On Fri, 10 Feb 1995 Passlane@aol.com wrote:
> Another point worth noting is that when contracting directly with a vendor,
> the government can include in its contract a waiver of this provision, so that
> the resulting work product prepared under the contract would remain public
> property. DOJ did not do so with West, but in fact entered into a very
> limited license for the Juris information. Bad deal maybe, but does that make
> West the bad guy for having a profit motive to protect? I think not.
I've read the West Juris Contracts, the 1982 and 1988 contract, and
the 1976 West FLITE contracts, and they may not say what you think they
do. But that issue will be decided in court, by a judge, now that the
foia is intact. I don't recall calling West a bad guy before, and we
don't try to make too many moral judgements about firms protecting their
interests. But we want to protect the taxpayer and citizen interest in
access to information from the government.
>
> Apparently TAP does not understand the concept of non-exclusive ownership.
> When a vendor obtains public domain information, adds value and seeks to
> protect that added value, ownership of the original information does not
> appear to me to be affected in any way.
I don't think that you understood what was at stake. Under the
amendment, every government data processing contract would have satisfied
the value added provision, and the processed records would be no longer
be public records. Often these processed records are the relevant
records. For example, under the SEC EDGAR system, the contractors do
almost everything, and same is true for many other data processing
contracts, so there isn't much to fall back on as a public record.
>
> It sounds to me, from TAP's characterization of this provision, like TAP
> believes every publication referencing any piece of public domain information
> should immediately become public domain. This position is extremely shocking
> given the history of copyright law in this country.
>
I would be shocking if it was true, but its not. We support private
copyright of value added contributions which meet the standards of the
copyright law, and we believe that there are many other important and
enforceable intellectual property rights. The amendment, however, did
something far more than recognize intellectual property rights as they
exist today, it created new ones that no one seemed to be able to explain
at today's hearing.
> I suppose if a concerned taxpayer wanting to protect the right to purchase
> value added publications had suggested this provision, TAP would have
> supported it. I certainly hope we do not provide so much freedom for
> information in this country that there is no incentive to private publishers
> to add value and promptly give us product we need and can actually use. I
> just don't find that our government is very responsive about providing
> information in timely and useable formats.
>
I don't think we make decisions this way. We opposed LEXIS on the
SEC EDGAR dissemination, Agreed with LEXIS on the public domain citation,
disagreed with LEXIS on the public domain database, disagreed with LEXIS
on the first version of the West Provision in HR 830, and are waiting to
find out where they are on the new one. We agree with private vendors on
many government pricing issues, and find lots are areas to disagree. If
one has an open mind, one doesn't judge an issue by its sponsor.
jamie
> Eli Roth, Law Librarian
> Lincoln Law School of Sacramento
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Love, TAP; internet: love@tap.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 610/658-0880; f. 610/649-4066
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