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

Sun Jan 16 14:47:06 UTC 2011

Here's a quick example on why commercial usage should also be free,
taken from my own experience...

The Institute for Icelandic Studies
(http://arnastofnun.is/page/arnastofnun_frontpage_en) is a public
institution that has gathered a lot of language resources over time.
Some of those resources used to be available for commercial use only
by a substantial annual fee. While several companies (startups mainly)
thought there were commercial opportunities in using this data, none
were willing to cough up the fees needed, so the result was that the
data wasn't being used for commercial purposes at all. One of these
projects was a search engine project that I was working on. As we were
working on things that were valuable to them, we managed to do a
"swap" agreement with them. We got a license to use their data, and
they go to use a lot of our technology.

The result was hugely improved search on the nationwide telephone
registry (http://en.ja.is/), resulting in more usage of the site
giving the company more advertising revenues and our users better
service and search results. Ergo: A lot of commercial AND society
value was released, that otherwise wouldn't have. In fact we were so
happy with the results that we decided to see what would happen if the
data was fully opened up. The telephone registry sponsored the
Institute to open up their resources and organize a prize competition
on projects using that data.

The competition was quite successful. We got over 30 entries ranging
from Icelandic language games, to hard-core language technology
solutions. Now there are several companies using their data for
various purposes and in fact there are even more academic and
non-commercial users of the data too as the data has been publicized a
lot more than it had previously.

All in all a good example of value that is released when data is
opened up for ALL usage.

Best,
Hjalmar Gislason
Founder & CEO, DataMarket
M: +354 860 3800
www.datamarket.com

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 11:24 PM, James McKinney
<oxford.tuxedo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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