Re: [open-regulatory-compliance] [EXTERNAL] Re: Non-CRA: Open Data in th

[Felix Reda <felixreda@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Federico,

I think you are right. The special conditions for very large enterprises don’t have to be more onerous. It could mean, for example, CC-by-sa for the general public, but if very large enterprises don’t want to follow the attribution or share-alike requirements, they could negotiate a paid license with the public sector body that doesn’t come with those restrictions.

What is even more interesting in this respect is that Art. 32q (6), in contrast to the old Art 6 (1) Open Data Directive, also allows public sector bodies to charge very large enterprises for the *production* of public sector data. Under the Open Data Directive regime, the re-use permissions only apply to data or documents that the public sector body already has available to it, it doesn’t constitute a requirement on the public sector body to generate new data. Under the new proposal, as I read it, a very large enterprise could pay a public sector body to generate new data, and to access that data under different (including more favourable) conditions than the general public.

Best,

Felix

Sent from Outlook for iOS

---

From: Federico Leva <federico.leva@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 1, 2025 1:48:23 PM
To: Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group <open-regulatory-compliance@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Felix Reda <felixreda@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [open-regulatory-compliance] Non-CRA: Open Data in the Digital Omnibus proposal

 

[You don't often get email from federico.leva@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ]

Thanks Felix for raising this!

Felix Reda via open-regulatory-compliance kirjoitti 28.11.2025 klo 8.14:
> The objective of allowing public sector bodies to always be able to charge very large enterprises for public sector data conflicts with this open licensing approach. If the same data was provided free of charge under an open license to the general public, but be subject to a fee for very large enterprises, even if there were no costs incurred by the public sector body associated with making the data available, nothing would stop the very large enterprise from simply copying the open data from a third-party source, which would be able to reproduce the data legally. So in order to be able to charge very large enterprises for the data itself (not costs for the provision of the data, such as bandwidth, anonymisation etc.), the Commission has to abandon the encouragement of standard open licenses and explicitly allow for non-open license conditions,

Alternatively, they could let member states come up with non-copyright
restrictions (other than the sui generic database rights), such as fees
or levies of various kinds. Italy is famously imaginative in that field.
That would obviously not be a good outcome (at least not for the single
market).

> [...] (4) Public sector bodies may establish special conditions for the re-use of data and documents by very large enterprises. Such conditions shall be proportionate and should be based on objective criteria. They shall be established taking into consideration the economic power, or the ability of the entity to acquire data, including in particular a designation as a gatekeeper under Regulation (EU) 2022/1925. [...]

This is "very funny" (read: not), because it doesn't say that the
conditions for very large enterprises should be more onerous than for
everyone else. Historically the problem has been that public sector
bodies are very eager to give away data for free to oligopolists like
Google (say, public transport live feeds for Google Maps) while keeping
it closed for everyone else. So the revision open data directive was
meant to level the playing field by making sure that if Google has
access to some data then everyone else should as well. To reduce
administrative costs, open data is the most effective way to achieve
fair treatment.

If we go back to the old ways, it will be even easier for very large
enterprises to just get preferential treatment, and there will be
nothing to stop them as the competitors won't have legal recourse any more.

Best,
        Federico