GeoDRM causes ‘heated debate’ on Geowanking list

The subject of GeoDRM something which OS like many other commercial data suppliers is very interested in developing has caused intense debate on the Geowanking mail list.

This comes as no surprise as the term has been damaged by the “heavyweight” tactics of the likes of Microsoft and Apple in relation to the music download industry and is seen by some even as “evil”.

In my mind the GeoDRM work we are supporting as this point is more about the creation of standards based ways of defining, expressing and distributing the rights to access geospatial data – recognising the point that both commercial and non-commercial users may want to manage how their content is used.

Yes of course at some point, some organisations will look to measures of actually physically restricting access to data based on particular rights, this a key element in establishing trust with the content owners. I am not going to argue that the fairplay system used by Apple is 100% right, it is better than many others, but without it there would be no iTunes store, and therefore a far smaller market for download music sales as the music industry would not have released their content!

Written and submitted from the CASA Basement Lecture Theatre at UCL, London, using my Vodafone 3G network card.