UK Version of Data.Gov ?

I blogged a while back about the US data.gov which is designed to improve access to federal data and encourage the use of this data outside of government.  It is part of the Obama administration's effort to use the Web to make government more transparent.

In a recent blog, Richard Stirling of the Cabinet Office's digital engagement blog indicated that one of the things the UK government is considering in reponse to Recommedation 14 of the Power of Information Task Force is to create a UK version of data.gov as an open data website for UK government data.  This follows upon the appointment of Andrew Stott as Director of Digital Engagement and whom you can follow on Twitter as @dirdigeng.

One of the differences between data accessibility in the US and other countries with a Common Law-based legal system, is that in the US government data is in the public domain, whereas in the UK and Commonwealth countries it is covered by Crown copyright.  

For example, in Canada federal government spatial digital data was recently made freely available at the NRCan Gratis web site, but with an intellectual property rights license which is pretty open in that it only requires attribution.

GEOGRATIS LICENCE AGREEMENT FOR UNRESTRICTED USE OF DIGITAL DATA

This is a legal agreement between you ("Licensee") and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada ("Canada"), as represented by the Minister of Natural Resources Canada. BY ACCESSING, DOWNLOADING, PRINTING OR USING THE DATA, INFORMATION AND MATERIALS BEING PROVIDED WITH, OR ACCESSIBLE PURSUANT TO THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY DISPOSE OF ANY SUCH DATA, INFORMATION, MATERIALS AND ANY DERIVED PRODUCTS.
...
AND WHEREAS Canada represents that it has full authority to grant the rights desired by the Licensee on the terms and conditions herein contained;
...
1.0 DEFINITIONS

Canada's Data means any and all Data, the Intellectual Property Rights of which vest with Canada.
...
2.0 LICENCE GRANT

Subject to this Agreement, Canada hereby grants to the Licensee a non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty-free right and licence to exercise all Intellectual Property Rights in the Data. This includes the right to use, incorporate, sublicense (with further right of sublicensing), modify, improve, further develop, and distribute the Data; and to manufacture and / or distribute Derivative Products.
...
3.0 PROTECTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SOURCE

Use of the Data shall not be construed as an endorsement by Canada of any Derivative Products. The Licensee shall identify the source of the Data, in the following manner, where any of the Data are redistributed, or contained within Derivative Products:

"© Department of Natural Resources Canada. All rights reserved."
...

In the UK access to government spatial data is more restrictive than in Canada.  Access to spatial data is available through the Ordnance Survey (OS), which was created by Parliament as a trading fund, which means that it is a private company with a single share holder, the UK government, which expects the OS to return a profit, which it does by selling spatial data for which it holds copyright.

Use of Content

All material on the Site (the "Content") belongs to Ordnance Survey or its licensors. You may retrieve and display content from the Site on a computer screen, print individual pages on paper (but not photocopy them) and store such pages in electronic form on disk (but not on any server or other storage device connected to a network) for your personal use. 

...

Except as expressly set out above, you may not reproduce, modify or in any way commercially exploit any of the Content. In particular, but without limiting the general application of the restrictions contained in the preceding sentence, you may not do any of the following without prior written permission from Ordnance Survey:

• redistribute any of the content;
• remove the copyright or trade mark notice from any copies of Content made under these Terms;
• create a database in electronic or structured manual form by systematically downloading and storing all or any of the Content.

To give you some idea of what this means, in a famous legal case in the UK in 2001, the Automobile Association, which is a private company, paid £20 million to the Ordnance Survey in an out-of-court settlement for unauthorized copying of OS maps.

To me this means that a UK version of data.gov will be quite different from the US data.gov, unless it is accompanied by legislation that changes the rules governing access to government spatial data in the UK.