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How much would you be prepared to pay for premium Ordnance Survey POIs?
Nothing, I am happy with the supplied POIs
3%
[ 27 ]
Nothing, POIs should be free
35%
[ 285 ]
£1.00 per category download
6%
[ 55 ]
£5.00 to download all POIs
15%
[ 123 ]
£10.00 annual subscription to download when I want
39%
[ 321 ]
Total Votes : 811
Author
Message
sausages Lifetime Member
Joined: Feb 25, 2005 Posts: 62
Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject:
MikeB wrote:
It can be viewed as some have put it that the people who want the data and can afford it pay for it, whilst the rest of the Tax Payers benefit from this activity.
It ought to viewed as a world leading tax payer funded service was seen as a cash cow and legally restructured to sell for profit that which already belonged to the 'customers' who paid for the data to be collected in the first place.
Sell the OS data for mutual benefit to commercial users ? Yes, naturally.
Allow limited access to that data free of charge to the tax paying 'customer'
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:24 pm Post subject:
MikeB wrote:
The Ordnance Survey is a non-ministerial government agency that operates as a trading fund.
I think Quango might be the description you are looking for.
MikeB wrote:
This effectively means that no tax-payer's money is used to provide the OS services or products
The fact that the OS is now a Quango doesn't change the fact that the assets it manages are crown copyright, were paid for out of taxes and therefore are owned by the taxpayer.
The OS could never justify the cost of creating it's assets from scratch because it would never be able to recoup the investment. No matter which way they spin it, they could never claim that they are a viable commercial business. Who is going to pay enough money for someone to survey the location of all the power pylons, for example?
The OS should forget about charging a piffling amount of money for POI downloads when the cost of administering the system would chew up most of the revenue earned by selling something that the customer (ie taxpayer) already owns anyway. It's just another tax.
They should:
1. Licence the data to Navteq, Teleatlas and commercial organisations who need to use it.
2. As scubakid and other say - charge businesses a fee to be included in the POI data. This could easily cover the cost of producing, collating and distributing the data.
3. Make the data freely available for non commercial use.
The choice is theirs, at a stroke they could make the world a better place by sharing information or they could just sit on it and it will be useless to anyone. _________________ Gone fishing!
UK tax payers have already paid for the data once so why should we pay again? i would accept paying a nominal fee to the providor.
Welcome to the forum.
There are very good arguments (above) in this Forum for doing so. They're written by more erudite members that me, so I suggest you read the whole lot first, then consider making the same statement again..;-)
hello chiggers
no it should be free, as others have said the taxpayer has already paid for the collation. I think it is ok for you to take a morale high ground and say along the line ''do you expect so and so free too!'' well no i don't expect everything for free, but i dont expect to wake up tommorrow and find a pound slot machine in the street lights in my street to make them light '' well the council put them in you know, do you expect them to light them aswell'' or if i phone the police i dont expect a 'bill'' because the government pays them to sit in a police station and 'you dont expect them to attend for something like a burgulary do you'' well yes i do actually. i am fed up of potty do goody pc correct kno*s, who would rather tax and price the joe average out of existance, its about time people stood up and said enough is enough, get rid of some of the top heavy beaurocrats and stop thinking up new ways to tax people
rant over
Can anyone provide any substantive proof the taxpayer has paid for the collation of the data- there are just random accusations thrown around that it has? If OS takes no tax from the Treasury then how can you claim otherwise- it just aint logical?
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:09 pm Post subject:
EkcoAD65 wrote:
Can anyone provide any substantive proof the taxpayer has paid for the collation of the data- there are just random accusations thrown around that it has? If OS takes no tax from the Treasury then how can you claim otherwise- it just aint logical?
Maybe today the OS takes no tax from the treasury TODAY but that is not the point. The vast majority of the assets the OS manages are crown copyright and were created long before they became a Quango and this was done using tax payers money.
Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 1199 Location: Park Gate
Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:12 am Post subject:
At the end of the day this discussion is no different to the one that raged on regarding the PocketGPSWorld database when it went commercial.
You all pay your annual subscription (except those with a life time membership) to download it every month. So why should the OS be any different. _________________ Graham.
TT Go720, App:9.510(1234792.1) OS:842337
GPS: V1.20, Boot: 5.5279, Home: V2.9.5.3093
Map: Europe V910.4892
Map: Europe_Truck V870.3421, Kingston 8GB SD
Nokia 925 Windows 8
sorry to spoil a good arguement but the whole 'free our data' debate is reduntant when it comes to the OS POI database.
The OS don't actually *own*, collect or in any way have claim over the PointX data (which is what we are talking about here). They are simply data aggregators, they take data feeds from the likes of experian, thompson local, binleys and merge them together with their MasterMap database.
The free option is a non-starter and your £10 a year looks off the mark as well. A full corporate enterprise-wide business-use licence for PointX is over £200,000! any pricing would have to be agreed by the ultimate data-owners and they are not going to sell cheaply.
Joined: 20/08/2002 11:51:57 Posts: 3859 Location: Essex, UK
Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:05 pm Post subject:
blairf wrote:
The OS don't actually *own*, collect or in any way have claim over the PointX data (which is what we are talking about here). They are simply data aggregators, they take data feeds from the likes of experian, thompson local, binleys and merge them together with their MasterMap database.
The free option is a non-starter and your £10 a year looks off the mark as well. A full corporate enterprise-wide business-use licence for PointX is over £200,000! any pricing would have to be agreed by the ultimate data-owners and they are not going to sell cheaply.
The OS are actually joint owners of PointX and are the sole distributor of the PointX data. Up until now they have been a commercial only operation, but now are examining the possibilities of releasing this data for non-commercial usage. One of the people at the meeting was from PointX.
If you want to make comparisons just look at the licence for mapping products. Non-commercial OS map data can be bought quite cheaply now, but is still a fortune for companies. _________________ Mike Barrett
I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. I know OS are joint owners with Landmark of PointX. The point I was making is that PointX themselves don't *own* the data, which is completely different from the position with OS mapping data.
PointX cannot charge of, and make up a new set of business rules for how they are going to licence this data. They have to clear any change with all those who feed them data (I think it is about 40 data suppliers now). These original data owners simply aren't going to let their crown jewels be given away like this. It is exactly this issue that has led to PointX being something less than a runaway success.
UK tax payers have already paid for the data once so why should we pay again? i would accept paying a nominal fee to the providor.
Welcome to the forum.
There are very good arguments (above) in this Forum for doing so. They're written by more erudite members that me, so I suggest you read the whole lot first, then consider making the same statement again..;-)
hello chiggers
no it should be free, as others have said the taxpayer has already paid for the collation. I think it is ok for you to take a morale high ground and say along the line ''do you expect so and so free too!'' well no i don't expect everything for free, but i dont expect to wake up tommorrow and find a pound slot machine in the street lights in my street to make them light '' well the council put them in you know, do you expect them to light them aswell'' or if i phone the police i dont expect a 'bill'' because the government pays them to sit in a police station and 'you dont expect them to attend for something like a burgulary do you'' well yes i do actually. i am fed up of potty do goody pc correct kno*s, who would rather tax and price the joe average out of existance, its about time people stood up and said enough is enough, get rid of some of the top heavy beaurocrats and stop thinking up new ways to tax people
rant over
Can anyone provide any substantive proof the taxpayer has paid for the collation of the data- there are just random accusations thrown around that it has? If OS takes no tax from the Treasury then how can you claim otherwise- it just aint logical?
can you provr they dont and never have had taxpayers money to build their database that they wish to sell, for the same reasons - it aint logical
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:00 pm Post subject:
blairf wrote:
I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. I know OS are joint owners with Landmark of PointX. The point I was making is that PointX themselves don't *own* the data, which is completely different from the position with OS mapping data.
PointX cannot charge of, and make up a new set of business rules for how they are going to licence this data. They have to clear any change with all those who feed them data (I think it is about 40 data suppliers now). These original data owners simply aren't going to let their crown jewels be given away like this. It is exactly this issue that has led to PointX being something less than a runaway success.
That's an interesting insight into the process and it sounds like it's not quite as simple as the OS redistributing data which is Crown Copyright.
However, the companies involved should consider the business model of the Yellow Pages. No one pays money for this big yellow book, it's distributed for free and the fees charged to advertisers cover the cost of printing and distribution.
Why not do the same thing with the POI database? If they make it freely available and licence it to the Sat Nav manufacturers (TomTom, Garmin et al) or map providers (TeleAtlas, Navteq) then they are effectively getting their advertising distributed for free.
If the OS charge £10 per subscription for people to download the data then half of this will be lost in admin costs and this would severely impact on their market share. Given the strength of feeling, a lot of people will probably share it illegally too. This could turn into a massive admin headache for the OS, they have to consider if it's more trouble that it's worth.
xda wrote:
At the end of the day this discussion is no different to the one that raged on regarding the PocketGPSWorld database when it went commercial.
I thought about that one long and hard and the parallels between the two are quite close to the bone.
However, I think the PGPSW vs OS business model is fundamentally different in that the Speed Camera Partnerships don't actually pay PGPSW to include (ie "advertise") their camera locations whereas the data that the OS is publishing contains a lot of information from providers who would be willing to pay for the privilege of having it included.
Therefore, PGPSW is forced into a subscription model to cover their costs whereas the OS is not.... _________________ Gone fishing!
So maybe a different model from that proposed may be suggested. Namely that commercial organisations such as Shell, Whitbread etc. pay to be included and it is down to them to keep the OS updated etc. This in turn will pay for non-commercial POIs (parks etc.) and the cost of distribution.
Joined: Jun 19, 2006 Posts: 212 Location: Sahrf Lunnon ;)
Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject:
Sorry for the slightly necro-post flavour here - I only just noticed this thread!
101sean wrote:
You can already download areas of OS mapping free online
yes, the Get-a-map system. Well aware of that, thanks
101sean wrote:
and get the whole of the UK at 50K and much at 25K for reasonable cost.
What do you define as "Reasonable Cost", and where from?
101sean wrote:
Business, local government etc pay a lot of money for getting higher resolution mapping which has to be constantly revised, I doubt whether funds from government cover all of this.
They don't. As mentioned earlier, OSGB is now a self-funding semi-autonomous agency.
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well said, fully agree
