[8860] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: JURIS - DOJ rejects TAP FOIA Request (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Love)
Wed Dec 8 11:49:51 1993
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 11:42:44 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@essential.org>
To: Eliot Lear <lear@yeager.corp.sgi.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9312070430.AA25213@yeager.corp.sgi.com>
On Mon, 6 Dec 1993, Eliot Lear wrote:
>
> This seems problematic to me. Shall the government not be able to
> secure access to information which private parties have made available
> in electronic form? After all, should your FOIA case be granted it
> would deter other such providers from doing business with Uncle Sam.
> [Some might argue that this is a good thing ;-]
>
Eliot is correct, the issues concerning FOIA access to licensed
materials are problematic. The policy question is, should the government
be allowed to maintain databases which are not open the the public
under FOIA? There are currently many types of government information
which are "owned" by various commerical companies. A very simple example
are the offical transcripts from any court and administrative hearings,
which are "owned" by the transcribing company, and licensed to the
government. You are no allowed to make copies of the government's copy,
and must buy them from the private reporter, sometimes at $3 or more per
page. Several agencies have attempted to "barter" data rights for
cheap access to their own databases. The Patent And Trademark Office
(PTO) and the SEC tried to do this in the early 1980s, but were stoped by
Congress. West gets its monopoly power in legal publishing by providing
lots of special favors to the courts, in return for special rights to the
data. If FOIA rights provided access to these materials, the government
itself would have to take more responsiblity for mainting its records in
electronic formats, and private sector activity would shift from "owning"
the data to more value added activities, which are subject to
intellectual property rights.
jamie
>
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James Love, Taxpayer Assets Project; internet: love@essential.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 215/658-0880; f. 215/649-4066
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