At least here in Europe, we pay for quite a few state owned services with our taxmoney, and we surely expect to get something back. If you get ill, the healthcare system goes into work, not waiting until they have checked your visa-card before they send you off to the nearest hospital. There you usually pay a small amount of the real cost. This is how is should be. We have a long tradition of helping each other in Europe, escpecially compared to other social systems around the world.
But there is a lot of things our governments should learn from other countries, especially USA in this case. Until now we have used paperbased maps to navigate, paid by our taxmoney. We have useually paid a nominal fee for printing and distribution when we was in need for this information. But in this digital age, when I'm asking for an electronic (vector) based map, my government would then ask a ridicoulus high price with a following 5 pages document stating the copyright of the information.But, We have all paid for this before. Why do I have to pay again. The US have stated that maps is useful and is paid by the american people. So then it should be public domain.
I dont ask for marked up information, just raw vector-data who is really useful for people who wants to make their own maps.
The best way to get access to vector-data maps is convince you local politicians that maps should be free.
Another way is making our own maps. It will take some time but with coordinating effort from a few dedicated people, it should be quite easy, espcially in cities. More and more people are getting private GPS due to cheap price and accurate reading of positions, we would surely see GPS build into a lot of different equipments in the near future, like mobile-telephones, cars, bicycles etc.
So, please help us, making Free electronic maps.