The article and the one it links to both suffer from fallacy of the excluded middle: the choice seemingly being that offering an API precludes offering the bulk data. Neither article provides an example of a government agency that only provides an API and does not provide the underlying bulk data.<p>I think both have their time and place.<p>I'd like to see a national standard for state, county, and city governments to offer enumerable, reflective, APIs and/or bulk data with consistent, uniform, predictable name and parameter conventions.<p>As an example, it would be easier for all (sez I, waving hands furiously) if I can take a zip code, map it to a government entity, and directly query that entity for its current sales tax rate.