In the United States, most government-published content is public domain. Does anyone know if that is the case elsewhere in the world, particularly in the developing world? A quick web search didn’t turn up much on this, so I appreciate any info anyone might be able to share on this.
Question for anyone who has info
I don’t know the “official” rules on public domain in the developing world, but it is exceedingly hard for most people to access government information in many countries. In fact, whether or not it is public domain belies the question of whether people can access it even if it is. Governments in general, and particularly in Africa, seem to view their information as THEIRS! Transparency international has some info on this. HakiElimu from Tanzania (who’s server is currently down, so I can’t give you the link beyond http://www.hakielimu.org/) has a great paper on their experiences with “Access to Information”. Problems with access to info occur both at the national and local level. There is a movement afoot against this – to make things more transparent – not only financially but in terms of other factors. And in fact, in Kenya, schools are required to post their financial info and the purposes on a bulletin board outside the school. It helps ensure that the money goes to where it is supposed to and that the right number of school days occur.
This is most certainly not the case in most places in the world – if any – outside of the US. This is one case of the US having a very enlightened policy, that has been very beneficial to all kinds of both public and private enterprises. I know that there is a determined movement in the UK, now also helped by the Guardian, to do away with Crown Copyright (Canada also uses Crown Copyright – you even have to pay to download charts from the statistical bureau), and OpenStreetMaps were started in the UK, because the Ordinance survey that makes maps sell them back to people – even to the municipalities that supplied the initial data that they were built on.
As Megan points out though, one thing is copyright, but another issue is that in a lot of developing countries, this information isn’t published or put online, or otherwise made available to people at all. If something is not copyrighted doesn’t make a difference if the only copy is in a locked drawer (in fact a lot of museums enforce no-photo rules because of this – the paintings are out of copyright, but they have the only reproductions, and they want to keep making money out of selling reproductions).
There was a very good article on FirstMonday a while ago about open access to law in developing countreis. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_12/poulin/index.html
You might find this blog entry from Ethan Zuckerman interesting too: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=1035
Thanks for the info on this. After reading the Week 6 readings for the OpenEd course, I have a better sense for this now. I was surprised to hear that government-published work is not public domain in most other countries. Well, at least the US has an “enlightened policy” on something.