Put the needle to the record by tricky

Not quite law yet,  but with cross-party support from the three main parties, it looks like the Digital Economy Bill soon will be. Unfortunately, being driven by the small-minded folks in the record and film industries shouting loudly about lost profits (not the Welsh band though), the bill is far from being what creative industries and the public need, rather it looks like being a massive missed opportunity and another example of the law being dragged into disrepute. To quote Mr Bumble, the (proposed) law is an ass.

Firstly, laws must be enforceable. An unenforceable law is a bad law. Relying as it does on the threat of having the internet disconnected at the behest of copyright holders is an untenable basis given what has been stated regarding access to internet access being a right not a privilege. Thankfully, the ISPs seem to be resisting pressure on this front and appear to be taking a stance that disconnection will only occur under the direction of a court order, ie in extreme cases where a case has been demonstrated to and supported by a court of law.

Secondly, laws must be beyond reproach. The law is there to serve the people, the rights of individuals and the common good, it is not there to protect the money making, self serving interests of a few corporate fat cats. It is true there needs to be a recording industry in some form but current moves are simply about self-preservation and stifling innovation rather than reshaping cultural industries for the new millennium. Allowing the record and film industries to largely draft their own legislation solely to protect their own current interests is a sure way of bringing the law into disrepute. As has happened with industries in the past, times change and industries need to keep pace with change, the law cannot be used to flagrantly support the status quo (not Rossi & Parfitt!) in favour of a small (but powerful) minority group. Imagine if the original Luddites had managed to get legislative backing to protect their industry and ban mechanical looms or if manufacturers of steam engines had done similar at the advent of the internal combustion engine.

I am not, however, arguing here for a complete breakdown in the creation and provision of music and film. Anarchy is not the way forward. Taking music as my main interest, it is possible to see that the ‘industry’ can play a useful role in promoting artists and supporting live shows, expensive activities which often need serious financial backing. But that does not require the behemoths of yesteryear and they cannot expect to make the vast piles of cash as before. The industry has been in the fortunate position of controlling the means of production and had total editorial control, hence could dictate how material would be created and sold but with technological advances, this has changed and those days have gone. Recording equipment is relatively cheap and easy to come by with a variety of venues in which bands and artists can record, not to mention bedrooms, attics, cellars and outbuildings countrywide. Publishing electronically removes the need for pressing factories. So what is the role for the big corporations in the new millennium? Rather than stifling innovation and access to music, sticking with business models that have existed as long as the recording industry and based around outdated technology, the industry should shrink dramatically and focus on activities which directly benefit artists and their fans.

An interesting statistic came out on tonight’s Panorama: people who download music via file sharing services tend to spend more on music, almost twice as much in fact. I would support this anecdotally in that music fans I know use file-sharing as a way of finding new music but nothing beats owning a piece of vinyl or a CD complete with the inlays and artwork. Having greater access to music encourages sales of music not the opposite despite what industry representatives like the BPI argue. File-sharing is simply the modern equivalent of taping vinyl, CDs and the radio, putting together mixes of favourite songs and sharing them with like-minded people, activities which help to get artists off the ground and have done for decades. True, sales of the latest manufactured disposable Syco pop dross may be in decline (although I note with sadness the return of the Stock and Waterman combo and can’t help wondering whatever happened to Aitken…) but real music produced by real musicians is as popular as ever and new acts are finding that they can use technology to break through whilst experienced acts can use technology to break free from the shackles of  major labels.

As Ludacris said:

Knowing he could rap
No one lift a hand
So he went about his bidness
And devised the plan
Made a CD then he hit the block
Fifty thousand sold, seven dollars a pop

Artists like Ludacris, Kate Nash and the Arctic Monkeys have all made a name for themselves through sheer talent and then subsequently been picked up by record labels. Their fan bases were arguably expanded by the promotion and exposure given to them by major labels but it was not major labels who gave them their break. Their live gigs are definitely facilitated by major labels, scale and finance being important factors, but they were gigging successfully before getting their deals. So there is still a place for the big players, it’s just not the same place they are comfortable with and used to, nor are there the untold millions available through restricting access to the cultural resource and exploiting artists and the public alike. And instead of moving forward, the Digital Economic Bill looks like fossilising this already dying industry; rather than being the panacea touted by the BPI and others, it will only serve to alienate fans and hinder development. The chorus to track 3 on the Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation album springs to mind. Thankfully, music and musicians will survive in one form or another but I fear for the wider ramifications of this crass proposed legislation.

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1. Copyright theft on a grand scale

Open by Justin Marty

I’ve been mulling over the nature of Open Data, Open Source and just general openness for a while now and, on the whole, these are admirable concepts. Access to data and software can only bring benefits for the most part. I detest control exerted through access to information in particular, with rigid top down hierarchies being top of my list of pet hates. Access to government information, for example, can only improve the way governments do business. But there has always been something niggling in the back of my mind and that is the need for confidentiality and privacy in some circumstances. I detest the argument that if you have nothing to hide, there is no need for such protection, an argument frequently used when talking about the draconian use of DNA databases and the growing desire by governments and organisations to amass data about people. And this week, in the week that data.gov.uk went live (a fantastic resource providing open access to government data), I’ve seen a couple of stories which reinforce the need for a pragmatic approach to information; one size certainly does not fit all and not everything should be open all hours. If we are going to open things up, there are implications which need to be carefully examined.

Firstly, a case on the Victorian Society website of the owner of a listed building who submitted a planning application. Replete with plans and high quality photographs, the application number was duly published in the local newspaper and the detailed submission, including the photographs, made public by the local authority. Within ten days, the obviously empty house had been burgled, the thieves using the address as published and the photographs as a guide. Numerous period fixtures and fittings were taken, presumably having been identified as easy pickings from the photographs which showed the house obviously vacant midway through renovations. Surely, this is a case of too much information being placed in the public domain.

Secondly, an interesting article on Open Access to scientific publications. Whilst I love reading a vast range of material on all sorts of topics, largely via Google Reader, it must be appreciated that online publication is not free; there are still costs associated with publishing online and these must be bourne somehow. One suggestion is to move towards an author pays model with publications free to end users, a model that could have severe implications for heritage publications if the costs are too high. And of course, a world full of poor quality articles from rich authors who can afford to publish, with excellent articles from those who cannot afford to pay the publication costs falling by the wayside is indeed a more ‘open’ world for end users but a diminished world at the same time.

Finally, following on from the second point, there is the Ordnance Survey, who are currently undertaking a consultation on their future after recent revelations. I wholeheartedly agree that an open access model for spatial data would be beneficial for the most part, especially for the heritage sector where funds are limited. Crucially though, the quality of the mapping must be maintained; simply updating OS holdings costs an arm and a leg and if their income stream is decimated, my concern is that quality will suffer. Other commentators, such as Richard Fairhurst, see other considerable problems arising from any open release of certain OS products. It is certainly not as straightforward as some of the posts on campaign blogs/websites such as Free Our Data make out.

So, whilst I am a firm believer in openness, I temper that with the observation that having everything accessible for all and for no cost is not the best way to proceed in all cases; not all information should be available in this way. And some information such as genetic sequences of the population at large should not be collated in the first place let alone be made available, even to those such as law enforcement agencies. Information is a vital resource in this digital world and it’s creation, use and provision of access to it need to be considered carefully on a case by case basis. Most definitely not open all hours in all cases.

Related posts:

1. Now we’re getting somewhere!
2. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk
3. heritage.data.gov.uk …?

The Linking Open Data dataset cloud by Fenng

Exciting news for UK data this week as the new UK data website, www.data.gov.uk, had its official launch. It’s been in beta for a while but is now fully functional and open for business, providing access to a range of datasets. Importantly, as well as the more traditional download of files in formats such as Comma Seperated Variable (csv) text files, the site promises to provide information in the form of Linked Data. This is a massive advance towards the semantic web with data freely available to be used and reused by all manner of web apps, promising virtually limitless potential; graphed, mapped, and mashed up in a myriad of ways.

This news follows hot on the heels of the consultation document on the future of Ordnance Survey data which promises to make more high quality map resources far more widely available. So in addition to having access to government data such as crime, education and health statistics, we will soon (assuming the consultation goes the way it ought to) have access to basemaps to plot it all on and administrative area boundaries to analyse by.

Of course, this is not the end of the story, just the beginning. Whilst the Linked Data approach works well for simple discreet datasets such as numeric/statistical publications and the accessibility of map data is largely a political issue, there is still some way to go before much more complex datasets will be available in this way; Whilst many datasets can be provided as Linked Data and mapping can be delivered as WMS/WFS, both providing mechanisms for exposing data and making it interoperable, there are a couple of big outstanding issues pertaining to cultural heritage information.

Firstly, the semantic clarity with which we record and have recorded information. Concepts are frequently complex and compound and often indistinct or inconsistent; the notion of period (eg Bronze Age) for example encapsulates a spatial element and a temporal element. For resource discovery, disambiguating the colour bronze from the material bronze may be essential; not all bronze (material) objects are bronze (colour) whilst some non-bronze (material) objects are bronze in colour. What one expert refers to as a bronze knife is to another a bronze dagger. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg with the variation  in classifications used, levels of atomicity in recording schemas and the legacy of how heritage datasets came into being. So simply converting a digital site archive or other archaeological record to a pile of RDF triples, providing URIs and exposing the data will not magically take us into a world of semantically interoperable heritage data but it is possible to see how it will/can work for some heritage datasets such as eg Oasis records, records of archaeological activities, events and publications or many of the discreet project archives lodged with the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) with some care and attention to detail. There will undoubtedly need to be some additional mediating frameworks to facilitate access to data, conceptual frameworks such as ontologies capable of rationalising semantic conflicts and terminological differences, but such frameworks are being developed/implemented (for example the CIDOC Conteptual Reference Model) and can help to resolve some of the semantic issues associated with heritage data.

The other major obstacle for much heritage data is politics. Currently, the primary sources of archaeological data for sites and monuments are the Historic Environment Records (HER) or Sites and Monuments Records (SMR), typically held within local authorities. Increasingly, these resources have implemented strict data licensing conditions and charge for supply of data. This is not only counter to the whole open data concept but the income streams generated by restricting and controlling access must be appealing to local authorities as a way of making heritage resources self funding rather than being a drain on limited resources. The result of this is that local authorities are going to protect what they see as their intellectual property which has monetary value. Sound familiar? Where HER/SMR data is made more freely available it is typically through local authority online portals in order than control can still be exerted over the data both with respect to content, modes of presentation and interaction. Even the Heritage Gateway, the exemplar of opening up heritage data which has tremendous potential and is an amazing resource, only provides limited access to partial datasets from participating originators with individual originators retaining control over what is presented and how. Why can’t we all have access to the data within the held by HER/SMRs and indeed the National Monuments Record (NMR) using similar techniques as are being used for other government datasets, aiming towards heritage.data.gov.uk as successor to the Heritage Gateway…?

So, it looks like attitudes towards government data are changing; data will become more openly available, leveraging recent developments such as Linked Data and heading some way towards a semantic web of sorts. With any luck, heritage data will get carried along and we will start to see more opportunities for novel heritage research off the back of this. But, the semantics of heritage data are by far more complex than anything emerging to date and will provide us with considerable challenges to make this information truly interoperable so one day we can indeed have a semantic web of the entire corpus of knowledge regarding how we got to where we are today.

Related posts:

1. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk
2. Time’s up for the Ordnance Survey…?
3. Awards for the Presentation of Heritage Research, 2007

Cider glasses by Miss604

This week, the government announced a cunning plan to reduce binge drink and related social problems: make alcohol more expensive. Now that truly is cunning, almost worthy of Baldrick himself. As someone who is partial to the odd tipple, I have to admit I find this plan absolutely ridiculous: The price of good quality cider is already high, reflecting the cost of manufacturing, and to artificially raise the price even more can only damage the industry. Furthermore, raising the price per unit of alcohol will adversely affect spirits and stronger drinks such as cider (coincidentally my favourite tipples!). Grmph.

Appreciated, there are big social problems, many drink related, but simply restricting availability is not the way forward; remember prohibition in the USA and how well that worked out, creating far more and varied social problems than those the initiative was meant to solve? As far as alcohol related social problems go, there are two main issues as I see it. Firstly, supermarkets selling unbelievably cheap alcohol as a loss leader to encourage people into the stores, taking a considerable portion of the market from pubs. Secondly, the rise of the soulless chain pubs and the focussing of these in city centres, creating modern day gin alleys.

Taking the first point, it is incredulous that supermarkets can sell bottles of lager for as little as 35p each. But then, the industrial scale of manufacture of such ‘beers’ and other drinks/potions and the chemical ridden processes involved mean that the concoctions of alcohol, water and additives are dirt cheap to make. Much ‘cider’ for example has never been near an apple. Pubs have lowered their prices, diversified their drinks range and gone promotion crazy to try and hold their own against this competition.

Turning to pubs, I grew up and live in the sticks where the local pub is the hub of the community. Yes, the drink flows freely but there is some level of shared responsibility amongst what is best described as a community of regulars; pretty much self policing with an occasional word to the youngsters (or older customers!) from the landlord as needed. Compare this to the situation in towns and cities where the chain pubs aka drinking holes dominate and the bar staff rarely know anyone present. Furthermore, the insistence by the licensing authorities that these pubs are gathered in town and city centres so as to make policing easier (by means of an obvious police presence in a small area and extensive use of CCTV) has further taken business away from more traditional pubs that used to be found scattered throughout our conurbations. Not to mention the powder keg that is the end of the night when hundreds of drunk folk tumble out and squabble for the same taxis and kebabs.

So, my vote is not to try social engineering using such a blunt instrument as artificial price fixing. Instead, lets try to get back to the concept of community pubs serving fine quality drinks at market value. Remove the licenses from the booze warehouses that are the chain pubs; anywhere where bouncers are needed on the door is not the sort of place I want to have a drink nor do I want to buy lurid coloured, cheap chemical concoctions. A combination of reasonably priced quality drinks served by a landlord who knows his customers (and when they’ve had enough) to customers who know each other, it being their community. And in an environment that is conducive to social interaction.

Just some thoughts from someone who enjoys a drink but has become seriously middle aged all of a sudden…

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Ordnance Survey triangulation station by Wessex Archaeology

Not only are we getting somewhere but news this week suggests we will have access to all kinds of map goodness to find our way and see what’s around us! First, the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) decided to start giving away their data in the public interest as announced at a recent conference. Then the Guardian’s Allegra Stratton reported yesterday (18/11/09) that moves are afoot to make more UK geospatial data freely accessible, including (wait for it) Ordnance Survey data. This was followed tomorrow (not sure how that works but the article is dated 19/11/09!) by another article in the Guardian by Charles Arthur with some more details. The long and the short of it is that the ‘mid-range’ series of maps from the OS will become freely available for both commerical and non-commercial use. Crucially for us archaeologists, that means the 1:10,000 map series we all know and love and currently pay through the nose for, unless we are privileged enough to have access to Edina Digimap or are working under an OS Subcontractor License.

Talking about Gordon Brown’s statement, Chairman of Ordnance Survey, Sir Rob Margetts said:

As Chairman of Ordnance Survey, I am delighted that the Prime Minister and John Denham have today made these proposals about releasing for free some of Ordnance Survey’s data to support innovation, accountability and growth. I  also very much welcome the commitment made by Government to contribute to the cost of this. This on-going commitment is fundamental to maintaining the sustained quality of Ordnance Survey’s data that has made the organisation a world leader in its field. The Board of Ordnance Survey will work very closely with Government, as well as our customers, partners and others to ensure that the proposals are fully developed for consultation and implementation next year.”

So what does that mean…?

The details are still to be fleshed out but note Margetts said some. I anticipate the data to be made available will be the 1:10,000 raster series. It’s not clear which, if any, vector products would be made available given that LandLine is no more and MasterMap is more detailed than the 1:10,000 scale cut-off, but anything is better than nothing: Some or all of Codepoint and BoundaryLine look to be included which will be useful for some, albeit limited, archaeological purposes. There is also no mention at this stage of other useful OS products such as LandForm, such terrain data being used to place archaeological data into its landscape context, perform analyses such as viewshed/visibility analysis and generate derived products such as slope, aspect and hillshade maps. Historical map data is also not mentioned yet and given that the digital georeferenced products were produced in conjunction with Landmark and are sold at a premium, I doubt we will be seeing such data becoming free anytime soon.

It will be interesting to see how this map data is delivered also. An enterprise (ie chargeable, commercial licensed) version of the OS OpenSpace platform called OpenSpace Pro is now at Release Candidate stage and it is possible that this could be a mechanism for delivery. Some standard WMS/WFS type webservices suitable for inclusion in desktop GIS software would be a useful addition though. And the range of data available through OpenSpace exceeds that being put on the table for open access, although notably does not include the 1:10,000 raster series.

Derived data anyone…?

The derived data issue, which meant that OS claimed ownership of all data produced using its maps claiming it to be a derivation of their intellectual property, should also become a thing of the past. Archaeological data held in Sites and Monuments Records, Historic Environment Records, the vast majority of published sources containing locations derived from OS maps not to mention user generated content created using the OpenSpace platform will be able to be freely distributed, copied and reused without any interference from the OS. The need for the kinds of licensing restriction currently being put in place by many Local Authorities and other repositories to cover themselves against possble legal action from the OS, which I have discussed previolusly, will be no more. This alone is a massive breakthrough for archaeological research.

Where next…?

So it seems a massive U-turn is about to take place with the OS being led by the nose from their position of ‘open data being untenable’ supported by mysterious secretive internal reports and no real evidence to ‘open data is the way forward’ supported by the Prime Minister himself. Perhaps the British Geological Survey will join the movement and make their data freely available…? To be honest, I thought hell would freeze over before the OS released any data for free so I am now in an optimistic mood and waiting for the next amazing installment.

UPDATE: 19/11/09

Ed Parsons has responded and there is an article in the Times from Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt providing some contextual background, these last two gentlemen reporting on the matter for government.

Related posts:

1. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk
2. OS OpenSpace
3. Open all hours

Glow Farm by TahoeSunsets; a Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR)

This week the government announced it’s plan for solving the upcoming energy crisis: More nuclear power stations. A list of proposed sites was published and various spokespeople were extolling the green credentials of nuclear power. Eh? New one on me. The usual arguments centre on plenty of cheap power, almost limitless amounts; rarely does one hear that nuclear power is the new green icon. It’s true that nuclear power wins hands down when compared to coal or other fossil fuels in terms of carbon dioxide output but that is to look at one part of the picture in isolation. There are a few other factors which need to be discussed.

Firstly, there is the safety aspect. There is some interesting reading on this topic from the industry themselves who are quick to point out there have only ever been two major accidents: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Fair enough, a small number but not insignificant as anyone who remembers either incident will recall.  Yes, incidents are few but when they occur they can be very severe with international reach, unlike incidents at other forms of power station. Add to this the higher incidence of childhood leukemia near nuclear plants, Sellafield reprocessing plant for example, and it is hard to say that nuclear power is clean or green.

Secondly, there is the waste. There are still no plans for dealing with the amounts of waste generated and it was only in 2005 that a government report was recommending various forms of burial as the way forward. So nuclear power may be considered green if we gloss over the fact that it generates toxic waste which cannot easily be dealt with and has enormous potential for environmental harm.

And finally, the cost. Building new nuclear power stations is not cheap, running them is also not cheap but the real cost comes with decommissioning. British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) are already suffering from the costs of decommissioning the UK’s current plants so the idea that a commercial enterprise can run nuclear power stations as a profit making venture seems ill founded. The tax-payer will end up subsidising nuclear power in one way or another; if private companies run the plants then a proportion of this revenue can be seen to be flowing into the hands of private individuals.

So, I am not objecting to this latest proposal out of irrational hatred of nuclear power, rather I am objecting to the ’spin’ that is being put on this initiative and the way in which only part of the story is being put forward by the government. It’s true, at current rates of consumption we will need more energy and with dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, we need other options. There is also the greenhouse effect and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But these need to be weighed against other issues and suddenly leaping from a no-nuclear standpoint to a pro-nuclear standpoint, wrapping up the shift in policy in pseudo-green credentials smacks of more New Labour double talk, especially when taken in conjunction with the proposed streamlining of the planning system as being all about empowering local communities (rather than steam-rollering opposition, which seems to be more like it).

On the subject of the planning system overhaul and the proposed nuclear developments, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, said in the Guardian: “Bypassing the planning system in this way is bad news for democracy and for the environment. A key democratic right is for the public to have a say on how their area is developed. Decision-making about where we get our energy from, and the long-term costs associated with nuclear, should be opened up to more accountability, not less.” Indeed. We need an open and honest debate about these issues with solid scientific advice as the basis and public participation. But I was forgetting, this government wouldn’t recognise good scientific advice or what to do with it anyway, as Dr Evan Harris MP (Lib Dem, Oxford West & Abingdon) most eloquently pointed out in the Guardian.

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“No problem, you’ll just owe us for the remainder of the contract” came the response. Huh?

“We’ve been with you for years, we’d just like to leave” we pressed.

“Yes, but you have an 18 month contract which you will need to complete…”

Now I have some experience of such ridiculousness, having formerly been a customer of the devil spawn that is British Telecom; they once tried to tell me that I would need to pay a cancellation fee for moving house, which received short shrift, my previous house move having counted as a renewed contract in their eyes rather than simply a different location for my previous longstanding contract (a very similar argument to this current Orange debarcle… ). They refused however to acknowledge mis-selling a broadband contract or refund some exhorbitant charges, insisting that they had fulfilled their stated notification requirement by writing to some random .bt email address about excessive usage rather than the email address I provided them with; conveniently, any recordings of the salesperson stating this had been ‘lost’ and of course, being a phone based contract, there was no paperwork to speak of. BT will never recieve a penny from me ever again; I refuse to deal with such companies.

Anyway, I digress into another tale of woe with a telecommunications company (ie there a trend here, given experiences with BT, Virgin and now Orange…?).

Back to the case in hand and Orange are insisting that despite our long-standing patronage, we must pay up the end of our contracts. Now there is a lot of dicussion online on this topic (eg here and here) but there does not seem to be a consensus. I appreciate the argument from the phone companies that folks just can’t leave contracts early but there needs to be some form of escape, especially in rural areas where there is simply little coverage (remember 99% coverage means coverage of the population rather than geographical area ie big cities and some other bits). And the idea that I would choose my house based on mobile phone coverage is simply laughable!

So, to conclude, I do hope Orange show some decency and accept that sometimes people sometimes need to leave for good reason. And longstanding loyalty deserves some recognition. My partner and I are not trying to profit by our moving network, we simply want to move to a network that works where we live. The saga continues…

No related posts.

Slides on Slideshare:

Presentation on Vimeo:

Strode College Archaeology Conference 09 – Paul Cripps. from Henry Rothwell on Vimeo.

Paul Cripps of Wessex Archaeology (www.wessexarch.co.uk) speaks on the subject of infomatics, HER/SMR storage and access, and covers a considerable amount of ground concerning information technology in relation to archaeological data.
Well worth a look.

Related posts:

1. It’s been a long time…
2. heritage.data.gov.uk …?
3. The wonders of technology

Word getting above it's station...

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1. Time’s up for the Ordnance Survey…?
2. KML comes of age

If you like these Avebury panoramas, do also check out Pete Glastonbury’s website where he has more from around Avebury also Stonehenge.

Also related to the Avebury landscape is my masters dissertation, now available on Slideshare. This goes into more detail regarding the landscape and the ways in which people in prehistory interacted with it, with some ideas regarding how the complex of sites and monuments came to be.

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1. Secrets of Stonehenge

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The summer solstice this year was apparently the biggest since the exclusion zone was lifted nine years ago, with access again managed by English Heritage: The BBC reported 36,500 revellers in attendance although given the way in which people were being counted, the real figure is almost certainly lower than this (counting was done by stewards on entry to the stones, so as people travelled back and forth to the campsite, they were presumably counted more than once).

The mood of those attending was largely good and I for one had many interesting and varied conversations with a variety of folks and even enjoyed a bit of dancing inside the bluestone circle, the latter not being something one can do everyday! There were folks from all over Europe and further afield and it is great to see so many people coming to see the event. I walked in from Durrington (avoiding the traffic carnage!) and couldn’t help but be moved by the people streaming in towards the circle from all directions, making me think of our ancestors who would have travelled along similar lines for soltices past: A truly inspiration feeling and one which really provides a sense of place.

The druids were there to welcome the dawn and the traveller community were well represented as ever. I really love the way in which Stonehenge represents so many different things to so many people from such diverse backgrounds: There are few events in the modern world which attract such a variety of people from all walks of life. Of course, there was a small contingent of ignorant yoof causing trouble, particularly at the buses in the morning, but this is the way of most such events these days, and it was more selfish, drunken bad behaviour than anything serious. I guess this is simply the way of the world these days: Even Glastonbury is no longer the preserve of the caring sharing hippy… And it is this minority which gives cause to the police presence…

The police, despite being present in numbers, were largely restrained although their heavy presence at the entrance, including dogs, and the use of metal-detectors and searches was intrusive to say the least but again, some level of intrusion seems to be the norm at any kind of public gathering these days. Thankfully, they were all wearing their ID numbers unlike at the recent G20 protests even if most of them had obviously forgetten how to smile, at least on the way in where intimidation was the order of the day: all the police I chatted to and saw around the circle were actually quite jovial, picking up on the good vibes from the crowd. I did hear a funny conversation between a visitor and one of the search teams as we passed through the security barriers which revealed they weren’t quite sure what they were looking for! I would guess from the police comments reported in the Guardian that illegal drugs were top of the list, hence the dogs but a tip for next year would be to watch out for large flares, at least one of which was sneaked in and caused mayhem in the circle when lit amongst the crowds…

The much talked about spy-in-the-sky seemed to be largely ineffective, with limited battery life (it kept disappearing, presumably for new batteries) and the laser-pointers aimed at it by the crowds can’t have helped it’s surveillance operations! From a geek point of view, I was rather jealous of the pilot: what a job flying such an amazing machine around (even if it does represent the rather repulsive surveillance obsession the authorities seem so keen on). I guess this was more of an intimidation tool than anything else, a bit like the zero-tolerance policy towards drugs which was patently untenable, much of the crowd enjoying, ahem, herbal cigarettes judging by the smells around the site.

The stewards did a fair job of keeping folks from climbing the trilithons but seemed resigned to letting people clamber on the smaller stones, a marked change from previous years and one which really ought to be remedied: The stones are not just important archaeological remains and of religious significance to some but are also home to a wide range of lichens which, taking years to grow, are very sensitive to damage.

One major problem, as in previous years, were the transport links. The roads became impassable and the police response was simply to close them and turn people away. The view in the morning was one of carnage with abandoned cars littering the surrounding roads where people trapped in the logjam had simply left their cars and walked to the henge. Yes, it was possible to get a bus between the event and Salisbury but the bus company certainly made a tidy profit, charging £6 for a single and £9 for a return ticket. Given that other similar sized (free) events such as the BBC One Big Weekend in Swindon earlier this year seem to manage the volumes of people and traffic, is it really that hard to implement some way of getting people to and from the event and ensure there are adequate numbers of stewards in the right places…? But of course, the difference being the solstice is an event which the authorities really don’t like like or want to happen, memories of the 1980’s festivals still influencing decision making. The use of tactics such as the bold statements about zero-tolerance to drugs accompanied by searches and sniffer dogs, the use of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, rumours of police horses being deployed for the first time since the Battle of the Beanfield and the alcohol restrictions, not to mention the rather under-resourced management of essentials such as the roads and public transport in favour of large number of uniformed officers on patrol all suggest the authorities would rather we simply weren’t there. Lessen the enjoyment and perhaps folks won’t return or be put off in the first place. Appreciated, English Heritage and the National Trust don’t want visitor numbers to increase but I for one am not keen on these rather insidious means of discouraging people, especially when all this security still fails to stop idiots bringing large flares into the event.

So, overall a wonderful experience once again but I have to wonder what will happen in the years to come…

Related posts:

1. Stonehenge world heritage status at risk as tunnel plan is shelved – Times Online

It is indeed true that uneven free entry will encourage visitors to visit some museums over and above others but this is not an argument for having entry fees. I have noticed when visiting another of my haunts, the Natural History Museum, that the demographic of visitors has changed in recent years. Many more people in total including more children and families in attendance rather than just obviously middle-class, middle-aged couples. This is a good thing; everyone should be given the opportunity to visit informative places like museums, they should not be restricted to those with disposable income. Far too often, heritage attractions charge an entry fee based on some rather spurious figure in the order of £6-10 for an adult. So, for a family day out, a typical 2 adult + 2 children family are looking at a not insubstantial sum and for those on low incomes, this may just be too much. If we want people to engage with heritage attractions, including museums, we need to scrap or reduce entrance fees as much as possible.

Related posts:

1. National Museums Liverpool Blog
2. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk

The concept of service provision…?

For a while now, I’ve been getting frustrated with the Ordnance Survey. Not in terms of the data they provide, it is of the utmost quality, rather the prohibitive costs associated with using their data, the way in which it is delivered and the draconian licensing arrangements (which the OS themselves recognise).Yes, there is Googlemaps but the quality just isn’t there for cartographic work and I have argued previously that the OS should improve access to their map data and cut through the nightmare of red tape that is OS licensing.

There have been small signs of the OS bending to public pressure from campaigns such as Free Our Data and input from influential figures like Ed Parsons (of Google and formerly the OS) when they recently did a u-turn and re-enabled access to OpenSpace from a KML based application by Gavin Brock. This application allows OS data from OpenSpace to be viewed in GoogleEarth and was deemed contary to the OpenSpace developer licensing agreement and hence disabled. Of course, the initial response of the OS was to threaten (remember the Met Police crime map fiasco?) then block, then bow to public pressure and make excuses after Ed Parsons blogged about it and a large contingent of interested parties from all walks of life who found the application useful bombarded the OS with complaints (but note, the OS still shrouded this u-turn in legalise, denied it was their fault and blamed Google!).  Hardly fostering innovation through effective use of licensing.

Recently, it emerged that some Historic Environment Records (or Sites and Monuments Records as they used to be called) have started to demand that users of their spatial data have current OS licenses, presumably due to the old chestnut of OS ‘derived’ data and their need to comply with their OS license agreements: Pretty much anything that has been captured against any OS map base is arguably derived data and hence OS copyright and therefore cannot be reused under the terms  of OS license agreements. So, to obtain archaeological spatial data created and maintained at tax-payers expense it is necessary (in some areas) to buy or obtain an OS license for the area in question. Similar to the news that some local authorities are charging for Local Plan maps , this is a more close to home example where the OS is affecting the cultural heritage sector through it’s ridiculous licensing restrictions. Whilst most academics can access OS data through Edina licenses on an institutional subscription basis, everyone else must jump through hoops and pay to ensure they have appropriate licensing in place else face the wrath of the OS. And this must be done every time there is a need to obtain archaeological spatial data from those authorities where the Local Authority GIS/legal teams have interpreted OS licensing in such a way as to demand a current OS license. Incidentally, this is by no means all Local Authorities, highlighting how the complexity of the OS licensing agreements leads to inconsistent interpretation and implementation.

A viable alternative…?

But now it appears a saviour may be on the horizon, a mapping provider with an alternative view on spatial data. The UKMap from the GeoInformation group is a resource to rival that provided by the OS. Not only are they looking to develop delivery services based around OGC standards (WMS/WFS) suitable for dynamic inclusion in my GIS, but they have stepped away from the ridiculous, convaluted licensing models used by the OS. Yes, the OS have developed OpenSpace in response to GoogleMaps but this is explicitly for non-commercial use, not a means of delivering data to customers.

“The GeoInformation® Group, publishers of UKMap® the new large-scale topographic mapping and address database for the UK, today announces a new strategic partnership with STAR-APIC, a world leader in delivering and managing mapping databases. The partnership will see STAR-APIC build and maintain the online delivery service for UKMap. The system that has been developed also offers the capability of delivering UKMap data via the Internet conforming to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web mapping WMS and WFS standards. The system is designed to offer traditional file based data delivery with the requirement for online delivery expected to increase through time.” (from the UKMap news pages).

And as regards the data available, if you thought no-one could possibly rival the OS, in addition to the 1:1000 topographic map base and overlay layers, the UKMap product comprises:

• Addresses
• Points of interest including retail and commercial data
• BLPUs
• Aerial photography
• Terrain
• Land Use
• 3D buildings

Plus a 1:5000 thematic raster map product suitable particularly for web-mapping applications. So that’s a pretty comprehensive list then! Especially given everything bar the thematic product is shipped as one product, no need for licensing of individual products. Plus the UKMap team handle contractor licenses, elimanating the nightmare that is the OS Subcontractor licensing scenario, an adminstrative nightmare. Plus, there is no derived data issue: data created by users belongs to users: “UKMap offers users the rights to retain any derived data they may create through using UKMap so increasing corporate assets and reducing investment costs” and “Share derived data and UKMap data with partners, sub contractors and consultants through simple licensing options” (quotes from the UKMap website). Furthermore, the data is delivered in useable formats so (in my case, as an ArcGIS user) no need to purchase the ESRI (UK) Productivity Suite Conversion tools simply to access the data.

The end is nigh…?

Obviously, I have yet to see what these licensing arrangements are for this new product and associated services, but the very fact that UKMap are thinking in terms of sharing and reuse is the polar opposite of the OS who claim rights over pretty much anything and are positively obstructive to the sharing of data (see the examples of SMR/HERs and Local Plan data above). I also haven’t seen the costs yet, but I doubt they could be as expensive as OS products. And of course, coverage will be an issue until the UKMap can provide full national coverage. But all this is, to an extent, beside the point. There is now another provider in the market and if local authorities such as Brent can see the benefits and move across, this should give the OS a bit of a push to get with the programme and realise they cannot simply hide behind licensing as they have done up till now.

So, just when I thought my dreams of having high quality mapping at a reasonable price delivered direct to my desktop GIS and web-based systems were little more than that, just dreams, along comes a light at the end of tunnel. So perhaps not exactly time’s up for the OS, indeed I would hate to see that happen, but hopefully this will shake them up a bit. Wake up Ordnance Survey, you’ve got competition now!

Related posts:

1. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk
2. Could do better…
3. Now we’re getting somewhere!

I’ve just been watching the Time Team special Secrets of Stonehenge; very interesting programme. The theoretical basis regarding stone commemorating the ancestors and the links between Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, linked by the river Avon, have been well discussed in the literature (see Parker Pearson & Ramilisonina. 1998) but it is really good to see how the evidence arising from the Stonehenge Riverside Project fits in to Mike Parker-Pearson’s ideas. Excellent contributions from Mike Pitts regarding the Aubrey Holes and how they are really stone sockets and Josh Pollard on the practices of excarnation and dealing with the dead in prehistory. Putting all the information together, the idea that it was an early farming community who built a bluestone circle to commemorate their ancestors, later becoming the sarsen megalithic structure we see today, certainly changes the established story; English Heritage are going to have to update their guidebooks!

There was also little mention of the recent Darvill and Wainright excavations which appeared on the BBC Timewatch programme other than a rather dismissive comment regarding ‘hospital theories’. As it says on the BBC website: His [Parker Pearson's] interpretation is at odds with that of Darvill and Wainwright. Stonehenge was not a place for the living, whether sickening or fighting fit. It was a monument for the dead. According to Parker Pearson, “Stonehenge… was built not for the transitory living but for the ancestors whose permanence was materialised in stone.” It must be admitted that the evidence for a prehistoric Lourdes is scant in comparison to the wealth of information amassed by the Stonehenge Riverside Project. And if it were a football match, the dream team of Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts, Julian Thomas, Chris Tilley, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards and Kate Welham certainly outgun Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainright… Of course, they are all well renowned archaeologists as regards Stonehenge and there are always competing theories, that being the nature of academic discourse; I certainly have many of their publications on my shelf for my research on prehistoric landscapes.

Well done Time Team for presenting at least some of the wealth of new information in an accessible and interesting fashion; I’d like to see part two (revenge of the ancestors…?) to complete the story

Other links:

• National Geographic pages on the Stonehenge Riverside Project
• My Flickr photos from the Darvill & Wainright excavations
• My Flickr photos from the Durrington Walls excavations, part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project
• The Stonehenge Research Framework authored by Tim Darvill
• My Flickr photos of Stonehenge, including some more from the Stonehenge Riverside Project
• The Stonehenge landscape in 3D from Wessex Archaeology
• Stonehenge LiDAR visualisation, a zoomify-able hillshaded elevation model from Wessex Archaeology

References:
Parker Pearson, M. & Ramilisonina. 1998. Stonehenge for the ancestors: the stones pass on the message. Antiquity 72: 308-26.

Related posts:

1. Stonehenge excavations
2. It’s all go at the local pile of prehistoric rocks!
3. How Stonehenge Might Have Been Built

Once in the audience, however, the debate was lively and it is obvious there is a lot of public interest and dissatisfaction; I am obviously in the minority thinking this issue should have been resolved without the many stages through which it has proceeded: recourse to denial, followed by apportioning blame on the system before finally reaching a stage of massed collaborative wringing of hands and MPs being asked to step down at the next election, potentially up to a year away. Vince Cable and William Hague both argued for an immediate general election in order that faith can be restored in the House of Commons, a notion that would simply play into the hands of minority parties as the public express their anger at the main parties; Marta Andreasen (UKIP) was certainly quite pleased with the suggestion. As i have already said, if the House had acted promptly to sack (and prosecute) those MPs who have fraudulently exploited the system, calls for a general election could have been avoided. If a general election were to be called now, there is a good chance some exemplary MPs would lose their seats as a result of the actions of their colleagues and furthermore, some of the most repugnant elements of British politics (such as the inherently racist BNP) would be given the chance of a lifetime. The only person speaking rationally on this part of the debate was Yasmin Alibhai-Brown with Ben Bradshaw failing to convince the audience that an immediate general election is a bad idea.

Furthermore, for William Hague to argue that David Cameron is doing his bit any more than Gordon Brown is simply preposterous, when his MPs have committed some of the grossest examples of expenses fiddling including having moats cleaned and forests planted on their vast country estates: The fact that his toffs have such land-holdings and properties does not give them the right to get the tax-payer to contribute a bean towards their upkeep! Having said that, whilst I would expect such behaviour of the Tory toffs, the fact that some of our so called socialist MPs have been found guilty of such behaviour and Gordon Brown has allowed himself to be targeted through lack of decisive action sickens me to the pit of my stomach; Hazel Blears in particular should be ashamed to call herself a Labour party member and go, never mind trying to justify her actions. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one.

On a plus side for Labour, it was genuinely pleasing to see that at least one member of the party is capable of rational thought with regards to the electoral process, arguing convincingly for dramatic electoral reform which is long overdue: Full marks to Ben Bradshaw. I’m dreading the next election as, due to the ping-pong nature of British politics as it currently operates, it’s the Tories turn to take the lead before they once again pillage the country to provide for the rich at the expense of the poor; the country still hasn’t recovered from the impact of the last Conservative government, the most significant effect of which was to severely damage the very fabric of British society. But then again, it’s not like Labour has done much to repair things in the decade of so they have been in power with a significant majority… It’s definitely time for some new politics.

The panel comprised Ben Bradshaw (health minister and MP for Exeter), William Hague (shadow foreign secretary and former leader of the Conservative Party), Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat chief economic spokesman), Martin Bell OBE (former journalist and the independent MP for Tatton from 1997 to 2001), Marta Andreasen (treasurer of the UK Independence Party), Jasmin Alibhai-Brown (columnist for the Independent and the Evening Standard). As ever, Question Time was chaired by the incomparable David Dimbleby.

No related posts.

I’ve just been putting a new YouTube playlist together for all the funky skanks kicking around right now and came across the official video from K.I.G. Check it out:

There’s also a monster remix from the man of the moment Donaeo (here it over on DJ B’s blog); yes, everything Donaeo touches turns to gold right now.

Related posts:

1. Mark Ronson remixes Bob Dylan
2. Beatbox magic
3. The message

No related posts.

I must admit, the main reason I was interested in seeing her talk was because I share many of her concerns. There are indeed many maps out there which are bordering on unintelligible and the quality of many is not up to the exacting standards set down by professional cartographers. The lack of contextual features on a Google Map is indeed often problematic and the example Spence gave on a GeoCommons map (where there is an obvious rift in a terrain model of India used as the basemap) is simply very poor. It is easy to find examples of poor quality maps and numerous examples were shown, exhibiting a mixture of poor quality cartography (i.e. the design and layout of the map) and poor quality data (i.e. inaccurate or erroneous content); I see these as two separate but related issues, the effects of which are exaggerated by the ease with which anyone can now quickly and easily produce a map without necessarily knowing how best to do this or how to find out how to.

I was, however, rather disappointed in the presentation as whilst being critical, the bigger issue of access to good quality data from which to make maps was firmly ignored whilst some unfair criticisms of map production were levelled.

Breaking news: GIS specialists can’t make maps…

The idea Spence put forward that GIS practitioners in general are ignorant of cartographic convention and practise and are the ones producing poor quality maps is simply wrong in most cases. I also found it a bit of an odd thing to say as there are GIS specialists within the BCS. It is true that there are some people working as GIS specialists who are wholly unsuited to the job due to a lack of appropriate skills or the job having been advertised well below the going rate for a suitably skilled person: You pay peanuts, you get monkeys, as exemplified by some of the maps Spence showed as examples which did not even include basic map furniture such as legends (and which is a particular problem in the low-paid cultural heritage sector). Having said this, the vast majority of qualified GIS professionals are fully aware of the history of map-making, cartographic conventions and how to make legible maps which are fit for purpose. It is often the case, however, that it is not GIS professionals who are producing maps these days: in many workplaces, desktop GIS is provided to users who may have no formal GIS or cartographic background with only rudimentary training provided, whilst the GIS professionals role is restricted to systems development and data maintenance, it being seen as primarily an IT role similar to database or website maintenance. More broadly speaking, map production has become truly democratised often with a resultant drop in standards but to blame GIS professionals for this is unfair. GIS itself is an invaluable tool for producing the highest quality cartography and in the hands of skilled users provided with good quality data, does just that. There is definitely a case for more GIS/cartography training for users expected to produce maps but given the costs associated with training, many organisations simply cannot afford this.

Making maps

This leads on to and is inextricably linked to my other major concern with what was presented, or in this case, what was not: access to and quality of data and associated processes of map production and how these affect the quality of cartographic output. Traditionally, cartographers would redraw maps for particular purposes. Time would be spent graphically tweaking information to make it as legible as it could possibly be. Treating maps as a pure representation of data rather than as simply a drawing loosely based on but separate from data makes it possible to systematise the production of making maps. It is often simply not feasible to spend time redrawing individual features for each map on which they appear: This is more akin to the production of a piece of art than an acceptable way of producing functional maps in a modern business context.

In GIS-based map production, features are recorded as geometry, attributed appropriately and then displayed according to a symbology based on this attribution. Data can be re-used and recycled without the need for constant manual intervention (other than to keep the features up to date). This makes the cartographic output entirely dependent on the quality of the underlying data and where this is of poorer quality, the quality of the resultant map will suffer. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it simply requires input data to be well structured and of the highest integrity, arguably a good thing.

Of course, treating the information as purely graphical and undertaking extensive redrawing to make the data fit for each individual application is one approach and this seemed to be what was being advocated: Indeed, Spence seemed to be suggesting that this approach is unproblematic, simply part of the process of cartography, it is after all what cartographers have always done. But this is to miss the point: This conflates the processes of data maintenance and map production. Why should people who want to create maps in the modern world using modern tools have to constantly revise and amend to make up for poor quality source data? Why can we not have access to good quality datasets produced and maintained by dedicated providers? Of course, there are always choices regarding what to include/exclude on maps and how features should be presented but the use of GIS makes the division between data and presentation explicit and to argue that successful map making must always include graphical fudging of datasets goes against the current trend of democratising map making through platforms such as GeoCommons and Google Maps which take very systematic approaches to geographic information and are dependent on accurate data.

To my mind, such systematic approaches to geographic information are a good way forward, supported by adequate training in how to use such systems. It is simply not possible to have hordes of dedicated cartographic specialists endlessly redrawing maps using the digital equivalent of pen and ink, keeping the activity as the reserve of these specialists (remember the typing pool anyone…?): the role of cartographic specialists therefore becomes one of system developer and trainer, one aspect being to develop the cartographic aspects of GIS-based map production but also to ensure that users have enough skills to use the systems effectively to produce exemplary cartographic output up to the exacting professional standards laid down by organisations such as the BCS. And given a large number of users are simply members of the public who want to use available tools to get information they want to convey to others out there, the training and information must be provided in a way that is accessible to all: If the BCS see the proliferation of mapping tools amongst non-professionals as reducing the quality of cartographic output, then the way to tackle this is surely to target those users in particular, to allow them to produce better maps, accepting the fact that these tools and platforms will be used to make maps by people who, in many cases, will not have had any formal cartographic training but who are interested in producing maps. This is not deskilling but democratisation and has been happening across the board in the world of IT as formerly specialist activities become accessible to more people; the same thing has happened with all kinds of activities from word-processing to web-design with people developing associated skills in all kinds of related areas from image processing to database management and networking. Of course, there is still a need for specialists, but this democratisation changes the role of the specialist from dedicated practitioner to facilitator/enabler and highly specialised practitioner.

As I have already stated, the use of GIS facilitates high quality cartographic output but only where the source data is well structured and of high quality. Yes, we could just keep painting over lower quality source data to hide inconsistencies and errors but access to high quality source data which does not require such intervention is surely the best way to proceed. During the questions at the end of the presentation, this question of access to good quality source data in the form of OS data was raised and my interpretation of what had been said during the talk was confirmed. Spence responded that there are free sources of information out there for those who cannot afford to use OS data (a two tier geoweb if you will based on ability to pay; not something we should be aiming towards), ignoring the fact that the quality of such datasets is often simply not up to scratch and the use of it as is often results in the kinds of problems criticised during the talk. Not a problem if your workflow is entirely manual and graphically based; you simply reinterpret the data, paint over the cracks and create a new pretty picture. It is a problem if your workflow is more systematised or you do not have the skills or tools to be undertaking this kind of work. How should members of the public with only Google Maps to work with undertake map production in this way? How should my users who use a largely automated process of map production using ArcGIS templates achieve this, and how do they necessarily know where any inaccuracies and problems with content lie? Surely, much better to ensure the map base used is complete and accurate to start with, eliminating the need for manually correcting it, and the best way to do this would be to improve access to high quality digital datasets. Otherwise, digital cartography is little more than a digital analogue of traditional cartography where each map must be hand drawn and the resultant map is solely the intellectual product of an individual rather than a standardised representation of geographic information; this is more art than an effective business workflow with product and efficiency of production in mind (I can just see the guffaws as my time estimates for producing maps leaps up tenfold due to the additional time needed as I artistically redraw source data to make it cartographically acceptable for each and every map).

So, Spence was criticising the quality of maps based on platforms such as Google Maps, but what is the alternative? We have good quality maps in the UK, provided by the Ordnance Survey, but their use is often precluded by the astronomical fees levied by the OS combined with draconian, complex and often unworkable license agreements. She suggested the use of free or open sources of map data such as the Peoples Map and Open Street Map but the use of such data in a GIS workflow can result in exactly the kinds of issues she was criticising: the integrity of the data is often lacking, resulting in poor quality cartographic output if inaccuracies and inconsistencies are not first identified and resolved.

Free our data!

So, we need to free our data. It is, to my mind, unacceptable that the Ordnance Survey are permitted to restrict access to our national map base in the way that they do (there is a good article on this topic here). Furthermore, their vociferous pursuance of anything which they perceive as in breach of their obstructive license agreements should be stopped: Three good examples of the OS acting unreasonably follow.

Firstly, anecdotal tales regarding local walking groups having received cease and desist notices having dared to publish online maps based on OS maps showing interesting walks.

Secondly, threatening local authorities with legal action over incredibly useful ‘what’s in my neighbourhood’ type maps is ridiculous; such maps used Google Map bases in order to avoid using OS mapping online, something that would cost more than the annual budget of an entire council in many cases, but it was the councils own datasets which the OS then claimed ownership of as they had been captured against OS map bases. This notion of derived data as the OS interpret it needs to be challenged.

Thirdly, the most farcical of the lot regards crime maps, much touted by the Home Secretary and which police forces rushed to produce to meet government targets. At which point, the OS threatened legal action for breach of copyright, the data again having been geocoded against OS products. How can such a ridiculous situation be allowed to happen? Surely, the role of the OS, as national mapping agency, should be to facilitate and enable other national bodies fulfil their responsibilities not obstruct them.

If the BCS are serious about improving the quality of maps being produced and used then one invaluable discussion they could throw their weight behind would be to improve access to high quality OS datasets for all, not just big business who can afford to pay the exorbitant license fees. To state, as Spence did, that even BCS members have to pay OS license fees, therefore it is acceptable that everyone should is a non argument: the idea that already overstretched resources in local authorities and the heritage sector should be used to fund the OS in this way is a disgrace. But it emerged why the BCS will not get involved in this debate: Spence indicated that the OS are partners in the BCS, hence the BCS cannot / will not get involved in the debate or be seen to criticise the OS. And hence my response to the BCS on this issue of improving quality of maps: Could do better…

Related posts:

1. OS OpenSpace
2. Time’s up for the Ordnance Survey…?
3. Free our data: New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control @ SocietyGuardian.co.uk