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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

I came across this while researching postal code data. I was first shocked to learn that this data set wasn't freely available from Canada Post ($5,000/year to access it), then pleased to find geocoder.ca's data set, and then pissed to learn they were being sued for it.

So far there has been absolutely no media attention on this.

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Which sadly isnt' surprising. The combination of it being something that would only affect a small group of people (basically anyone in the IT industry building location-aware applications), and the media's ADD-like ability to concentrate on issues will keep it from ever seeing the light of day.

I don't know what this government has against the tech industry in this country, but it must be some serious loathing with all the BS coming down the pipes

This goes back a long way. Amazing amounts of GIS data for the U.S. was available from tonnes of vendors sliced and diced in all sorts of interesting way on a CD-ROMs for < $100 way back in 1996. Canada, not so much. $3,000-15,000 for similar data. Because StatsCan and other organizations were selling it to big corporations who could pay that price tag... the result of that policy? Google maps could never have started in Canada.

It's not too bad these days, though. I'm involved with a Candadian company doing GIS, and finding free layers getting easier.

E.g. http://www.geogratis.ca has a massive amount of freely available data for Canada.

There are some ridiculous bits, though, such as being unable to get the Alberta Township grid, which is a necessity for a lot of property related stuff, without paying.

Which is a great micro example of why startups have an uphill battle here as opposed to other jurisdictions. Sadly I dont' see that changing at all, barring a radical house cleaning.

I think it goes back to a cultural problem with government. They don't acknowledge hobby research as legitimate or useful.

So they release data to universities and charge everyone else an obscene amount.

This kills a lot of start up ideas.

I have emailed a journalist, I hope this will be helpful.

I don't even understand how you found it, I can't seem to navigate to the announcement from their front page. If they make it impossible to find, it's quite understandable nobody knows about it.

It's not easy to find, but I've managed to work out what seems to be the shortest route.

Step 1: Start at http://geocoder.ca/

Step 2: Click "Free Data" -> http://geocoder.ca/?freedata=1

Step 3: Click "You haven't made it until you get sued" -> http://geocoder.ca/?sued=1

There seems to be no mention of "sued" in the source of the front page.

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