[Fsuk-manchester] What would you ask government top brass re: Free Software etc.

[Tim Dobson]

Distributed *Thinking* Project:

This Wednesday I *may* be in a situation where I can talk to some of
the top brass of the brown government.

Instead of being worried about my local
bypass/school/hospital/cut+pasteMP, I have chosen to do my best to get
some answers on behalf of the Free Software Community to various
questions.

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This is where you come in:

What questions would *you* ask a government minister about, relating
to Free Software, DRM and any other issues technology related;
(Copyright reform, software monopolies...)

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Here is one example of a question, I will be asking if I get the chance:

"Important trading funds such as the Ordnance Survey, UK Hydrographic
Office, Royal Mail and Highways Agency are funded from the public
sector by as much as 50% and yet charge exorbitant amounts to use the
data they collect an impose onerous copyright restrictions that
prevent re-use. What is your position on the campaigning [1][2] to
overhaul this archaic system so that tax-payer funded data is freely
available for use by the public."

Examples: Ordanancy Survery maps, Postcode geocoding.

[1] Free Our Data (http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/)
[2] Public Geo Data (http://publicgeodata.org/)

Question Courtesy of Noah Slater.

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Any information I find out, I will publish under CC-BY-SA  or possibly
even a less restrictive licence.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Please post any suggestions to the mailing list as soon as possible,
this may allow the question's structure to be improved upon etc.

-- 
www.dobo.urandom.co.uk
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If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us
still has one object.
If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now
has two ideas.   -  George Bernard Shaw