[Publicwhip-playing] Re: [geo-discuss] Re: [Openstreetmap] Coders needed for similar project & UK FOI act request update.

Fri Nov 11 01:57:22 UTC 2005

Hi Jo,

> On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 12:59:23PM -0800, Jo Walsh wrote:
> > hello clive, list,
> > On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 05:05:26PM +0000, Clive Galway wrote:
> > > On a side note, as a result of this project, I am currently trying to push through a Freedom of Information Act request on the British Government to get them to release UK political boundary data (eg counties etc) into the public domain on the grounds that political boundaries of our country are the property of the populace and not Ordnance Survey as they are saying.
> > > The original request was denied, it is currently on appeal and I am in talks with the ombudsman's office ( The governing body one appeals to if they feel the request / appeal has been unlawfully denied ) who seem to be quite outraged that this information is not free and they think I am in with a half-decent chance.

I'm sorry, this is probably something I don't fully understand, but
I don't see why information being released to you under FOI necessarily
places it free of copyright and hence into the public domain?

I'm not a lawyer but I've had a go at reading around this and can't
see that you'd be granted any additional rights to use data released
in this way over and above any that you had already just because it was
disclosed to you under FOI?

Surely it's the rights that you want (or rather the right to further
distribute without inhibition) not the actual data itself. So I can't
see why this FOI request is relevant to what you want to achieve.

The boundary data isn't secret. FOI was meant to prevent stuff from
unnecessarily being secret rather than forcing everything to be free?

Please someone explain how I've got this wrong.

J.
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