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

Wed Jan 5 09:52:17 UTC 2011

On Wed, 5 Jan 2011, Christian Laux wrote:

> 2.             if the KVK does in fact contain email address information,
> and if the Swiss court is correct to state it is mandatory to republish
> information "as is", this shows that there is no restriction from the data
> side to republish the data.

Don't think so narrow minded in the new information age, the biggest 
concern is analogue spam... which basically results in much more hassle 
than electronic versions. The regulation (obviously) applies to both.

The point is thus: the data can be public domain (by law) and use of any 
data for commercial (e)mail can be regulated (by law). 'Direct mail' uses 
a source, like e-mail spam does. By hidden markers in address information 
it is easy to pinpoint the source of this data.

The last (significant) Dutch concern was a company registry, that had the 
same abbrevation as the 'Chambre of Commerce', they bought a commercial 
address file and started to write invoices... it was big news...

Secondary Google's 'lets publish all corporate info on a map' included 
personal addresses (even my parents one with THEIR name, while not having 
a business) and retirement pension corporations. (In The Netherlands you 
can basically setup a private company that has the sole purpose of 
supporting yourself in retirement. Obviously not something you want to 
have published as business on Google.) The latter companies get spammed 
daily by people wanting to sell stuff that profits 'on the long run'... 
regulation is needed, I totally believe in this.

Stefan