsoe4/status/25495868148809729
>> >
>> > regards,
>> >
>> > Peter
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > euopendata mailing list
>> > euopendata at lists.okfn.org
>> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/euopendata
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Interdependent Thoughts
>> Ton Zijlstra
>>
>> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
>> +31-6-34489360
>>
>> http://zylstra.org/blog
>> -------------------------------------------
>
>
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