{"word_count": 162, "character_count": 1063}
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1781888,00.htmlTen weeks after Guardian Technology launched the "Free Our Data" campaign on March 9, government advisers are starting to consider its message. [...]Our proposal is that the government gets out of the market and leaves data pricing to the market. Data collected by the public sector (apart from necessary exceptions to protect privacy and national security) should be available to all for free, to exploit as they wish. This would require higher taxes to fund the national collection of, for example, meteorological data. But this cost would be outweighed by the economic benefits of creating taxpaying companies and jobs....[W]e stand by the arguments at the centre of our campaign:* The public sector is best positioned to collect data, and the private sector best placed for commercial exploitation* Taxpayers should not have to pay twice, or three times, for data they already own* At the very least, the government needs to produce better evidence to justify the overall cost of the status quo.