[8877] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: JURIS - DOJ rejects TAP FOIA Request (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tansin A. Darcos & Company)
Wed Dec 8 23:19:46 1993
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 93 23:01 EST
From: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
To: "J. Timothy Sprehe" <p00269@psilink.com>
Cc: James Love <love@essential.org>
Cc: com-priv <com-priv@psi.com>
>From Paul Robinson <TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
---
J. Timothy Sprehe <p00269@psilink.com>, writes:
> Taxpayer Assets Project is still not addressing a fundamental
> question: Why should the Justice Department pay for TAP or anyone
> else to have a free (or heavily subsidized) lunch in computer assisted
> legal research (CALR)?
Well, I'd like to know where it is right or proper for a government
agency to give away a government-owned database to a private company,
rent that database back from the private company, paying a large sum
for it, then when the private company decides to stop offering the
database, that the government should have to get rid of it - including
the original material and public domain materials - and spend even more
money to rent essentially the same database over again.
Somehow this whole thing smacks of a sweetheart deal that someone has
done something sinister about. Anyone remember what the Justice Department
did to the people who owned the Promis computer program? Anyone noticed
how that reporter looking into this suddenly turned up dead in a motel
room in West Virginia, and how the local police "just accidentally" botched
the recovery of his body making an analysis of what happened impossible?
Perhaps this could be the reason that Justice is so anxious to dispose
of the current system? So some people who are going to benefit from this
may do so? Look at the stunt the White House pulled on the Travel Office.
I wouldn't be surprised at anything this administration does, especially
if it's going to reward some supporter or contributor. I wonder if the
FEC has figures on any moneys that anyone who is going to make money off
this contributed to the Clinton campaign.
> Nowhere is it written in law or policy that the mission of the
> Justice Department shall be to provide low cost CALR services to the
> public. Justice is the nation's lawyer,
Somehow, I doubt this. They may be _de jure_ the "nation's" lawyer, I
sometimes suspect as of whom they are the _de facto_ lawyer.
> whose mission, according to the _U.S. Government Manual_, is to
> enforce the laws,
Tell that to Inslaw.
> safeguard consumers,
Tell that to people who want to eat healtier who find the FDA is doing
everything it can to shut down the health food industry.
> protect citizens through law enforcement,
Tell that to the dead at Waco. Lots of talk about so called "child
abuse" until some bright boy discovered child abuse isn't a Federal
crime and the federal government has no jurisdiction, so some new
excuse was created.
> and ensure healthy competition of business in our free enterprise
> system.
Gee, you must be living in a different country than I am. The Justice
Department is not in the business of protecting competition; it is there
so that entrenched companies can squeeze out competitors:
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act declares that selling at a price above that of
your competitors is de-facto evidence of a monopoly, since you could not
get a higher price unless you were one.
The Clayton Anti-Trust act makes selling at a price below that of your
competitors evidence of an attempt at destructive competition.
The Robinson-Patman antitrust act declares it illegal to sell at a
price equal to that of your competitors, since if the price is equal,
it is de-facto evidence of price fixing!
> Love wants Justice also to deliver low cost computerized legal
> information services to the public, but the Congress has never
> seen fit to agree with him.
> Am I the only taxpayer who thinks that federal agencies should stick
> to carrying out the functions for which they were created? that
> Justice has no business providing CALR services to the public? and
> that the demise of JURIS is a good thing for the taxpayer?
The Justice Department was created supposedly to try cases which
there is an interest by the federal government in. As such, it has
created a set of databases for its own use, but turned around and
essentially gave to a private company, and that the cost for the
new contract will be even higher costs to the taxpayers.
So the demise of Juris, at a much lower cost, and replacement by a higher
cost system is a good deal for the taxpayers? I don't see it.
Many government agencies create databases as a result of their operations.
Copyrights. Patents. Trademarks. FCC. SEC. All of these databases are
either available in printed form or (now) available on the Internet.
(Copyrights and SEC are now; One group has FCC's list of Amateur licenses
on an Internet site.)
This database that DOJ has consists of two parts: headnotes and casenotes
which would be owned by West Publishing, and it could be considered
reasonable to require that be removed. But the rest is public domain
text of court decisions, that the government has spent a great deal of
money creating, and that there is no special reason cannot be made
accessible by the public.
We're not talking about access to the NCIC or the Social Security System;
we are talking about material that government agencies have to access
anyway to do research (unless they want to use printed guides) and that
typical access to the "enhanced" material is in the $250 an hour range.
Doesn't anyone think DOJ could sell access to the base court cases for
$10 an hour or so? And thus help finance the cost of running the service?
---
Paul Robinson -- TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM
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First thing we do, let's kill off the lawyers. - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
