Crying into Our Beer

At first blush, this sounds good:

The University of Manchester has secured a £8.4 million deal to become one of the country's largest repositories of facts and figures.

The award by the Economic and Social Research Council will renew the services which are free of charge for researchers and students until 2012. Tens of thousands of people are already using them.

But the clue is "free of charge": we're talking free as in beer, here, people.

So, a missed opportunity here to make this data - precisely the kind of stuff that should be available in an unfettered form - truly free. It makes you want to weep.