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Australian Bureau of Statistics Doesn't Like Direct Downloads of Census Data

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sort-of-open-data dept.

Bismillah writes "The ABS has released the census data for the country under a Creative Commons license, but instead of making it easy to get, they've put in Javascript to obfuscate file paths and more. All commented in the source code of course." At first glance, it's an attempt to get people to pay $250 for a DVD with the data instead.

3 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. You Know What They're Up To? by Greyfox · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This follows on my "best method to get tech support from a computer person." You don't ask "How do you...?" You assert, loudly, within hearing range of the computer person "This is the absolute beset way to do it!" and provide a woefully incorrect method of getting to the result you're trying to achieve. One of these methods will have the computer person falling over himself to help you. Guess which one. Have I mentioned that I'm Evil lately?

    Anyway, they're pulling the same thing here. They want someone to gather up their data and present it in a nice package for free. The best way to do that is to drop an ineptly-presented steaming pile of crap on the internets. There'll probably be 15 open source projects to slice and dice it on github by the weekend, and it didn't cost the Australian government a dime! It's brilliant!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  2. Re:Bit torrent by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually the census data has a whole pile of interesting nuggets in it.
    I do have portions of it right now.

    I didn't notice all the javascript however and thought the download process was straight forward.
    Kudos to the ABS for using Creative Commons.

  3. Re:Excellence in Government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's almost as bad as copyrighting public laws.

    I'm not sure if you're joking here but the Australian government actually DOES copyright legal documents. For example to comply with telephone wiring regulations requires access to a document released by "Standards Australia" which costs about $200 last I checked. I don't doubt that the document was developed using public funds. I'm sure this shit happens a lot more than people realise.