Access to Gov't Information

This is the eighth in a series of posts calling attention to topics we cover in the Citizen Media Legal Guide. In this post, we highlight the section on Access to Courts and Court Records, which provides an overview of federal and state laws that grant you the right to access federal and state court records and court proceedings. We also provide some practical tips for getting useful information out of your local courthouse.

If you’re hunting for information, consider a visit to the courthouse, where you can sift through resource-rich court records or attend (sometimes colorful) court proceedings.

Courts are centers for dispute resolution. They are public forums in which societal norms and values, as reflected in laws, are used to address and correct wrongs. While a number of laws govern the court system, none is so deeply-ingrained as the presumption that court proceedings should be open to the public.

If you are wondering how attending court proceedings or combing through court records might be valuable to you, here are several great reasons to consider acquiring -- and publishing -- information available from the courts:   read more »

Here at the Citizen Media Law Project we recently finished the fourth major section of our Legal Guide on Access to Government Information. As we were researching the various freedom of information laws, we came across Pennsylvania’s recently enacted Right-To-Know Law which goes into effect on January 1, 2009, and wanted to again applaud its arrival (we initially noted the Governor's signing of the law back in February).

The Better Government Association watchdog group ranks Pennsylvania’s current open records law near the bottom (48th of the 50 states) for quality of public access. The law itself dates back to 1957 and seemed fairly ensconced until a recent spate of highly publicized government scandals triggered its reassessment. The notorious attempt by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Authority’s to cover up the hundreds of thousands of dollars it spent on resort trips for board members and staff over a five year period, and the Democratic caucus’ infamous secret payment of legislative bonuses totaling 1.9 million dollars to staff members were among the more egregious news stories and resulted in public outcry demanding greater government transparency.   read more »

Just last week, I was ruminating on the viability of state claims of copyright in government records. At the time, I was pretty confident that a state wouldn't be crazy enough to claim copyright in its own statutes, both because caselaw suggests this would be legally invalid and because it would be shoddy public policy. Now, the Legislative Counsel Committee of the State of Oregon has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Justia, a free online resource for judicial decisions and statutes, claiming that Justia's posting of the Oregon Revised Statutes violates its copyright. The Committee's claim is not as outlandish as it initially sounds, but it is still quite problematic.

The Committee is not claiming copyright in the text of the law itself. Smart thinking -- Tim Armstrong at Info/Law does a better job than I could marshalling the cases suggesting that any copyright claim to the text would be doomed. (The most exciting of these cases is Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int'l, 293 F.3d 791 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc), if only because it's from this century.) Instead, the Committee claims copyright in   read more »

The New York Times just ran a fascinating article on The Smoking Gun, a website dedicated to providing "documents--cool, confidential, quirky--that can't be found elsewhere on the Web." The three-person investigative shop in mid-town Manhattan consistently finds -- and publishes -- court documents, government records, and other esoterica that it finds through Freedom of Information requests, court files, and good old-fashioned investigative journalism. As we explain in our legal guide, you don't need the resources of a big media organization to use these information gathering tools effectively.

According to the Times:

The Smoking Gun has demonstrated that if you obey the metabolism of the Web, not the journalist, you can land with significant impact in a hurry.

“I think one of the keys is that we are three people,” said Mr. Bastone, who founded the site with Daniel Green, another Voice alumnus who has since moved on to truTV at Turner, and Barbara Glauber, Mr. Bastone’s wife and the designer of the site. . . .

“Their secret sauce is the ability to source documents that no one else can get,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, which inherited the site when it bought Court TV. “It’s not a big business, but it’s profitable, and one of the things we are diligent about is the care and feeding of brands. Young people respond to this brand on TV and on the Web.”   read more »

Michael Geist points the way to an interesting Vancouver Sun article, reporting on the B.C. provincial government's inclusion of copyright notices in packets of documents turned over to journalists under B.C.'s Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act, a Canadian analog of our state FOI laws. Stanley Tromp, writing for the Sun, explains:

Soon afterward, I was perplexed to receive "notices" slipped inside packages of documents mailed to me in response to some of my FOI requests. These letters warned me that: "These records are protected by copyright under the federal Copyright Act, pursuant to which unauthorized reproduction of works is forbidden."

If I wanted to redistribute even a portion of these records, I would have to send a special request (which could be denied) to the IPP, and also pay up. The implicit threat that I could be sued for non-compliance was clear.

The notion that the media may not inform readers of harms to the public interest without first pleading for the state's permission and paying a copyright fee is deeply troubling.

After several years of this process, I complained to B.C.'s information and privacy commissioner, David Loukidelis, an inquiry was begun, and a ruling is expected.   read more »