I had a note about this in my original post about OpenCorporations, but it bears repeating, as I was just asked about it by a reporter from The Guardian: in addition to my daring exploits of late I was also, as it happens, the programmer who originally crafted the code for the Province’s Corporate Register, as part of a multi-year project developing www.gov.pe.ca that ended amicably five years ago.

I haven’t had access to the code that runs the register, or to the database that serves it, since 2003, however, and the “spidering” of the register that fed the OpenCorporations project was done simply by indexing public web pages. This is something that anyone could do (and, indeed, is something that other search engines did freely for many years until the register was modified last week).

Indeed I used a similar approach when I created spidering applications to index Charlottetown Building Permits and City Council Minutes in 2006.

In the front section of today’s Globe and Mail is a report filed by Oliver Moore: PEI tightens registry access as traffic spikes: Thousands search politicians’ names after blogger creates search by shareholder:

So on one hand you have the Province of PEI restricting access to information that can empower citizens to understand corporations better because it is, it says, this is “inappropriately using corporate data.”

On the other hand you have the Province of PEI defending its own sales of information that can empower corporations to better understand citizens:

Assistant provincial tax commissioner Jim Ramsay told CBC News Wednesday the Geolinc information is useful for doing business.

“It’s used by corporations, companies that have an interest in land, financial institutions, real estate [agents], law firms,” said Ramsay.

I’m just sayin’…

In other Jean Canfield Building news, this boardroom booking website has an interesting manual of “Standard Operating Procedures” for the building. If you ever doubted the thoroughness of the federal government’s bureaucratic machine, you’ll be happy to know that, among other things, there are official policies on newspapers (“All newspapers, magazines and periodicals are to be delivered to each Department through the mailroom.”), plants (“No plants are allowed at the Jean Canfield Building.”), earthquakes (“Take immediate shelter and protect your face and head with your arms.”) and explosions (“Make an entry in the Post Logbook and submit an Incident Report to the Facility Manager.” — that’s only the last step, though).

Of additional interest is that the management of the building appears to have been outsourced to a company called SNC-Lavalin ProFac, a group that’s part of “the largest engineering and construction firm in Canada and one of the five largest in the world.”

Note to Jean Canfield Building operators: I think I may have accidentally booked the Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst meeting room for 30 minutes on December 16 at 8:00 a.m. — feel free to remove my booking.

This amazing tool provides real-time monitoring of the solar energy array on the Jean Canfield Building across the street from my office. As I write on this overcast Thursday it’s generating 1 kW of electricity.

There’s a different view of the same data here.

From my Danish operatives comes a link to KBH ZEN. Interesting.

As I announced earlier in the week I’ve just switched off OpenCorporations.org. Rather than shutting off public access to the data entirely, however, I’ve created a new site: at ClosedCorporations.org you can access an archival (and “memorial”) version of the site, with the data frozen in time at November 19, 2008.

I’ve also written a history of the OpenCorporations project for posterity.

Just by chance, [[Catherine]] picked up a Tetra Pak of Iranian pomegranate juice from Kozy Korner Cafe on Prince Street (the former Eddie’s Lunch, Viva’s and Marinagrill space). I’ve avoided Kozy Korner: too many Ks, unappealing “Downy Fresh” smell from the laundromat, and too many memories of the greater days before. But man is the pomegranate good: add a little soda water and a lime and you could be, well, anywhere exotic you might wish to be.

The only publicly-aired complaint about OpenCorporations came last night on [[Compass]] in a comment from [[Tim Banks]], who said, commenting on the availability of his home address:

I just don’t think under privacy laws that that should be something that’s out there. Unfortunately with this economy there tends to be a lot of people showing up at your door.

For the record, should you be one of the downtrodden who might seek financial assistance from Mr. Banks, there are a variety of ways of finding his home address; perhaps the simplest way is to look it up in the telephone book.

There are many completely valid reasons for debating the merits of OpenCorporations; being uncomfortable with the “release” of information that has always been available, both through the Corporate Register and otherwise, probably isn’t one of the better ones.

Several reporters have asked me this week why I think Islanders have taken to the OpenCorporations project so enthusiastically — more than 250,000 searches by nearly 3,000 people in just 7 days. I gave a variety of answers, perhaps none really that accurate. Tonight my mind turned to history, and I recalled this passage from Canada’s Smallest Province, F.W.P. Bolger’s history of the Island. It’s from the chapter The Beginnings of Independence and concerns the divvying up of the Island to largely-absentee proprietors:

It is obvious, so far as the Board [of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations] was concerned, the disposal of the land on St. John’s Island was regarded as nothing more than a cold and indifferent business venture. This approach was more than matched by a substantial portion of the original proprietors. Many of them disposed of their grants as rapidly as they could locate buyers; their interest in their property was as impersonal as the average modern stockholder’s in a major corporation. Within the next ten years, the ownership of fully one-fourth of the townships had changed hands. This rapidly changing proprietorship makes tracing the ownership of lots a veritable enigma.

And later in the same book:

Discontent and revulsion came from the urge for self-respect as well as the feeling of being exploited by alien landlords. All through North America the ownership of land was a mark of competence while tenantry was a badge of inferiority.

While it’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to attempt to draw a direct parallel, I think it’s true to say that Islanders are, by nature, wary of proprietors, and that the roots of this can be traced, in part, to the turmoil of the land question.

Yes Islanders are curious — nosy, even — and perhaps that’s what drives much of the interest in knowing more about our corporations and who controls them. But I’m sure that some of that curiousity is driven by a healthy suspicion about those who engage “cold and indifferent business ventures.” That’s a good kind of curiousity to have, and one that I was trying to foster.