An important part of a land administration system that is aimed at constantly reflecting the current right holders of the land and supporting the real estate market, is the system behind the registration of rights, restrictions and responsibilities. Over time the way land transactions have been evidenced, moved from oral agreements, via private conveyancing to registration of deeds, and ultimately registration of title (Larsson 1991). Although most literature sees each step in this development as providing a better system, there are countries with well operating land administration providing a high level of tenure security which legally still operate ‘only’ a deeds system (e.g. France, South-Africa and the Netherlands). In case of the Netherlands the administrative side of the cadastral records contains high quality information on the rights and right holders, derived from the registered deeds, and for many issues society relies on that information (and, ‘being a so called ‘key registration’ is even obligatory to be used by the public sector). The introduction of improved legislation in 1992 (both a revised Civil Code and the introduction of a specific Law on Cadastre and Public Registers) combined with the (early) digitalization of these administrative records, over time has further increased the quality of the information. Some (small) interventions over the years have added to this quality as well. A number of further (administrative) improvements are being considered. Although in general systems of land registration can be seen to be on a sliding scale from simple deeds to advanced title registration, in a recent study we found that there is a discontinuity somewhere on this sliding scale. Whereas it is getting harder and harder to further improve the quality of the information, the full benefits can only be reaped when the law at some point gives legal status to this information (i.c. see it as a title record). Depending on the specific context, incl. the problems experienced due to current weaknesses, power balance between stakeholders and more general e-government developments, such a jump may be warranted or not.

Assessment of geographic information infrastructures (or spatial data
infrastructures) is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers in the
Geographic information (GI) domain. Especially the assessment of value added
GI appears to be complex. By applying the concept of value chain analysis to GI,
this paper provides a research framework for unambiguously assessing GI value
adding. The paper details the enhancing process that must be employed to turn
raw geographic information into new services and products regardless of the
organisation performing the enhancement. Not only the differences in technical
characteristics of data sets are identified, also the roles in a value chain of
government organisations and commercial organisations were explored. The
framework is applied to two types of GI in the United States and Europe. The
presented research shows that the framework allows for true comparison of GI
enhancement in different jurisdictions. This should result in better understanding
of the level of GI enhancement in a specific jurisdiction and accordingly in
effective decisions stimulating GI enhancement, geographic information
infrastructures and information societies.

Zonder dat we het beseffen speelt geo-informatie een belangrijke rol in de samenleving. Vragen als waar ga ik heen, hoe kom ik daar, hoeveel tijd kost het me en wat zijn de alternatieven zijn vragen waar vrijwel iedereen iedere dag mee te maken heeft. De behoefte aan actuele en juiste geo-informatie is hierbij evident. Het correct gebruik van de geoinformatie is net zo belangrijk als de beschikbaarheid. Een geologische kaart is niet geschikt voor navigatiedoeleinden, net zoals een vaarwegennetwerk niets zegt over de kwaliteit van het water. Er zijn mensen die voor het eerst op GoogleEarth kijken en spontaan naar buiten gaan om te zwaaien naar de buren met de illusie dat deze dit live kunnen zien op hun computer. Geo-informatie kan lang niet altijd zomaar gebruikt worden. Geo-informatie mag ook lang niet altijd zomaar gebruikt worden. Met dit laatste komen we bij het onderwerp van dit boek: het informatierecht. Openbaarheid, gebruiksvoorwaarden, intellectuele eigendom, en privacy zijn factoren waar op zijn minst rekening mee moet worden gehouden bij het gebruik van de geo-informatie.

The issue of privacy protection is raising discussion in society, every time certain ICT developments allow for or simplify the collection, combination or application of new sets of person related data. Location based services (LBS) are amongst these new ICT developments that potentially put the privacy of individuals at risk. LBS technology allows for tracking and tracing the location of mobile phones or other terminal equipment, for example car navigation systems. These are widely available and becoming increasingly precise in defining a location, opening new possibilities for commercial and government use of location information. The increased possibility to know people’s whereabouts, both in a geographical and temporal sense, is posing the question of possibility versus desirability with regard to location privacy.
The EU-Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC, OJ L
201) has anticipated this new ICT development. In addition to ‘traffic data’, necessary for the transmission of a communication, the directive uses the term ‘location data’, being the geographic position of the terminal equipment. Processing of any data for LBS is only allowed if the supplier has got prior, informed consent from the user. The user should have the possibility to block the processing of his location data (him being tracked) in an easy manner when he prefers so. Through the directive the EU has chosen for a strict OPT-IN regime including on-the-fly OPT-OUT.
However, the directive allows national legislation to override the EU provisions for a number of cases. For example, national laws can restrict the privacy protection when this is “a necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society to safeguard national security, defence, public security, and the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences or of unauthorised use of the electronic communication system” (article 15). This poses the question to what extent government may collect and use tracking information to prevent terrorist attacks, or to satisfy other national security purposes, and consequently limit location privacy.
This research centralised around the question: “How should the right to location privacy of users of mobile phones and other terminal equipment be balanced with the tracing and tracking interests of the (national) security sector?”

The removal of Public Sector Geo-Information (PSGI) from current ‘silo systems’
is a socio-political challenge based on intertwined regional and national policies,
along with the different policies and cultures of public sector agencies. These
socio-political issues have created a web of complex access policies (e.g.,
pricing, copyright, and licensing agreements) that have in many cases negatively
influenced access of PSGI. Therefore, for PSGI to be made more accessible
there should be in place more transparent, formalised, non-conflicting and wellstructured policies to regulate sharing and reuse. A number of European states have made considerable efforts to facilitate the sharing and reuse of PSGI.
Recently, their efforts were boosted by the European Union through the issuing of
two key Directives (PSI and INSPIRE) to facilitate the concept of reuse of Public
Sector Information (PSI) and the sharing PSGI in the case of INSPIRE. The
challenge then is to determine whether these Directives are effective in improving
the quality of access to PSI across Europe. The success of the Directives can in
part be measured by answering the following questions: Are the current and
future access policies of member States in compliance with the letter of the
Directives? And are they in compliance within the spirit of the Directives? In an
attempt to answer the questions above the authors investigated and analysed
key policies supporting the concept of sharing and the reusing of PSI/PSGI in five
European jurisdictions. This paper discusses key findings of the investigation with
respect to Norway and the United Kingdom with specific reference to England.
The paper presents the results of the investigation in the following manner: a
discussion of the concept of sharing and reusing of PSGI, followed by a review of
key EU Directives that directly or indirectly govern access to PSGI, and a
discussion on PSGI access policies in Norway and England. An analysis of these
policies is then presented to illustrate whether or not they are within the spirit and
letter of the PSI and INSPIRE Directives.

Hergebruik van informatie en met name van overheidsinformatie is een veelbesproken onderwerp. De discussie gaat vrijwel altijd over de prijs van de informatie en tegen welke voorwaarden de overheid haar informatie ter beschikking stelt of moet stellen.
Sinds halverwege de jaren negentig hebben een aantal onderzoeken aangegeven dat het open model het hergebruik van informatie bevordert en daardoor, een soms ongekende, groei van de informatie-economie zou stimuleren. Deze onderzoeken hebben mede geleid tot de totstandkoming van de Europese richtlijn inzake het hergebruik van overheidsinformatie (PSI 2003).
Behalve een vooral principiële discussie tussen voor- en tegenstanders van vrije toegang, zien we in Nederland een ongekend scala aan toegankelijkheidsregimes en arrangementen.
Voor vrijwel iedere geodataset is weer een ander bekostigings-, verrekenings-
en toegankelijkheidsbeleid geformuleerd. Naast al het werk dat hier mee gepaard
gaat, werpt dit ook drempels op bij het gebruiken van geo-informatie van een
ander, zowel binnen de overheid, door value-added resellers (VARs) als voor private bedrijven en particulieren.
De PSI richtlijn, de huidige tekst van de INSPIRE richtlijn en de Wob brengen tot
nu toe nauwelijks tot geen noodzaak met zich mee om hier verandering in aan te
brengen. Dit is jammer want onderzoek geeft aan dat juist consistent
oegankelijkheidsbeleid door gebruikers van overheidsinformatie wordt gewaardeerd. Verschillen in prijsregimes, gebruiksvoorwaarden en aansprakelijkheidsregiems kunnen leiden tot verwarring en uiteindelijk beperkt gebruik van de data set.
Het doel van dit onderzoek is een internationale verkenning van de mogelijkheden om op een efficiënte manier uniformering van gebruiksvoorwaarden en tariefstelling bij wet te regelen. Hiertoe zijn vijf landen onderzocht.
De volgende onderzoeksvragen staan centraal:
1. Welk nationaal en lokaal beleid ligt ten grondslag aan de beschikbaarstelling
van geo-informatie? Welke wet- en regelgeving is hiervoor ontwikkeld en op
welke wijze is de overheid georganiseerd?
2. Wat zijn de effecten van dit beleid voor de overheid en het bedrijfsleven?
3. Welke elementen uit het beleid van andere lidstaten zou Nederland kunnen
gebruiken om vrij hergebruik van geo-informatie te bevorderen?

Value–added use of geographic information is important in the development of geographic information infrastructures. In spite of the European directive “Reuse of public sector information”, the market for value-added geographic information products and services based on government information hardly develops in Europe under current circumstances. The value-added business community uses the information to a limited extent because of the high price and the restrictive use conditions. As a consequence the use of these public datasets remains limited to a stable group of professional users; the mass is not reached. However, this paper argues that the barriers can be levelled through an alternative to current access policies. The alternative access policy may be a first step towards the widespread availability of value-added geographic information services satisfying the needs of the public data providers, the value-added businesses, and the citizen.

Dit rapport betreft een analyse van de juridische en economische randvoorwaarden van een algemeen voornemen van RWS-AGI om alle beschikbare geografische datasets binnen RWS-AGI vrij ter beschikking te stellen. Dit rapport gaat na in hoeverre bestaande verplichtingen een (onoverkomelijke) barrière vormen om te komen tot de gewenste vrije beschikbaarheid. De volgende vier bestanden staan centraal: het Nationaal WegenBestand (NWB), Actueel Hoogtebestand Nederland (AHN), Electronic Nautical Charts (ENCs), en Orthofotomozaïekbestanden. Verder behandelt het rapport vier specifieke vragen: 1. Wat zijn geschikte gebruiksvoorwaarden voor vrije verstrekking? 2. Kan RWS-AGI het zich permitteren om alleen actief via Internet haar gegevens beschikbaar te stellen? 3. Kan RWS-AGI het zich permitteren om geen vragen van klanten te beantwoorden? 4. In hoeverre werpt het kader voor markt en overheid belemmeringen op voor het vrij verstrekken van geo-data en in hoeverre mag RWS-AGI (web-) services aanbieden?

Geo-information is a double-edged sword, regarding its powers in providing instant access to vast amounts of data and the opportunity to abuse, to misinform, and to invade the privacy of individuals on a greater scale than ever before [Cho, 1998: 22]. Thus, access to geo-information has always become an essential issue on development of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). Legal aspect of access to geo-information is also becoming one of the most important frameworks of Indonesian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ISDI), which is still being developed at this moment. Since there is no available arrangement on accessing geoinformation within ISDI, this paper will explore the most suitable arrangement on legal aspect of access to geo-information by examining the recent progress on legal aspect of access to geo-information in Indonesia and development of ISDI. The recent progress on development of Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI), Philippines National Geographic Information Infrastructure (Philippines NGII) and Malaysian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (MyGDI) will be evaluated as well in order to provide recommendation on legal access of access to geo-information within ISDI.