Freeing The Isle of Wight

About the only way I think of that the United States is more socialistic than the rest of the world is that information collected by the federal government generally gets placed into the public domain. This policy has had a happy consequence that there are a lot of map products and map data available free to the public. These include digital versions of the topographic map series produced by the USGS, as well as the street mapping used by the Census Bureau in the course of their work.

Most countries are not so fortunate, and map data collected by the government survey agency at public expense gets sold back to users, often at a considerable price. This situation has led to a movement to make publically collected data freely available. A workaround until this practice is changed is to start making one’s own maps, and a number of mapping enthusiasts are taking this route.

One such project is the OpenStreetMap. To contribute to this map, people go out with recreational GPS units and trace out streets, paths, and trails and submit their coordinates to the online map. This weekend the OpenStreetMap folks are going to free the Isle of Wight. Some 30 volunteers from all around Europe are converging on the 381 square kilometer island to travel all its roads and footpaths and will make the resulting map freely available to the public.

(Via The Map Room)