Re: [PLUG] Help with Lawsuit

[Edmund Goppelt <webmaster@hallwatch.org>]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 10:43:39AM -0400, Mental Patient wrote:
> I believe in open records, but I dont believe that makes the city your
> personal slave. If the records are available to the public, then use the
> public interface. To me, the city spending money to get you the data in
> the format that _you_ need/want doesn't make sense. Why not just scrape
> the website? It'd take less time than going to court to try to convince

Thank you for your comments.  I agree with you completely that it
would have been a whole lot easier for me, the City, the Judge, if I
had simply "scraped" the data off their web site.  I do want the data
and will probably go that route if I lose the suit.

However, I have a larger goal: when it comes to public records, I want
the City to follow the law.  The Law says the City must provide
records if they already exist in a particular format:

"...a public record shall be accessible for inspection and duplication
by a request in accordance with this act.  A public record shall be
provided to a requester in the medium requested if the public record
exists in that medium; otherwise, it shall be provided in the medium
in which it exists."  65 P.S. Section 66.2(a) of the Right to Know Act.

> a judge that you have the right to demand special treatment. Unless what
> you're asking for is reusable by more than just you, it seems selfish
> for you to ask the city tax payers to foot the bill for a data
> extract....

I am not asking for special treatment, just that the City follow the
law.  

PA got a new Right to Know Act in December, one that for the first
time addresses the issue of public records on computer.  In my
opinion, it's a vast improvement over the old law from 1951.

I understand your concern that taxpayers not end up paying for
expensive open records requests.  And so did Pennsylvania lawmakers:
the new law allows the City to recoup its costs when fulfulling a
request for public records.  In this case I believe the cost to
taxpayers would be nominal as the task at hand is trivial: write and
then run a one line SQL query for their Oracle server.

If you're curious about the new open records law, you can read the
full text here:

http://www.pa-newspaper.org/legal/handbook2/Right_to_Know_law.htm

Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

-- 

Ed Goppelt
http://www.hallwatch.org
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