text: **3.3. Legal issues remain crucial**
  Proper licensing of Public data is essential. The more Open Data activities continue, the clearer this 
  
  rule becomes. What distinguishes Open Data from "mere" transparency is reuse. Paraphrasing 
  
  Eaves, until a government get the licensing issue right, Open Data cannot bring all the possible 
  
  benefits in that country. If there are no guarantees that public data can be used without restriction, 
  
  very little happens in practice, and when it happens it may be something against the public interest. 
  
  Canadian Company Public Engines Inc, that is paid by local police departments to collect, process 
  
  and analyze official crime data, also publishes online, with a proprietary license, anonymized 
  
  summaries of those data. When in 2010 another company, Report See Inc, scraped those data from 
  
  their website to reuse them, Public Engines sued. 
  
  Reporting this, D. Eaves rightly points out that*both*companies are right: one is trying to protect its 
  
  investment, the other is simply trying to reuse what IS public data, by getting it from the ONLY 
  
  place where it's available. This is what happens when public officials leave the ownership of*public*
  
  data to the third parties hired to collect them. Please note that, in practice, it makes very little 