Fwd: [Aust-NZ] interesting decision - UK row over publishing public mapping data

[John Smith]

Actually the really amusing part about this is the fact that local
governments have to collect the bulk of the data and then hand it over
to Ordnance Survey, who then used to sell it back licensed copies to
local governments *AND* claim all rights over any derivative data...

Mind you Google has pulled similar tricks, they gave some local US
government bodies full access to Google earth for one year, and Google
got a lot/most of the map data the local govt had and got to bill that
local government annually afterwards...