We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to free UK Digital Mapping.”
Details of Petition:
“Satisfy the national interest and consumer need for accurate, high quality and readily available UK maps by making them freely available, ideally with no licensing or copyright restrictions. This will encourage commercial and public body exploitation, ensuring efficient and widespread utilisation of public information. The problem: If you want to publish UK location based data derived from Ordnance Survey maps (most data is) on a map background, such as GoogleMaps then you are probably infringing copyright. This applies to EVERYONE including other government departments! Solution: Review the trading status of Ordnance Survey, changing from a ‘Trading Fund’ (require to ‘break-even’) to a directly funded government department. Review Copyright licences – what are we actually trying to protect and from whom? The Benefit: Remove the existing and extensive bureaucracy and licensing conflicts that exist between the numerous parties involved. Make UK Plc more efficient!.”
· Read the petition
· Petitions homepage
Read the Government’s response
Thank you for the e-petition asking the Government about free UK Digital Mapping.
At Budget 2009, the Government announced a new strategy for Ordnance Survey which balances the need to maintain the highest quality standards with the need to stimulate innovation in the geographical information market and make data more widely available. Ordnance Survey will continue to be self-funded and earn revenue from licensing its data but it will reform to ensure easier access to its high-quality geospatial data and services. In particular, an enhanced OS OpenSpace service allows developers to experiment with a wide range of datasets at no cost and Ordnance Survey is fundamentally overhauling the framework by which it licenses its products and services.
Further details can be found at www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk.
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