James Kobielus of our sister site DATAVERSITY recently wrote, “Openness, transparency, and agility are where the world is headed. However, these trends are problematic for those of us who have intellectual property – including software, data, and other products – that we seek to control access to for many legitimate reasons (e.g., our livelihoods depend on being paid for them). Open access to free data is happening everywhere, regardless of whether it’s convenient to those of us who own copyrights. Open data is an important trend, and, regardless of what the cynics may say, it’s not an ideological cover for intellectual proprietary pirates. In fact, it’s a core principle of the emerging world economy.”
Kobielus continues, “Open data may be what economists term a ‘public good.’ In other words, the public benefits when open data from diverse information sources is made freely available. What this means is that the general public can use the data without the need to pay royalties, licenses, or other fees. The broad economic benefits of open data may far outweigh the benefits of keeping it all closed and proprietary behind one or another ‘paywall.’ This is the thesis behind a recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study called ‘Open data: unlocking innovation and performance with liquid information’ (see this link to the full downloadable report).”
Image Courtesy: McKinsey&Company
