Terrific article.
CWSA's "FreetheWeather.com" website attempts to pass off S.786 as public interest legislation that would help the public with regard to access to data. "Senate Bill 786 proposes that the public should have guaranteed, unfettered access to data from NOAA and the National Weather Service," the site claims, "Right now, the NWS doesn't have to provide any of its information to the public. Your taxes have paid for the weather data collected by the NWS. Shouldn't you be able to access this information?"
As noted previously, the claim that NWS "doesn't have to provide any of its information to the public" is not accurate. NOAA's Partnership Policy declares, "NOAA will adhere to the policies contained in the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, OMB Circular No. A-130, "Management of Federal Information Resources," and other relevant laws. These policies are based on the premise that government information is a valuable national resource, and the benefits to society are maximized when government information is available in a timely and equitable manner to all...
NOAA will provide information in forms accessible to the public as well as underlying data in forms convenient to additional processing, to the extent practicable and within resource constraints. NOAA will make its data and products available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form and will use other dissemination technologies, e.g. satellite broadcast, NOAA Weather Radio, and wireless, as appropriate. Information will comply with recognized standards, formats, and metadata descriptions to ensure data from different observing platforms, databases, and models can be integrated and used by all interested parties."
A new article in
Information Week highlights the anti-competitive aspects of S.786 and effectively debunks the assertions made on the "FreetheWeather.com" website.
I draw upon excerpts from a June 23, 2005
Information Week article to illustrate several key points:
S.786 Is About Restricting Data:
Root says... "In fact, they're getting more and more into providing specialized, customized value-added products and services," he says. "They're doing it for free. They're writing specialized XML code, they're providing special data services in different formats that up until this point, the private sector has been doing for a reasonable fee."
In December, NWS began making weather data in its National Digital Forecast Database available to the public in XML format, allowing anyone to request weather information through its NDFD XML Simple Object Access Protocol server. Previously, NWS data feeds were not in a format that anyone could access.
Data is the issue. NWS is not compromising the commercial sector's ability to create specialized products/services based on its data. It is just making the data available to more people in an easier-to-use format.
S.786 Would Harm Small Meteorological Entities:
Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for The Weather Underground Inc., a small online weather information site, doesn't think it's that far-fetched. "The bill is designed to be private-industry friendly," he says. "I think it was written as a favor for large weather providers." He believes that the bill would eliminate the forecast data his company currently gets from the NWS, forcing his company to purchase that information from a large commercial source such as AccuWeather.
Dr. Masters is familiar with the impact the legislation would have on his own business. The legislation is anti-competitive as it would make him dependent on other competitors, and there is no assurance that they would not put their own interests ahead of those rivals such as Weather Underground.
The Language, as written, Would Impede the NWS' Ability to Furnish Data:
David Moran, assistant professor of Law at Wayne State University, says the bill is ambiguous and contradictory. "I believe the bill is poorly drafted because, after reading it several times, I'm not at all clear as to exactly what information the NWS would be prohibited from releasing to the public," he writes via E-mail. "First, it does not define some key terms. ... Second, [certain provisions] appear to be flatly contradictory. How is the NWS supposed to issue to the public all of its data (not just severe weather information) without thereby providing a service that would compete with private entities?"
"FreetheWeather.com" asserts that the concern that "The government will have to stop providing weather data to the public" is a "lie." A law professor who is an expert on such matters indicates that there is merit to such concerns given how the bill is crafted.
S.786 Isn't The First Private Effort to Restrict Public Data:
Efforts to control public information that profits the private sector are hardly new. Commercial providers of patent and trademark information opposed making the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database available online, a fight they lost in 1998. And in 1993, responding to pressure from public interest groups, the Securities and Exchange Commission made its Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval System available online free of charge, a service Mead Data (subsequently purchased by Reed Elsevier and renamed Lexis-Nexis), under government contract, previously offered for a fee.
In the Information Age, data is power. Thus, it is not surprising that some have decided that rather than winning in the marketplace through innovation and improvement, they would seek legislative "short cuts" that create formidable barriers to entry to reduce the kind of competition they fear, as the outcomes are never assured. They cannot control others' innovation or improvement. They can try to control data. That's the route S.786 takes.
