It is a contract job for an Italian University, funded with EU money. I am looking for real world examples of the availability of public data like these have actually been good for local businesses, making them sustainable or cheaper to run. Every feedback is welcome. Here are more details on the project: Open Data, Open Society: a research project about openness of public data in EU local administrations. Again, thanks to all who will provide relevant pointers & info!

I was myself the "victim" of a similar case, that is a magazine that says you can't copy their articles without at least attribution, then fully copied one of mine... without attribution, of course. When I said "you should replace the full text with an abstract and link to source" they simply removed the whole page :-|

Can you fight DRM with patience? Of course you can, but patience requires (as others have already pointed out) a working brain. It's the same with music and movies. If people had had patience to think and wait a bit we would have solved for good the problem with RIAA, MPAA and similar ten years ago: staying a few months without buying nor dowloading music would have left them with no cash AND, above all, with no argument at all to use as basis for things like ACTA. I already explained this in a format that, hopefully, most teenagers could understand in "Mr Label's nightmare: what really, really scares him", a very short novel I wrote six years ago.

just a few days ago, when I found a real magazine had copied without permission, integrally and without attribution, an article of mine. I wrote this: http://stop.zona-m.net/node/112 then asked them to please cancel their copy and they immediately did it.

"I submit that the best supporters are impassioned users."

Sure, no question about that. The point of my article is to just say
"such supporters aren't enough to guarantee FOSS survival, so it is
urgent that they find ways to convince others to support (which is
not necessarily equivalent to "use") FOSS and open standards by governments.

Marco F.