[okfn-discuss] UK national statistics: are they open or not?

Wed Nov 8 16:21:33 UTC 2006

The other day I went to [National Statistics UK][1] investigate their 
licensing. Boiling it down their [copyright statement][2] says:

   * National statistics are under Crown Copyright
   * If you want to reproduce the statistics other than for research or 
private study you need a 'core' (now called PSI) click-use license

This is where it gets interesting. According to the PSI license which 
I've converted to text and excerpted at:

   http://okfn.org/wiki/crown_copyright

"In this Licence, to reproduce includes the following non-exclusive 
rights throughout the world:

6.1 publishing the Material in any medium. This includes featuring the 
Material on websites which can be accessed via the internet or via an 
internal electronic network or on an Intranet;"

This seems to be pretty broad and cover anything I'd like to do (there 
are some restrictions mainly of an integrity type in section 9 but they 
don't materially alter this). If this licence was effective it would 
mean that the data was [open][3]. **However** further down the National 
Statistics copyright page one finds:

"Customers wishing to repackage and/or redistribute National Statistics 
material in their own products or services and allow their customers to 
use such material should contact 
hmsolicensing at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk with details of their request."

This seems to imply that repackaging and redistribution require separate 
permission and are not covered by the PSI licence. If this is the case 
the freeedom to reproduce granted in the click-use license is rendered 
completely void. All of this makes me wonder whether the National 
Statistics UK see some special distinction between 'reproduction' and 
'repackaging/redistributing' (perhaps the first is non-commercial but 
the second is commercial?).

Regards,

Rufus

[1]: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
[2]: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/copyright.asp
[3]: http://okd.okfn.org/