Re: Life under stupid Database legislation

On 6/19/98, Diane Cabell <cabell[_at_]mama-tech.com> wrote:
>
> Wouldn't it depend on the exact nature of the "arrangement?" The school
> may be gathering the information for its own purposes, and not for the
> court. Their arrangement may meet none of the employment, agency or
> exclusivity criteria. The court's original collection (perhaps a big
> file cabinet of hard copy decisions) would be free to copy under this
> section, but certainly not a collection made/organized by an independent
> party who simply has access to the original collection.

Perhaps, but this merely is another litigation one would have to engage in to access this information -- the database bill provides a damaloclesian [sp?] sword.

But, this is not what is going on. What is happening here is that a goverment agency -- a court -- is offloading its public responsibility onto a private party to archive and disseminate these opinion. [I assure you, the exact terms of these arrangements would require taking a deposition of the Chief Judge in the Circuit where you are litigating.] Now one of these private parties, a private university has already claimed a copyright in the mechanical html versions it prepares. Why will it not go to the next step if provided the opportunity under the database bill.

Similarly, the federal courts offload the responsibility of providing a citation system and archiving the "official" versiions of their cases on West.

The evil of the database bill is it will provide enormous incentives to private publihsers to dissuade governmental agencies, from local planning board on up, to maintain easily avaialable and authoritative archives of their official documents.

The deal is that the originating agency reduces its budges by letting a private publisher do work that should be done by the agency. In return, everyone else including every other agency and governmental unit and the public is not at the mercy of the monopolist database provider.

Does any one wish to argue that the bill does not creates these incentives?

Alan D. Sugarman
<sugarman[_at_]hyperlaw.com> Received on Sat Jun 20 1998 - 17:58:34 GMT