[open-government] National legal barriers to open data in Europe

Wed Jan 5 13:03:32 UTC 2011

Hi Toby,

as I stated already yesterday:
these court rulings as in Switzerland are based on a misconception of 
the purpose of re-use markets. As researcher in several EU-related 
projects I told already in 2005 these lessons learnts the guys of DG 
INFOSOC. - However, they missed to understand the legal and 
methodological complexity of the re-use issue.

Therefore, even the PSI Directive 2003 lacks clarity and a proper 
classification of various and heterogenous markets involved. It is a 
pity that lawyers never study beforehand the micro-economic reality and 
value chains.

Therefore, each EU member state transposed the PSI Directive differently 
subsuming it under different legal super-categories. Once by the 
Ministry of Interior, or the Ministry of Economic Affairs of even the 
transport ministry.

***************

And of course the relationship between FOI and PSI re-use legislation 
was never dealth with properly. So the mass in France, Germany and most 
EU member states dates back to the PSI directive and the unability of 
national legislators to set up a proper classificiaton. Even some of the 
Slovene judgements drive me crazy.

Best,

Gerhard

On 05.01.2011 12:50, Toby Mendel wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I agree with Chris on two points, which I see as related:
>
> 1) There is no need in a licence to remind people that breaking the 
> law is illegal.
> 2) It is not appropriate, either from an openness perspective or from 
> a more general analysis of appropriate lines of responsibility, to 
> make distributors of data responsible for downstream spamming.
>
> To strain Chris' analogy below, it is a bit like making those who sell 
> knives are responsible for the wrongs that those who buy the knives 
> might commit. In other words, the spamming rule treats this social 
> good in a different way than we treat other social goods, which 
> impacts negatively on openness.
>
> I think we must argue strongly against such rules.
>
> Toby
>
> On 5 Jan 2011, at 07:09, Chris Taggart wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Antti.Eskola at tem.fi 
>> <mailto:Antti.Eskola at tem.fi> <Antti.Eskola at tem.fi 
>> <mailto:Antti.Eskola at tem.fi>> wrote:
>>
>>     This solves the problem only if the retriever and the first user
>>     is the same and remains the end user. Why can't the license text
>>     mention that the data can be used only for legal purposes?
>>     Strange if it is doesn't mention it yet.
>>
>>     Cris's point may be that e.g. spam laws should target spammers
>>     themselves, not those who release public sector data in good
>>     faith, but that data is subsequently misused by spammers. Right?
>>
>>     Antti Eskola
>>
>>
>>  Yes, that's right. In fact I don't think it's necessary for the 
>> licence to say it should only be used for legal purposes -- it's 
>> redundant, a bit like having a sign on a shop which say 'You may only 
>> enter here if you promise not to steal from us'
>>
>> Chris
>> -- 
>> -------------------------------------------------------
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>> http://opencorporates.com
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> ___________________________________
> *Toby Mendel*
> *Executive Director*
> * *
> *Centre for Law and Democracy*
> toby at law-democracy.org <mailto:toby at law-democracy.org>
> Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
> Fax: +1 902 431-3689
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>
>
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