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> it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.

One really nice thing about the USA is how much public and open data there is. In Europe you can't even get access to maps, which is why OSM was created in Europe.

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Whilst the Open Street Map is free its important to note that the Ordinance Survey maps are some of the most detailed in the world. They offer a free access option and a paid option. Whilst the organisation is operated out of public money I am not opposed to its usage terms that are in effect a tax on business use.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/help...

You can get access to a lot of data in Europe, including maps (ordinance survey). In fact the UK has more open data available than the US, according to OpenDataBarometer:

http://www.opendatabarometer.org/report/analysis/rankings.ht...

That doesn't appear to be a very good counter point, your own link confirms what the parent said.

There's one country ahead of the US in that list, half of Europe averages middling scores, and the other half is either not even listed (eg Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia, Belarus) or posts incredibly bad scores (eg Poland, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Iceland).

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