UK's Ordnace Survey relases data as CC-BY. Could OSI do the same?

I wonder is there any way we could try and get the OSI to release their data as CC-BY like their UK cousins?
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata

Here are two links to two video talks given by Tim Berners-Lee at the TED conference. The older one, from Feb 2009 was his initial plea for governments and organizations to open up their data for public use.

The more recent one from Feb 2010 is a short update. In it he highlights the OSM Haiti map (at 3min 50sec).

Would the mandarins in the Govt & OSI be open to that argument ?

Update video (Feb 2010) http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html

Initial video plea for open data (Feb 2009) http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

I’ve never found OSI to be flexible or open to new ideas!

Jim

The BBC have an interesting article where they say the EU is looking at forcing Governments to release more public data for free and without strings attached.

We may get some OSi data yet !!!

BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16184456
Archived version http://www.webcitation.org/646D3bkjG

A year later I took a look to see how the EU was pushing things along.

I eventually managed to find out that the reforms described in the BBC article are officially called the revision of the PSI [Public Sector Information] Directive 2003/98/EC. Its suppose to be adopted in 2013.

These pages track the draft directive’s progress. Currently it’s awaiting its first reading in the EU Parliament:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2011/0430%28COD%29&l=en#tab-0

http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/detail_dossier_real.cfm?CL=en&DosId=201183#419702

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=9024