[A] bill introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites . . .

from Palm Beach Post

Read A Parody of this article called "Oxygen Makers Seek Ban on "Unfair" Competition" by BIllmon's Whiskey Bar

Critics say the bill's wording is so vague they can't tell exactly what it would ban.

"I believe I've paid for that data once. ... I don't want to have to pay for it again," said Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University. He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline. "The National Weather Service Web site would have to go away," Bradner said. "What would be permitted under this bill is not clear -- it doesn't say. Even including hurricanes."

But here's the real problem:

Also last year, the weather service began offering much of its raw data on the Internet in an easily digestible format, allowing entrepreneurs and hobbyists to write simple programs to retrieve the information. At the same time, the weather service's own Web pages have become increasingly sophisticated.

Combined, the trends threaten AccuWeather's business of providing detailed weather reports based on an array of government and private data. AccuWeather's 15,000 customers include The Palm Beach Post, which uses the company's hurricane forecast maps on its Web site, PalmBeachPost.com [...]

Another supporter of the weather service's efforts, Tallahassee database analyst John Simpson, said the plethora of free data becoming available could eventually fuel a new industry of small and emerging companies that would repackage the information for public consumption. He said a similar explosion occurred in the 1990s, when corporations' federal securities filings became freely available on the Web.

AccuWeather wants a monopoly on such data for commercial use. And Santorum sells legislation for the few thousand Myers has thrown his way.

From Daily Kos

# posted by Jon Easton : 11:27 PM  0 comments