Telling the Ordnance Survey to Get Lost

Ordnance Survey is trying to get Web 2.0 hip:

explore is a new beta application from Ordnance Survey, allowing you to create and share your routes with the world, and join in with ones that already exist. Find out more about explore.

As this is a new application we need your help to build up the content. Please submit your routes and make explore a useful and exciting tool for all our users.

So it wants to tap into user-generated content. Which would be fine, were it not for the fact it doesn't play fair: its maps, funded directly by taxpayers, and often drawing on information provided by local authorities, also funded by taxpayers, aren't made freely available to those self-same taxpayers (ever heard of open access, chaps?). Why should people contribute to an enclosed commons? This is our data: free it, and then we'll make it soar.

Bottom line: ignore this until the Ordnance Survey (and its masters in the UK Government that lay down how the service must operate) get a real clue. (Via Ogle Earth.)

A Small Comeuppance for Enclosing a Commons

The governing board of the Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that it had accepted the resignation of its top official, Lawrence M. Small, after an internal audit showing that the museum complex had paid for his routine use of lavish perks like chauffeured cars, private jets, top-rated hotels and catered meals.

But aside from claiming interesting expenses like “chandelier cleaning and pool heaters” at his home, Mr Small will be of most interest to readers of this blog for

a recent deal with Showtime, the cable channel. In that deal, the Smithsonian agreed to restrict access to its archives and scientists, which critics said violated its public status.

In other words, Mr Small was enclosing a commons. Nice to see that he's received his comeuppance, however, er, small it might be. (Via Boing Boing.)

The Tragedy of the Enclosed Lands

How could I resist a blog entitled "From Sink Estates to SQL", with the subtitle "Thoughts on Housing, IT, FOSS and Politics" - to say nothing of posts called "The Tragedy of the Enclosed Lands" with long, sad tales like this:

Last year I attended a demonstration by some companies looking to supply us with a GIS solution. I did not get to hear any costs at this point, but what maddened me somewhat was the level of restrictions the data suppliers wanted to put on any information they gave us.

These included :

- Insisting that if we put map data on our intranet we'd have to buy a licence for every potential user, i.e. every person who has access to our intranet. Considering this is over a thousand people now (and growing) this is fairly ridiculous.

- Advising us that we would only be able to print out maps (to include in publications to customers) if we got additional licences for this.

- If we decided not to renew our licence for the data, we'd have to destroy all maps produced/printed as well as the more obvious step of deleting all data we'd produced and uninstalling the software.

Reasons why proprietary approaches are doomed, No. 4,597. But do read the rest of the post, it's very thoughtful, and concludes stirringly:

I actually believe that mapping data will be de-facto public domain within the next decade. Until then though, we have alternatives. Of the data we collect, I intend to submit it all to the Open Street Map project (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page) which is an excellent attempt to bypass some of the legal faggotry in the copyright datasets. Collectively, we can tear down the enclosures. We can rebuild a commons which can help organisations of all sizes innovate with GIS technologies (surely something which can only increase with better mobile devices?)

Enclosing the Urban Commons

You don't usually think of cities as being a commons, but here's an interesting perspective that proposes precisely that:

Community development activists, urban planners, and city government officials are increasingly taking note of a disturbing trend: escalating housing costs are forcing lower-income and working- and middle-class residents to leave our nation’s cities. Gentrification and subsequent displacement are rampant. Across the country, millions of us can no longer afford to reside in our major urban areas.

...

Or, to put it in the vernacular of the commons, many of our most vibrant urban areas are being “enclosed.” Our cities which once were centers of diversity (ethnically, culturally, and in terms of income levels) are now becoming modern-day analogues to the medieval walled cities of Europe – available to the wealthy elite (and single, young, college-educated professionals with high levels of disposable incomes) while the people who make those cities function (service workers, teachers, police and firemen, city employees) must move to inner and outer-ring suburbs.