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No, 120,000,000 people who might benefit from apps built by others on the open data. It is good IMO for a rep to fight for legislation that helps local busines

No, 120,000,000 people who might benefit from apps built by others on the open data. It is good IMO for a rep to fight for legislation that helps local businesses when that action serves his constituents as a group over the long term. That's not the case here because what Santorum did is attempt to artificially block competition in a space where competition is likely to benefit all of his constituents in the long term. It's selling out the majority for the sake of one small business and creating a wasteful bit of government that small gov types like Santorum ought to be fighting against. It's creating a barrier to free market completion for the sake of a small win for one small company.

stinkytaco 15y ago
One could argue that a taxpayer subsidized weather service kills private competition. How do you compete with free? Of course, all those arguments miss the point. The weather service is an important function of the government, we shouldn't have to pay for weather. It's a matter of public safety and information, the property of the commons, not some commodity. Protecting that is the reason we have a government, not to artificially support a Senator's local business.
- baconner 15y ago
  I completely agree with your reasoning on why weather data is public data. Its actually not an argument about business at all but one of the public interest. To expand on you reasoning a bit I think there is a general test we can apply to all government data collection and publishing practices. If the data is being collected then its been determined to be in the public's interest to do so and therefore it's also in the public interest to release it freely in a reasonably accessible format. If the set is not useful then releasing it serves to at least inform citizens that we're wasting money so we can exert pressure to stop collecting the useless set. The exception of course is gov data that may have privacy or security implications but nevertheless eventually it should be released when those concerns are no longer valid.

stinkytaco 15y ago

One could argue that a taxpayer subsidized weather service kills private competition. How do you compete with free? Of course, all those arguments miss the point. The weather service is an important function of the government, we shouldn't have to pay for weather. It's a matter of public safety and information, the property of the commons, not some commodity. Protecting that is the reason we have a government, not to artificially support a Senator's local business.

baconner 15y ago
I completely agree with your reasoning on why weather data is public data. Its actually not an argument about business at all but one of the public interest. To expand on you reasoning a bit I think there is a general test we can apply to all government data collection and publishing practices. If the data is being collected then its been determined to be in the public's interest to do so and therefore it's also in the public interest to release it freely in a reasonably accessible format. If the set is not useful then releasing it serves to at least inform citizens that we're wasting money so we can exert pressure to stop collecting the useless set. The exception of course is gov data that may have privacy or security implications but nevertheless eventually it should be released when those concerns are no longer valid.