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I have worked
closely with the development of this Directive.
I will explain the background of this Directive, the initial
barriers, and what we expect from this Directive in the future.
Public sector
content is the prime content resource, derived from many areas including:
law, environmental information, and company information.
PSI is important for helping new business and services, as well as
citizens, protect their interests in a democratic society.
The focus of the PSI Directive is the re‑use of PSI in
services and new products. The
PSI content sector is huge in euro terms – the largest content sector to
be developed in Europe thus far. To
fully utilise this resource in the information age, this directive is
trying to address certain barriers at a European level.
In surveying
the world scene, as we do when establishing new laws and regulations in
Europe, we looked towards IT in the US.
The information market built on PSI in the US functions better than
in Europe. One regulatory
reason is the strong Freedom of Information Act in the US, which allows
deeper access to information than European law does.
The US also has a different copyright regime on PSI at the federal
level. This does not apply
directly to the state level, but at the state level they have more lenient
practices than exist in Europe.
Additionally,
the US maintains... The
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