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'Google, Apple, and Uber Should Be Forced To Share Their Mapping Data' (technologyreview.com)
The UK government should encourage companies like Apple, Google, and Uber to publish more map data to help the development of technologies like driverless cars and drones, according to a new report by the Open Data Institute. From a report: This sort of data, which includes addresses and city boundaries, fuels tons of everyday services, from parcel and food deliveries to apps like Google Maps and Uber. Internet giants are sitting on top of vast amounts of geospatial data, but it is largely inaccessible to others. The ODI argues it should be as open as possible as a part of "national infrastructure." Analyzing map data can help communities and organizations make decisions across a vast range of sectors -- for example, how to improve access to a school or hospital.
Encouraged or forced?
One is a good idea to get behind, the other less so.
The TFA sounds like a RFP. They want the data to be free, but are open to paying millions of pounds in licensing fees for the all the stuff that's actually required to consume the data.
>> "There are opportunities to explore alternative business models that will help to ensure sustainable access to open geospatial data. For example: charging for warranties and quality assurance, charging for support and consulting around use of data, charging for API access and/or tailored online services to enable on-demand use of data within specific sectors or types of application..."
Being "encouraged" is hardly likely to influence the corporate players to giving up their intellectual property for free - it would be hard to imagine an incentive for them to do so. But why bother? OpenStreetMap is open access crowd sourced geospatial data, and has grown from being a curiosity to a major player for such data. Wikipedia flourished despite dire predictions from companies like Encyclopedia Brittanica, and look who won that battle. OpenStreetMap is a Wikipedia for maps, and has gone from being an interesting "curiosity and experiment" to a major player.
Those companies expended resources to get that data.
Perhaps they should be asking government, who built the majority of the roads, and created the plans and surveys, which should be better than anything which can be collected by simply driving around.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's interesting that they call out technology companies about this, and never mention logistic companies who, arguably, have a far better data set because their business so deeply relies on it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This is 17 levels of dumb. For goodness sakes, collecting this data is expensive. If the government forces the companies to just hand it all over, then they are going to stop collecting it. Then we will all have really good and quickly and permanently obsolete maps.
If the government wants the data they should create a whole department that is tasked with doing nothing but creating and improving maps. (Wait...)
Is money.
Google et al, scum buckets and hives of villany tho they all are, spent money to collect, organize, store, and maintain that data. If a government wants to license that data on behalf of it's citizens for whatever mutually agreed upon price, more power to them. If they want to dictate that the information be given up or seized just bc they say so, well, thats how revolutions get started as Britain learned a couple centuries ago.
Open Street Map is one project that is open source and does a good job providing maps. I think people just look to name brands as a easy means to access maps because all those platforms do their own mapping. Google, Apple, Microsoft all have mapping apps and so why do they need to share? No doubt services requiring good mapping is building and the sources with the best coverage and accuracy will win. Which is why sharing probably isn't going to happen.
telling the US brands what should be done with data the US brands collected.
Its "inaccessible to others" as the US brands had to spend a lot of time and their own money to collect all that data.
The UK gov can create its own data sets and give them away to any project they want for free as "national infrastructure".
What is it with gov and bureaucrats need to take from the private sector and give to competitors?
Should the UK gov want to provide data sets to innovate new start ups, create a UK gov backed open set and let anyone use the data for anything.
Start spending gov money in the UK on UK projects that provide data to UK brands.
Don't go full tyranny and demand US brands give their years of hard work over to the UK for "free".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Since it's "national infrastructure", and the data is just sitting out there for anyone to collect for free, then let the government collect the data and give it away.
Good mapping data is expensive and labor intensive to collect, and is a huge competitive advantage to the company that invests the resources to do it well. It should remain with those that own it.
Forced? Let me guess.....for the common good?
Whatever happened to property rights?
If the information age, data is a commodity that requires significant investment to produce. Therefore, how would this be any different than a fully-marxist state seizing of the means of production?
"The Open Data Institute is a non-profit private company limited by guarantee, based in the United Kingdom. Founded by Sirs Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt in 2012, the ODIâ(TM)s mission is to connect, equip and inspire people around the world to innovate with data"
It's Tim and his mate being silly.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
So what you're saying is that there is an opportunity for someone to copy that open data to a fast server and provide something of value?
You could either monetize it somehow, whether via a $5/year subscription to the fast service or ads or whatever, or just pay the bill from their own pocket to provide a public service.
These companies paid (made large investments) to collect this geospatial data.
If the government wants the data "nationalized", shouldn't the government make contracts to pay the companies to give away the data they collected?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We should defintely force other people or companies to do everything I want.
No, other people or companies should *not* be allowed to force *me* to do what they want.
It would be a shame if something happened to it.
How magnanimous of the UK government to give away property that does not belong to them.
Having any gov demand a company hand over its own data sets is not "pool resources together" AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
... you didn't answer the question about what law(s) were broken, only exclaim that you're happy when government changes the rules.
Reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the defendant was charged with "conspiracy to commit acts not normally considered illegal".
I'm Company X. Over the last number is years I've spent a lot of money building up a massive makiyng database, all at my own cost. I sell this data to people, cheaply, but still make enough money to help recoup the costs. It's not a cheap business.
Why, then, should I just give it all away for free?
Are you going to force Nestlé to give away chocolate for free? I don't think so, so why should I have to give you my product for free?
It has only been a quarter century or so since virtually all map data came from governments. As computers reached a level of being able to pick routes and GPS became cheap, both needs and wants arose for expanded data. I can remember a few years in the 90s where applications that were technically possible were being held back for lack of that data. Many knew we needed it. It would be nice if the governments had stepped up and expanded their data for everyone's use in a timely fashion. They didn't.
The companies who had applications that could utilize the data to enough benefit to justify the billions in continuous expenditures necessary to collect it and keep it up to date did so. It would not be the least bit fair to then turn around and wipe out the benefits derived from their efforts by making the same data available to all.
A government grab of this data would be little different from a government announcing tomorrow that all entertainment in the country it oversees is now public domain and free for all to view or listen to at will. The public might cheer initially, but the industry would collapse. It would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
At this point, it would not even be fair for the governments to step in with their own money, create an equivalent dataset including all of the imagery and analysis of that imagery, and then give it to the general public. The public wouldn't even desire the data if it weren't for the industry's risk-taking and developments that created the need for it.
they based their data on taxpayer provided data and don't contribute anything back willingly
so the UK will legislate to FORCE them to CONTRIBUTE back to the taxpayer funded systems
What do you mean "collect it"? They built the damn thing. Council surveyor drawings are among the most accurate representation of street designs and addresses. Tax documents are the most accurate representation of registered businesses at each address.
They HAVE this data.
The Ordnance Survey should also have to share its mapping data with the public - most of which was gathered with public (taxation-funded) money!
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Socialists, demand the right to others work for nothing.
The solution is quite simple: governments should feed all the geo data they have anyhow, collecting dust on some hard drive, into OpenStreetMap!
In theory, the government and municipalities already know exactly where each and every business is located, what it does, how it looks from the outside, if it passes health inspection, etc.
Same for almost any other kind of interesting Geodata. All that the governments have to do is feed this data into OpenStreetMap, or at the very least publish it on their websites in a CSV file or something.