Ramblings of a compulsive engineer

The use of Linked Open Data is becoming increasingly widespread, boosted by recent moves to increase government transparency and efficiency by publishing non-sensitive datasets for free online. There is now a large 'cloud' of interlinked datasets, as evidenced by efforts to catalogue and visualise the Web of Linked Data.

Content owners governments and research institutions are in a unique position; they have the means to invest in the creation of datasets, yet none of the financial pressures of private companies which require them to turn a profit from such investments. So far, all datasets published as Linked Data have been published for free, without access restrictions. However as Linked Data technology moves beyond the Research and Development stage, and is incorporated into commercial products and services, pressures to generate return on investments will increase. In the face of those pressures it is inevitable that some will seek to monetize Linked Data.

In response to these pressures we can expect to see the rise of Linked Closed Data, datasets which are linked in adherence to Linked Data principles, but to which access or some content is restricted to paying members. It may be possible to meet these financial pressures through other means, such as advertising, however we are sceptical of this (this will be the subject of a later post).

Linked Closed Data will not mean the end of the Web of open Data; closed datasets are unlikely to displace the free alternatives, as commercial datasets are sold on their quality and depth, something which free datasets do not generally assure. It will however enable a market for high quality Semantic data, which may benefit to both companies and consumers.

My colleagues and I recently submitted a paper discussing this subject to the Consuming Linked Data workshop (COLD2010), which unfortunately was not accepted. This post explores our ideas about Linked Closed Data from the paper.