'Google, Apple, and Uber Should Be Forced To Share Their Mapping Data' (technologyreview.com) 109
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.
What it is? (Score:1)
Encouraged or forced?
One is a good idea to get behind, the other less so.
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Why the hell isn't the second option not good? PLease explain and leave the 'govarnmant baaaad'-shit out of it.
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All information should be public. Full transparency, no more secrets.
Great. Let's start with all of your financial and personally identifiable information.
Companies invested in collecting this data (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government wants the data "nationalized", shouldn't the government make contracts to pay the companies to give away the data they collected?
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Maybe they could use the tax collected to fund those contracts.....oh that's right, those companies hardly pay any tax. Silly me
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Which leads to the point I came here to make: large corporations get huge tax breaks. Why not make those tax breaks in exchange for contributing to the public good (such as freely available map data)?
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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?
Actually, the real question has to be: why the fuck doesn't the government already have all of that data, and give it to these (and other) companies? After all, the government is the one who planned and build those roads, and has detailed tax records of the buildings near these roads.
Companies USED gov data now its pay up time (Score:2)
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
Re:What it is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the hell isn't the second option not good? PLease explain and leave the 'govarnmant baaaad'-shit out of it.
LOL, that's like saying, "Please explain why forced labor is not good, and leave the "slavery bad" shit out of it. That's an unreasonable constraint, given that the government is the only entity capable of such coercion.
Re:What it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL, that's like saying, "Please explain why forced labor is not good, and leave the "slavery bad" shit out of it.
Not really. Slavery is inherently bad, so an explanation of "it is wrong because it is slavery and slavery is wrong" works. Government, on the other hand, is not inherently bad, so saying "it is wrong because the government is doing it" makes as much sense as Trump's "it is wrong because Obama did it" stance.
:)
And if you think government is inherently bad, I will gladly help fund you a one-way trip to Somalia.
Re:What it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell isn't the second option not good? PLease explain and leave the 'govarnmant baaaad'-shit out of it.
LOL, that's like saying, "Please explain why forced labor is not good, and leave the "slavery bad" shit out of it. That's an unreasonable constraint, given that the government is the only entity capable of such coercion.
Great example - it took a strong federal government to end slavery in the US, because the invisible hand of a free market sure as hell wasnt getting it done, or fixing company towns, or the railroads, or the banks. But this is different because on a computer.
Re: What it is? (Score:3)
Not always. Take the phrase "I don't not like it!" or "I don't dislike it!". It doesn't mean I like it, it means something in between dislike and like. English is complex and subtle at times. Double negatives serve a function.
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How many Millions of dollars did these companies invest in their mapping data, so their services will have some advantage over their competition?
While I understand the value of shared Map info, but what is in it for these companies. And besides the big tech companies, what about the normal Map Makers who have copy-written their maps.
If the UK think this is useful information, then is should attempt to buy the data, vs encourage or force them to give it up.
Re: What it is? (Score:1)
I love it when Yanks post things like this, then squeal like little girls when their precious companies are fined for breaking EU laws or the EU countries change their tax systems to make them pay.
And yet... (Score:2)
... 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".
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So what laws are they breaking?
However,
If you pay a lot of attention to EU laws, a lot of them are written to to put non-EU countries at a disadvantage, Such as Corn Syrup (an American Product) vs Cane Sugar from companies that are owned largely by European companies, and operated in countries that the EU has greater leverage with.
Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the US does this all the time too. However EU Residence and fans, need to get off their snotty high horse and thinking these laws are
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Forcibly encouraged.
Translation: we don't want to pay but we will (Score:2)
>> "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 o
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"I got just as much right [as the kid does] to that mine, now that it's worth somethin'." -- Charles Foster Kane's worthless, drunk, layabout dad.
Why not just use OpenStreetMap? (Score:1)
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 b
So copy it to a fast server and make some $ / good (Score:2)
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.
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OpenStreetMap provides source code to cache their map tiles. Also, there are public tile caches available already. You don't need to fetch tiles from the source.
Re:Why not just use OpenStreetMap? (Score:4, Interesting)
it would be hard to imagine an incentive for them to do so.
I'll disagree. Once all competing companies in a space achieve parity for a particular feature that isn't getting any better, there really isn't any reason for them to work separately any longer. After all, at that point the front-runners would have lost their competitive advantage, so they'll never see any gain against their competitors come from further investment in that feature. Spending money on that feature would simply be the cost to tread water against their competition, without any ability to actually get ahead.
At that point, why not open the data up? If you can externalize the cost by dumping it on society or, if nothing else, split the cost among everyone in the industry, why wouldn't you? It doesn't cost you anything competitively and it would significantly reduce your costs, allowing you to spend more time and money on the areas where they can help you get ahead better. Plus, if you're the one leading that charge towards openness, you get to define the de facto standard, meaning you can be ahead of everyone else in supporting/do less work to support the new thing.
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The issue is this isn't a map of the moon, the maps need to be changed and updated all the time. Currently the data collectors have a reason to do this, if they fall behind their opposition will gain the edge of being seen as "more reliable". Now if they have access to their competitors data there will be the parity that you point out, and with no fear of being left behind there will be no reason to spend money to unilaterally update.
I think the odd thing not being pointed out is that these companies do th
Say what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Real data is gonna be better than plans.
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Careful, comrade. That of talk is dangerous.
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Using public records is a good idea, but driving around tells you what was actually built, rather than what was planned. If you base your maps only on plans there is a risk that your maps will describe Plan C whereas what's actually out there is Plan D which got misfiled. Or Plan B because Plan C was dropped after approval, but before construction. Or Plan None which was built in 1993 as a temporary construction feature and never removed.
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And? Forcing people to part with data via eminent domain is going to be something that happens. They can forestall that by giving data away.
Or, to put it another way "data wants to be free"
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You first. Please share your full name, address, SSN, DoB, mother's maiden name, bank and credit card numbers, any associated PINs
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The headline says "force" but the report says "encourage". The government could require some amount of data sharing, perhaps with mandatory licencing similar to music or phone network local loop unbundling. It's not without precedent and can be fairly compensated.
The other issue is privacy. If the data is freely available then it can be more easily abused. At least with these companies they are regulated.
UPS, Fedex? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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It's interesting that they call out technology companies about this, and never mention logistic companies
How about mentioning themselves? I mean who has more accurate data on businesses and addresses that the government's own tax departments and council surveyors?
The fact that Google needs to collect this data in the first place is a failure. It should already be available.
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Ya...you might have too optimistic an opinion of how governments operate. Governments are...well, government operations. Lowest bid succeeds, and all that. I'd be willing to bet that the data is incomplete, spread throughout at least a dozen different databases and technologies, with random redundancies and inconsistencies, all of which are wrapped up by some fucked up oracle license which would necessitate the sacrifice of a country's first borns to access.
Whereas logistic companies actually need the da
Data is Expensive. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...)
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they are going to stop collecting it.
I am not suggesting they should be made to hand it over. I agree with you. They made the maps they should have the rights to share them or not as they please its their property.
That said I don't they will really stop collecting it. Google did not set about map making to sell maps; they are not Rand McNally. They collected that data because they needed. A decade ago to drive page views and sell banner ads while people printed driving directions off the web and more recently to enable Android to navigate
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That might be because France won't allow Google to give it away for free [theguardian.com].
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This ruling was overturned on appeal: https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/france-google-wins-court-decision-vs-evermaps/
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Not quite as simple as that, is it? Your own link explains the issue.
Driving the competition out of business by selling at a loss (including free) is not allowed in most EU countries. Other examples include newspapers that cut their price to something ridiculous temporarily. Large companies using their immense cash reserves to buy the market is hardly a new thing.
Google claim they are doing it for the benefit of society, but that's a hard sell. Probably didn't help that they were also being investigated for
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As someone who has been contracted and employed by a government agency to collect and generate publicly available geographic/statistical data I can safely say this... we've been waiting for google to eat our lunch for the past 10 years. They have no interest in doing it. In fact, they could dump it as a secondary output to their main money-making business. It wouldn't cost them anything at all (but may have some interesting privacy ramifications).
I do thin
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If the government forced them to hand over all the data, everyone's maps will improve. If they put a lag of a year, then they have the incentive to keep gathering that data. And frankly, the cost of generating that data is falling rapidly every year, since so much of it is crowdsourced or acquired by ever improving drones..
The best encouragement... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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Someone should write a statement, an organizing document if you will, to list powers the government has, that constitutes it, you might say, and specifically, disallow the King from taking things without paying for it a fair trade value.
There are open map projects (Score:1)
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.
Why is the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
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Perhaps they got started with the high quality post office and Ordnance Survey, compiled at tax payers expense?
"Google, give us the data we gave to you." Does anybody doubt government?
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Has to then give their resulting new data away for free to everyone on a gov demand?
That data was not "compiled at tax payers expense". The US brands went out all over different nations and collected their own data.
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You mean the data a totalitarian surveillance-espousing company has gathered and funded via massive invasion of privacy through mass surveillance, scraping of public sources and hiding behind a paywall, trespassing etc. Given all that, Google should rather pay back every damn bit they've violated both civilized behaviour, as well as democracy.
Oh, and in your Google cheerleading, you forget that Google has a business presence in the UK too, so yes, UK laws and policies do apply to those entities.
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One solution to the "last mile problem" is local loop unbundling, that is forcing the company that owns the last mile infrastructure to open it up to everyone. Of course they can charge fees to use it, but they have to charge everyone (including themselves) the same fee.
It's drastic but sometimes the advantage that owning that infrastructure conveys is so great that it prevents any effective competition. Without it they would have one or maybe two ISPs at the most in the UK.
The alternative is breaking the c
Let the government collect it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Call me ignorant (Score:1)
So while I could well be wrong, pretty sure google maps is already open to the makers of driverless cars. Now if those companies want to use that data for their own purpose and improve it, yeah they are gonna have to pony up
Spoken like a true statist (Score:3, Insightful)
Forced? Let me guess.....for the common good?
Whatever happened to property rights?
Nice business you have there, comrade (Score:2)
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Socialists, demand the right to others work for nothing.
ODI (Score:2)
"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.
Oh, wait... (Score:1)
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.
Nice data you have there (Score:2)
It would be a shame if something happened to it.
How magnanimous (Score:2)
At what cost? (Score:2)
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?
I'm generally all for free and public but,,, (Score:2)
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 compan
Also the Ordnance Survey (Score:2)
The Ordnance Survey should also have to share its mapping data with the public - most of which was gathered with public (taxation-funded) money!
The solution is OpenData for governments (Score:2)
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 website