David Eaves

"Hi Hugh - I've heard this from others too. This problem appears to be true on the iPhone apps and possibly some but not all android apps (haven't been able to confirm if it never happens with all of them.) -- www.eaves.ca @daeaves" - David Eaves

"Chia-Kai, Nice work. Sounds like there are a few events that are going to have 100+ people. So great to hear. Congratulations!  Am definitely looking forward to hearing updates." - David Eaves

"This is actually a terrible outcome. Crimereports requires cities to essentially hand over the rights to share crime data - so citizens in those cities cannot download, map, and share their insights with this data. It literally takes a public asset - crime data - and privatizes it. It is a great business model for crimereports as they get to gather data about how citizens view and explore this data, but it is a terrible outcome for citizens, who lose the right to engage with crime data on their own terms." - David Eaves

"Neither Karen or myself is asking anyone to individually be culpable, but to recognize that we are part of a system that not only gives us that privilege but that has, and continues to, harm and marginalize some more than others. You can bend that into being called collective guilt. Or you can understand it as critical thinking and analysis. Max has chosen the former. I choose the latter. The challenge for non-aboriginal Canadians is to persuade more to choose the latter frame as well. It won't be easy, because it isn't easy. Max Fawcett's response above is a wonderful example of everything my post is about. The inability to understand his own place of privilege, along with the defensiveness and fear the debate creates for his view of Canada and his own sense of identity is precisely my point. You can read the emotion spilling off the screen in his response. I don't say that out of disrespect, but to illuminate just how triggering, to just how much of existential threat this debate..." - David Eaves

"Er... a few comments. 1. I created these diagrams for this post. They are not re-used. 2. I included the coloured button identifications to spur interest - for some people they have meaning (they are ideas championed by the white house) and i didn't have the time (and it didn't fit into the flow) to spell out what they were. 3. While I do like politicians voting records I don't think they are particularly special. In fact, you'll notice that everything in both diagrams are the same so I think it is interesting that you've zeroed in on that example.  4. I did abbrivate the personal data examples in order fit in the text in with the new purchasable data - so I resorted to the buttons cause it was easy. 5. Yes, the anonymized data could be open - I think this is an interesting point and something the diagram fails to capture as well as it could - but my main point was talking about privacy and personally identifiable data sets, so that's why they ended up there." - David Eaves

"Okay, complicated issue that I guarantee I won't handle all the nuances of in this response, but here is where my thinking is at. a) there are some data sets that are just plain private and only individuals should have the right to share them (in personally identifiable ways) - specifically I'm thinking health and education records and the sort. b) that said, I don't think it is possible to put the data genie back in the bottle. Even with health records - I'm suspecting my credit card company, of even some browser cookies - can probably discern if I get cancer by looking at my spending or webpage viewing patterns. c) so I'm thinking there are probably so core data sets we want to protect and then we will need to legislate against use - e.g. it will be illegal to de-anonymize or to reconstruct my healthcare records, or to make decisions based on inferences of what my health records might be. Of course "c" will create a whole new set of problems, so there is not going to be any simple..." - David Eaves

"Fixed! Thank you!" - David Eaves

"Not a sideswipe, just an observation. I'm not their target audience. Boomers are.  That's not to say the Globe has progress on this front in the last few years (see Eat the Young from August 2009) but they know where their subscription bread is buttered, and it is not with my demographic, and the content reflects that fact." - David Eaves

"My understanding is that legally, if they got a license (I've no idea how hard that is), they could. However, I suspect that the cab companies would pressure/order their cabs to not use them. Would be interesting to see what would happen." - David Eaves

"Interesting benefit. Hadn't thought of that." - David Eaves

"It is interesting to me that this comment is written from the perspective of the industry. I get the perspective, but it isn't clear to me how cheaper fares are not in the interest of the consumer.  This is not a call for complete de-regulation, but if there is downward pressure on rates, from a consumer perspective that is not necessarily a bad thing." - David Eaves

"Good question Eric - I think the service is too new to have any data like that. Probably San Francisco would be the best place to look.  Of course, you'd need to adjust for the size of the fleet. There are now something like 60-200 more town cars operating in San Fran because Uber has made it profitable for them (so I understand)." - David Eaves

"I agree that the language of the other licenses is also suboptimal - but I'm not sure that it necessarily means what you claim.  I spoked to the UK government a couple of years about this clause, they were surprised to hear about the interpretation I mentioned in my blog post. They told me they never intended to be saying that the end user is liable for 3rd party information - their intention was that they would be explicit about what third party rights but did want to be explicit that they could not offer those rights. So it was more of a lack of clarity around the language that was the issue (of course it has the impact that I mentioned in the piece). I do actually believe that this language may be introducing a high degree of risk - so if governments are truly interested in having re-use for commercial and entrepreneurial reasons - they need to understand that this risk will very likely dampen (particularly established players) interest in the data." - David Eaves