tianjara.net | Andrew Harvey's Blog

A little while back I sent the RTA an email to try to claify the copyright license of some of their data so I could determine if I could use it. Like this data feed, http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au/data/traffic-cam.json. The link to the copyright license is broken. This is the response I got,

The RTA supports and encourages open access information, and is determined to grow its range of traffic resources to provide developers with access to live updates and traveller information feeds. Request for licensing agreements are assessed against the following considerations: - Consumer benefit - Legal constraints - Road safety - Branding - Technical capacity - Cost - Availability of data If you would like to apply for a license agreement for the RTA’s Live Traffic content, please submit a proposal for your service and how you would like to use the RTA’s content, including the above considerations. Your proposal will then be assessed by the RTA.

What a load of garbage, if you trully "support and encourage open access information" then you would release these data feeds under a public domain like license. Saying "we will make a case by case decision once you tell us your proposal" is just going to hinder the innovative use of that data. People will create their own datasets independent of you, which of course this could go either way. The peoples dataset could be either better or worse quality than yours, but either way you would save people some work if you helped out by releasing your data under a free and open license. You are a government department, not a company.