I agree – if everyone were to make their data public, the possibilities are endless. I recently dreamed about a site where experimental data from university research was easily available. Imagine being able to query this site with a general question and getting hard data from half a dozen studies to back up the answer.

Happy new year to you as well.

Sean

Yeah, you are right when you say that the “potential” worth something. But what I tried to say is that one would probably benefit much more if he gives its data away and get data from other people than if it would only has its own data (at least for people that doesn’t has the resources of the biggest Web portals). That way, its potential would be much greater, so it would worth much more.

But no, I have no idea how to liberate the data. In fact, I think it is a 1M$ question. Probably that it will liberate itself without people knowing how it does

Take care and happy new year 2007!

Salutations,

Fred

Let’s assume that data is worth nothing. But it still has the potential to be worth something (maybe a lot) if I do something clever with it. If I own data, and you don’t, then I also own that “potential”. If I share the data with you, then it’s possible that you do something very useful and profitable with my data. I could consider a loss of profit on my part.

Perhaps if there data-sharing contracts or some data laws enforced, data sources and data shapers could share in profits.

Any ideas on how to liberate the data?