Ordnance survey copyrights?

Steve said:

While trawling throught the books,clothes,maps etc in Keswick the other
day I noticed the gps maps for pc now available and while reading the
cd rom covers noticed the words `crown copyright` and it got me
wondering. All the information obtained for these maps are from
Ordinance Survey which is a government/crown organisation? if not
government organisation then funded by the government or better still
the tax payer ie all of us so why the astronomical cost for information
which we have already paid for?.

http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/

Steve said:

Hi Folks
New to the group.
While trawling throught the books,clothes,maps etc in Keswick the
other day I noticed the gps maps for pc now available and while
reading the cd rom covers noticed the words `crown copyright` and it
got me wondering. All the information obtained for these maps are from
Ordinance Survey which is a government/crown organisation? if not
government organisation then funded by the government or better still
the tax payer ie all of us so why the astronomical cost for
information which we have already paid for?. Obviously
packaging,delivery etc has to be paid for but £150 for a single disc
covering central England ??. One of my other hobbies is astronomy and
access to Nasa web sites is actively and freely encouraged indeed
some databases can even be sent on cd rom free of charge by simply
requesting it even to the UK!!. Have I got it completely wrong or can
someone correct me please?. Cheers

Welcome to the old topic of the OS and its data.

The OS is charged by government to make money.
It does that by selling the data we paid for through taxation back to us.
One could argue that a printed map does indeed cost £8-£10 (retail) once one
factors in printing (not cheap for a map) and distribution, though its hard
to see the computerised maps as just a huge profit centre.
The OS will justify their costs by saying that they are now expected to
self-finance their surveys and updates of mapping from sales of the data and
maps.
In the UK, if anyone who wants to improve the basic OS data and then sell it
to customers, they have to buy an expensive license from the OS before they
begin. (Such as computer packages for putting data onto GPS receivers).

Contrast with the USA, where government agencies who collect data make it
available for free, taking the view that the government pays for the agency
through taxes, and thus the data belongs to the people of the USA. Thus,
you can get various bits of mapping data from the USA for free, then improve
it and sell the improved result. (Such as computer packages for putting data
onto GPS receivers)

End result, mapping data for end users is quite expensive in the UK, and the
high cost of entry to the market deters new start-ups or hobby-produced
low-cost products (I know of at least one useful hobby-grade product for
walking/cycling use which was killed off by the OS demanding its licenses).
Or, you can use US (NASA and US Geographical Survey) data to make your own
maps for free, though (not surprisingly) US Agencies don't go to huge
efforts to map the UK/EU to the levels of accuracy that might apply to the
US.

- Nigel

--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

I worked on a contract basis for OS a few years ago in connection with
digital mapping. The work was nothing special but very time consuming
and not very cost effective as I had to find and visit different
properties throughout the North of Scotland, mainly in remote areas.
In addition to my wages they had to pay me an overnight allowance, a
lunch allowance, the cost of a hire car and its fuel. For that as I
said they didn't get much of a return. No wonder they need to re-coup
all that expense.

Lindsay
www.caledoniahilltreks.com

Quoted message said:

For that as I
said they didn't get much of a return. No wonder they need to re-coup
all that expense.

I have a walking mate (seriously I do) who was a senior sales person on
in the digital mapping side of OS.

His opinion was that compared to the cost of collecting and maintaining
the OS data, they were selling the digital data to Memory map etc, too
cheaply.

The we have paid for it through past taxes argument may be of
historical interest, but is of little relavence to the future running
costs of the OS of maintaining the data.

I do however think that the current price of digital mapping is too
high and if it was 1/4 the price they may sell 4 times as many copies
and get the same revenue.