Several of the initial spatial datasets to be made available through this project have been produced by federal agencies or will be scanned from federal government sources (see above). These datasets do not raise significant copyright concerns. Similarly, a cooperating private data supplier, ESRI, has expressed willingness to make several large spatial datasets available for prototype testing and development and for use by the academic and research communities with few restrictions.
Proprietary Interests in Datasets: Copyright concerns do arise in those instances in which data suppliers desire compensation for copies of geographic data sets. A universal electronic currency system is not yet available on the internet that would allow real-time electronic payment for copies of datasets while providing security for merchants and anonymity for purchaser [45]. Such a system is not being proposed for development by this project. However, if such a system becomes practically operable on the internet during the life of the project (example: Xanadu Light with an effective user front end), our intent is to encourage private sector spatial data suppliers to make their datasets available using the prototype system we are developing in conjunction with the universal electronic payment system.
Public Sector Datasets: Although a comprehensive ``net cash'' and ``net check'' system will go a long way in dealing with many security and privacy issues as well as enable the efficient transfer and payment for copyrighted spatial datasets, such a system will give rise to a new batch of legal issues and concerns. Of particular interest to those using or wishing to use spatial data is the government sale of such data and the inherent conflicts with freedom of information principles that government sales give rise to [27], [5]. The vast majority of generally useful spatial data sets in the United States have been produced at taxpayer expense at the federal, state, and local government levels. The ability to efficiently buy, sell, and distribute spatial data sets over the network does not negate arguments or resolve concerns regarding whether it is wise long-term economic policy for government to do so or whether principles of citizen access to the functioning of government will be impinged upon through government sales arrangements [34]. This project does not hope to resolve these policy issues but we do intend to develop, explore, and offer alternative incentives for encouraging government parties to make their spatial data sets available. For instance, what incentives in addition to other than monetary compensation by users would convince the State of Massachusetts to go through the extra time and expense of preparing detailed meta data on their statewide orthophoto datasets and making those datasets available over the Internet? What incentives other than fiscal would motivate local government officials to make their spatially indexed datasets available to their citizens over the Internet? Numerous alternative incentives exist and are currently the object of discourse and study under a major NCGIA research initiative on Law, Information Policy, and Spatial Databases [54]. Principals involved in that research will work within the proposed project to expand the digital spatial library through use of incentives that will meet the expectations of "library users" who expect to not have to pay directly for services while supplying benefits to those government data producers who make their spatial data sets available.