[open-government] Quirky licencing issue

Wed Apr 20 17:55:50 UTC 2011

Hi Tim,

I can't help you with your issue, but I'm curious: isn't the data made by a
public body also public? I mean, does the Ministry of Economic Development
owns the copyright of what it produces?

Sometimes here in Brazil I face the same problem, but I simply ignore it. In
fact, I hope whatever public body claims to own the copyright to sue me, so
we can test this interpretation (that the data is public) in court and clear
up this doubt.

I would like to know if this isn't the case in New Zealand too.

Best Regards,

2011/4/20 Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz>

> I've been attempting to get data from on New Zealand's Ministry of Economic
> Development. They have a web API for their registries of
> companies, charities, intellectual property, banned directors and so forth.
> Their licence for a web API key prohibits a few things. 1) I can't disclose
> any of the API calls or XML schema details and 2) the use of their data must
> not be used for direct marketing purposes.
>
> I am thinking about making denormalised data publicly available. Probably
> through a repository such as Infochimps or Tallis's dataincubator.org.
> However, I may be held liable if someone downstream from me uses it for
> direct marketing purposes.
>
> What do people suggest? At this stage, I am thinking of providing
> information less addresses, e.g. just company names and maybe a city. Does
> this seem sensible?
>
>
>
>
> Tim McNamara  |  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
> timmcnamara.co.nz
>
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>

-- 
Vítor Baptista
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