Boettcher & Dames (2018) raise some important issues regarding public domain government data. In brief, the U.S. federal government releases data into the public domain by default. This raises 2 potential types of issues:

• privacy and security of individuals’ data
• potential for enclosure / privatization of free public services if the government’s data is released as open data but the government does not maintain a free human readable version

Boettcher, J. C., & Dames, K. M. (2018). Government Data as Intellectual Property: Is Public Domain the same as Open Access? Online Searcher, 42(4), 42–48.

Public domain and open data policies and how they are made. Current status of open data policies in the Federal government are changing with new laws. What is HR4174/S4047 and what does it say and mean? What are trends in government data policies regarding access to that statistical data? This article will give the reader an understanding of federal policies and laws regarding data.

Citation: see “From” above, this post is just a pointer to the Boettcher & Dames article. Recommended: read the original article first.