SDI Convergence - Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association

gion, aware of the INSPIRE context, is developing a new business model for licensing
geographic information. The project, supported by a specific research scholarship,
aims to realise a complete policy guideline to regulate the use and dissemination of
Piedmont’s geographic information, with the addition of a set of standard electronic licences.
In this article, section 2 will describe the project in its regional context whilst section 3
and 4 will treat the different phases of this research. The final section presents the conclusion
of this research period and the start of the next implementation phase.
2. DEVELOPMENT AND REUSE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
In 2005, Piedmont Region gained experience in legal interoperability, defined as the
legal way to reach the capability of information exchange, with the realisation of the
‘Discipline of use’ for the regional Infrastructure of Spatial Data (SITAD), which in recent
years has increased users and information shared. SITAD Rules of Access and
Use is a regulatory instrument, which defines roles and responsibilities of users in
terms of information use, but it is also open to legislative improvement. However, the
Rules refer to generic information and therefore the regional administration developed
tools to regulate the dissemination of geographic information available by public administration
bodies.
A specific research scholarship ‘Development and reuse of geographic information’,
supported by CSI-Piemonte (the instrumental body of Piedmont Region for Information
Systems), started in 2006 to develop new regulatory instruments: ‘Guidelines on the
use of geographic information’ and a set of geolicences (electronic licence agreements
related to geographic information).
The main goal of the research was to study in depth methodological and organisational
aspects of sharing and disseminating geographical resources (information and services)
in the digital environment. The 2–year project aims to provide policy guidelines
to help content providers protect their intellectual property (geographic information),
using alternative forms of licensing and transmit to end users rules about specific resource
uses. The holder of intellectual property rights (information owner) provides
specific rights to identified users, within particular constraints, away from an ‘all rights
reserved’ approach towards a ‘some rights reserved’ approach. The result is a business
model for licensing geographic information based on a set of rights associated
with specific geographic resources.
The first phase of this research was dedicated to understand the overall context related
to use, dissemination and reuse of digital information, in particular geographic resources.
The analysis of the international activities in managing use rights of geographic
information, focused on Digital Rights Management (DRM) and its application
in the geographic field (GeoDRM). Also the European legal context on information
sharing was studied. The second phase concerned the development of regulatory instruments
for geographic information dissemination. In this stage, a new business
model for geographic information was developed and the basis of the practical implementation
was founded.
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