Statutes, regulations and policies are similar in this respect. Using short-term thinking, people in government often assume they can simply set prices in order to maximize profits, like any rational, monopoly seller. What they forget is that this is exactly why utilities commissions were established to regulate traditional government-sanctioned monopolies such as B.C. Hydro. In the information selling area, this will become more and more obvious to the extent that government agencies impose unreasonably high prices for information for which they are a monopoly supplier. A third problem with government sales of computerized information has to do with how prices are set.
Total revenue is the product of the price and the number of units sold.
The same amount of revenue can be generated by a high price and a small number of units sold as by a low price and a large number of units sold. Granted, the digital maps contain a lot more information than a paper map, but it's obvious that at that price customers will be limited to logging and mining companies and government agencies. They don't get the information, so we lose a wonderful opportunity for promoting rational land use planning, education, software development and so on, and meanwhile the government doesn't gain a dime in revenue from these potential users of the information. In short, what's needed is some form of fee waiver for public interest, non-commercial use of the information. This is precisely the issue in an inquiry now being conducted by the British Columbia Commission of Information and Privacy.