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The commonsense definition of data should prevail here. Since taxpayers originally paid to compile the data, the county should put all of their GIS data on the

The commonsense definition of data should prevail here. Since taxpayers originally paid to compile the data, the county should put all of their GIS data on the web, free to all. If hosting costs are a concern, they should look into creating a torrent.

brudgers 15y ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of government in the sunshine and half a million dollars is asinine and not in the public interest. However, the your argument appears largely unsupported. Just to play devil's advocate, if the county builds a stadium for the local high school team, are citizen's entitled to free admission? If they build a performing arts center, are citizens entitled to use it for free?
- nknight 15y ago
  Actually, yes. Every dollar in use fees for physical locations goes to defray the cost of the construction, use, and maintenance, lowering the actual taxpayer burden. Cost of distribution for public information -- which will be collected regardless of use by anyone other than the government -- is de minimis. It is literally so low that it would cost the government more to do the accounting that could be reasonably charged for the act of distribution. What is unsupportable is not simply putting the data online. The government serves the people, it is to act in their interest. It is unquestionably not in the people's interest to have this data charged for.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  Actually, at least some public venues are free for qualified non-profit use. So...yes.
- forkandwait 15y ago
  The marginal cost to produce a nights worth of stadium use is nonzero -- staff, performers, and depreciation if nothing else. So the users should pay that. The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil -- hence the price should go to nil as well. THe only reason for a society to force the cost to be non-zero via licensing is to incentivize the creation of the data, but the government is going to do that anyway, since they need the data to function. (The marginal cost thing is why we need copyright and patents -- we need to impose non-market controls, because otherwise price and profit go to nothing and there is no incentive to create things which have marginal costs of nothing like sheet music and new molecular compounds. Yes, there is some irony whenever a capitalist argues for intellectual property -- save my market by non-market rules!)
  - davidw 15y ago
    IP is an artificial market rather than !market. Also, data is non rivalrous, unlike a stadium. Basically an unlimited number of people can access it. OTOH, charging something might put the onus of paying for the collection a bit closer to the users, if that group of users is small and well-defined. It wouldn't be fair for them to reap large benefits at the expense of everyone else. That said, though, if the users are a large and not well-defined group, opening up the data is probably more beneficial.
    - maxerickson 15y ago
      If the data collection is not benefiting most of the people in the county, then the question quickly comes up, why is the county doing it? That doesn't completely address the county doing collection that benefits everyone by providing information to a small group of people, but I think it supports the notion that any prices should be set to mitigate the sharing costs, not the collection costs (because the county should be organizing data collection around beneficial activities, not around creating salable data sets).
      - davidw 15y ago
        Yes, I would mostly come down on the side of making the data open due also to the benefits of letting anyone have at it and create new and interesting things. GIS data is not some tiny niche.
      - kd5bjo 15y ago
        There's also the possibility that the most value to the people of the county comes from subsidizing the beneficial activities that need the data by collecting licensing fees from businesses that can use the data for monetary gain.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    >"The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil" Nonsense, GIS data typically found in municipal datasets requires going out to field and physically locating items such as underground utilities and stream edges, as well as, verifying data pulled from other sources. The cost of reproducing that data is low, but then again, the cost of unlocking a stadium is equally low...roughly equivalent to the cost of quality assurance measures one might take before distributing a copy of municipal GIS data, or the cost of maintaining adequate bandwidth to distribute data sets the size of a county GIS database containing 6" resolution aerial photography.
- replax 15y ago
  "Just to play devil's advocate, if the county builds a stadium for the local high school team, are citizen's entitled to free admission?" Obviously you are missing the point, going to the stadium is the result of something being on show there, the "content". Therefore, it would not be free. What should be free (excluding maintenance costs which would need to be payed) is the usage of the stadium and actually it most likely is. I know that in the UK I think there is a data liberation act or something similar, where you can request for data to be made available in public which was payed for with tax money. I think, however, that you shouldn't even need to ask. If they don't want to publish the data, then don't pay for it with tax money...
  - brudgers 15y ago
    >"Obviously you are missing the point, going to the stadium is the result of something being on show there, the "content"." You are cherry picking. Access typically is restricted during non-performance times when marginal costs approach zero, e.g. one cannot walk around the track after work or have a Saturday morning Frisbee toss on the field because the gates are locked.
    - leot 15y ago
      No, you are cherry picking by using as your example a stadium that isn't managed well. There is no moral justification for the government's charging more than the cost of duplication (which itself should only ever have to be paid once).

brudgers 15y ago

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of government in the sunshine and half a million dollars is asinine and not in the public interest. However, the your argument appears largely unsupported. Just to play devil's advocate, if the county builds a stadium for the local high school team, are citizen's entitled to free admission? If they build a performing arts center, are citizens entitled to use it for free?

nknight 15y ago
Actually, yes. Every dollar in use fees for physical locations goes to defray the cost of the construction, use, and maintenance, lowering the actual taxpayer burden. Cost of distribution for public information -- which will be collected regardless of use by anyone other than the government -- is de minimis. It is literally so low that it would cost the government more to do the accounting that could be reasonably charged for the act of distribution. What is unsupportable is not simply putting the data online. The government serves the people, it is to act in their interest. It is unquestionably not in the people's interest to have this data charged for.
waterlesscloud 15y ago
Actually, at least some public venues are free for qualified non-profit use. So...yes.
forkandwait 15y ago
The marginal cost to produce a nights worth of stadium use is nonzero -- staff, performers, and depreciation if nothing else. So the users should pay that. The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil -- hence the price should go to nil as well. THe only reason for a society to force the cost to be non-zero via licensing is to incentivize the creation of the data, but the government is going to do that anyway, since they need the data to function. (The marginal cost thing is why we need copyright and patents -- we need to impose non-market controls, because otherwise price and profit go to nothing and there is no incentive to create things which have marginal costs of nothing like sheet music and new molecular compounds. Yes, there is some irony whenever a capitalist argues for intellectual property -- save my market by non-market rules!)
- davidw 15y ago
  IP is an artificial market rather than !market. Also, data is non rivalrous, unlike a stadium. Basically an unlimited number of people can access it. OTOH, charging something might put the onus of paying for the collection a bit closer to the users, if that group of users is small and well-defined. It wouldn't be fair for them to reap large benefits at the expense of everyone else. That said, though, if the users are a large and not well-defined group, opening up the data is probably more beneficial.
  - maxerickson 15y ago
    If the data collection is not benefiting most of the people in the county, then the question quickly comes up, why is the county doing it? That doesn't completely address the county doing collection that benefits everyone by providing information to a small group of people, but I think it supports the notion that any prices should be set to mitigate the sharing costs, not the collection costs (because the county should be organizing data collection around beneficial activities, not around creating salable data sets).
    - davidw 15y ago
      Yes, I would mostly come down on the side of making the data open due also to the benefits of letting anyone have at it and create new and interesting things. GIS data is not some tiny niche.
    - kd5bjo 15y ago
      There's also the possibility that the most value to the people of the county comes from subsidizing the beneficial activities that need the data by collecting licensing fees from businesses that can use the data for monetary gain.
- brudgers 15y ago
  >"The marginal cost to produce data (or software) is almost nil" Nonsense, GIS data typically found in municipal datasets requires going out to field and physically locating items such as underground utilities and stream edges, as well as, verifying data pulled from other sources. The cost of reproducing that data is low, but then again, the cost of unlocking a stadium is equally low...roughly equivalent to the cost of quality assurance measures one might take before distributing a copy of municipal GIS data, or the cost of maintaining adequate bandwidth to distribute data sets the size of a county GIS database containing 6" resolution aerial photography.
replax 15y ago
"Just to play devil's advocate, if the county builds a stadium for the local high school team, are citizen's entitled to free admission?" Obviously you are missing the point, going to the stadium is the result of something being on show there, the "content". Therefore, it would not be free. What should be free (excluding maintenance costs which would need to be payed) is the usage of the stadium and actually it most likely is. I know that in the UK I think there is a data liberation act or something similar, where you can request for data to be made available in public which was payed for with tax money. I think, however, that you shouldn't even need to ask. If they don't want to publish the data, then don't pay for it with tax money...
- brudgers 15y ago
  >"Obviously you are missing the point, going to the stadium is the result of something being on show there, the "content"." You are cherry picking. Access typically is restricted during non-performance times when marginal costs approach zero, e.g. one cannot walk around the track after work or have a Saturday morning Frisbee toss on the field because the gates are locked.
  - leot 15y ago
    No, you are cherry picking by using as your example a stadium that isn't managed well. There is no moral justification for the government's charging more than the cost of duplication (which itself should only ever have to be paid once).