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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: [gislist] GIS Fee structures |
| Date: |
09/04/2003 03:55:01 PM |
| From: |
Alicia Torregrosa |
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>recovery and charge fees for GIS data ranging from $0.99 for each parcel
>record to thousands of dollars for a single layer. This may change
quickly
>due to recent court rulings that any product developed using taxpayer
money
>is in the public domain.
Unfortunately, I am not an expert on legal issues of GIS, my comment was
based on a conversation with someone who had exceptional knowledge and
experience with GIS and "Public Records Law" and "Public Records Access
Regulations." I was repeating her opinion on the trends in data
availability due to legal challenges in the last 5 years. My search for
the actual court rulings turned up the court cases that Professor Harlan
Onsrud publishes as links on his GIS Law website
http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~onsrud/GISlaw.htm
The legal challenges both for and against public agency dissemination of
GIS parcel data, have been most successfully litigated at the state and
county level based on interpretations of the each state's open records
laws. A thoughtful interpretation from Massachusetts is at
http://www.state.ma.us/mgis/mgicletr.htm. A good resource for a state by
state view of electronic access laws, cases, and associated information
comes from "THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS"
http://www.rcfp.org/elecaccess/
Last May the "Committee on Licensing Geographic Data and Services" held a
workshop: posted on the National Academy's site are the presentations and
white papers from those two days of meetings:
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/besr/Licensing%20Agenda%202.html
I wrote Dr. Onsrud asking if he had heard of more recent rulings and he
wrote back that he had yet to see a case that "came down" the way I
described it. He did suggest Henry Perritt Jr.'s book, Law and the Super
Information Highway (2001)
http://www.kentlaw.edu/faculty/scholarship/perritt_pubs.html, that
articulates the argument quite well.
This topic seems to interest several members of this list, so when I find
more information I will post it.
............................................................................
atorregrosa@usgs.gov
............................................................................
Alicia Torregrosa
Western Geographic Science Center
US Geological Survey
345 Middlefield Road MS 531
Menlo Park, CA 94025
office:650-329-4091 fax:650-329-4429
............................................................................
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