Catalysts Limited

Anyone wishing to reuse government and parliamentary information will have to apply for a new licence from now on.  The Click-Use licence, available for the last decade, has been phased out and replaced with a Creative Commons type licence devised by the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI). The new licence is already used on the data.gov.uk website and will authorise the reuse of data both commercially and non-commercially.

The Creative Commons organisation is reportedly "thrilled" at the news. However, spokesperson Jane Park said that they would prefer to see it go further than the Attribution Only licence: "Though we are confident that this shift will increase the UK's capacity to foster reuse, collaboration and innovation in government and the world, we hope to see the UK move in the future towards fuller openness and the preferred standard for open data via CC Zero."

Those wanting to "mash" public sector data to produce new information will have to sign up to stringent terms and conditions to ensure they do not 'distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action' with the information. Managing Director of the Infolaw website for lawyers Nick Holmes, who is also a publishing consultant in the legal sector, said: "This may seem quite unexciting but it's a big deal."