Re: [PLUG] Help with Lawsuit

[Mental Patient <mental@neverlight.com>]

On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 14:53, Edmund Goppelt wrote:

> 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.
> 

Well, then it sounds like you certainly have grounds for a case. I don't
know (obviously) any of these sort of details. I just know what a PITA
it is getting anything that doesn't fit neatly into a flow chart out of
the government. Thats what prompted me to say it'd be less aggravation
to just scrape the site. But, if its the principal of the matter, then
more power to you. 

I at first thought that cost was the angle the lawyer was coming from.
Given the above points, the worst case would be raw dumps of data on
whatever media type. 


> 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
> 
Not really :) But thanks for the link. I'm not patient enough to deal
with bureaucracy. 



-- 
Mental (Mental@NeverLight.com)

"Shouting at people who, for one reason or another, cannot hear you 
is mentally-ill behavior -- or evidence of idiots in command."

--George Smith, a virus researcher and columnist for SecurityFocus. 

CARPE NOCTEM, QUAM MINIMUM CREDULA POSTERO.

GPG public key: http://www.neverlight.com/pas/Mental.asc

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part