WV Assessor Sues to Keep Tax Maps Off the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "After trying to charge $167,488 for their collection of county tax maps (in TIF format), West Virginia was forced by a judge to hand them over for a $20 'reproduction costs' fee. Now a county tax assessor has filed a lawsuit trying to block the tax maps from being put online, claiming copyright infringement and financial damages since fewer people are coming to her to buy paper copies at $8 per page."

podunk speed tr...er, "rent seekers"

[harvey the nerd]

Given the funky West virginia law, I would keep my server and business centers out of WV and ignore everything else. As for the quality of the WV tax assessor's argument, it reminds me of this little incorporated town that consisted of 4 miles of empty interstate only, a speed trap, and a post office box in another town... don't bother to pay, the state ignores them, too.

Re:There shouldn't be any profit involved

[Albanach]

The fact they want to charge suggests you probably didn't pay for this information when you paid your taxes. They're trying to recoup costs through the charge.

Local government doesn't exactly run at a profit. If they are forced to stop charging by law, or find they have no sales due to the data being freely available on the internet you'll find that lost income has to be recouped - then you'll be paying for it through your taxes.

Please note, I'm not suggesting the data shouldn't be free on the internet, just pointing out that in the past they probably helped cover the cost through paper sales and if/when that changes the money will have to come from somewhere else.

paaardon?

[superwiz]

Governments can claim copyright? How? There are so many argument against it, I am not even sure where to start.

Re:Make these bitches give us INFORMATION, FREELY

[ultima]

Wait, are you implying that people who work for the government might be self-serving parasites?

By making this information available for free, those people who made a living by reproducing it are being put out of a job. And government jobs often attract the kind of people who would are just not adaptable enough to find a new job. So of course they are going to fight this -- because accepting it means they would have to change, and change is hard.

Re:Public Record?

[base3]

Jackson County, Missouri as well. A stalker's dream, perhaps, but public records are public records, and it's about time they are available to other than lawyers, investigators, and people with the luxury of 9-5 M-F idle time to visit the courthouse. There was an attempt in Missouri pass a law to let "special" (i.e. cops and politicians) people opt-out, which was fortunately defeated. If there is indeed a privacy concern, then perhaps what is public record needs to be redefined for *everyone* rather than letting the powerful opt out (and it's not as if they can't hide their ownership through shell corporations and nominees, anyway).

Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress

[Insightfill]

Reminds me of this one from 2001: Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress [slashdot.org] Texas town has the writing of the building code outsourced. Local guy obtains a copy and posts on the Internet, only to get sued for copyright infringement.

Re:Public Record?

[snarfies]

"Public record" does not mean "free."

I used to be an auto insurance adjuster with a three-state territory (MD, DC, and VA) (yeah, I'm counting DC - that's where the majority of my cases were). As such, I had to obtain police reports, often. Police reports, at least with regards to auto accidents, are public record. If you just happen to drive past an accident, and note when and where it was, you can request a police report if you like.

NONE of the municipalities I dealt with had any online availability. I had to physically mail them a request, and almost ALL police jurisdictions charged for copies of the accident reports. In DC, it was $3. In Prince George County, MD, it was $5. I know there was one municipality in VA that charged $15 for the report (I THINK it was Orange, VA, but I could be wrong).

There is an argument for charging for public info

[rbrander]

...but it's to benefit the PUBLIC, not their servants.

When it was all paper, Calgary used to let you come look at your own street map (dollar figure on every house lot superimposed) for free. That, to most people's mind, satisfied the requirement that you have transparency about your own assessment and those most directly comparable to it.

If you wanted a whole neighbourhood map, though, that was some hundreds of dollars; and it scaled up to tens of thousands for 10 lbs. of paper that gave you the hundreds of thousands of homes for the whole city.

The argument was that this amount of data was of very little interest to the private citizen - and a valuable professional tool for any real-estate company. So since the public data cost the public a lot of money to gather, due diligence in exploiting that property of the municipality required extraction of a market price from those businessmen, we charged what that traffic would bear. No different than letting a community group use a city building for free to have a meeting about re-zoning, but charging 1,000 salesmen market price to use it for a business conference.

Alas, nobody could deny that putting it all on the Internet was a public service. I think the "business" of selling large amounts of it has also fallen off because the real-estate agents just use the web site heavily, looking up one street at a time around houses they are selling or thinking of buying. Again, the "greater good" ruled...it was nice to have a revenue stream of four bits or a buck per citizen selling a $20K sheaf of paper to a dozen-odd real estate companies every year, but allowing the resource on the Net so people didn't have to come down to City Hall to make an inquiry was overall a greater public good. If somebody suffered from the change, well, that happens with changes, even overall-good ones.

I rather doubt the assessor lady is the personal owner of the copyright - the copyright holder has decided to do something else with their property. It's not copyright violation, it's use of copyright to maximize public good. Sorry.

She may have a point...

[davidwr]

If the tax maps themselves are "official documents" and have the force of law, then they are in the public domain.

If they are merely "for your convenience" renderings of legal descriptions of tax boundaries, e.g. "The boundary of Fire Tax District 1 runs from Point A to Point B" then she may be able to claim copyright. Any other mapmaker is free to go back to the same legal descriptions and create their own maps.

A few years ago the Supreme Court said that if a city "incorporated by reference" a "book of standard codes" as its electrical code, the incorporated portion could be printed without paying royalties to the people who wrote the book.

Re:Public Record?

[Foobar of Borg]

There was an attempt in Missouri pass a law to let "special" (i.e. cops and politicians) people opt-out, which was fortunately defeated.

Interestingly enough, data mining companies do exempt public officials and famous people from their search results. I guess they don't want to get sued when someone stalks them. Of course, all us "little people" can get stalked and attacked by random psychos and they don't give a shit. I imagine exempting public officials also makes it more likely that selling such information to whoever has a few bucks to spare is going to remain legal for the foreseeable future.

Re:There shouldn't be any profit involved

[walt-sjc]

In my state, there IS a requirement under the "Freedom of Access" laws that any and all public information requested must be provided (with a very few exceptions for confidential data.) If the request is beyond a simple dump, the office is allowed to recover the costs of preparing the data. Under this law, I was able to get a database dump of the entire GIS system data on a DVD for $25. And I like that. It allowed me access to tax information and comps to prove that I was being over assessed and get my property tax bill lowered by $1000 / year. Just pointing me at the website would not give me the information I need. Refusing the dump would be illegal under our FOA law.

Re:Public Record?

[torkus]

Wall of text crits me. I die. Lol...i thought i was loquacious!

Again, though, I have to disagree. Any document generated by a government agency that is not subject to national security restrictions or classified can be demanded via FOIA. That inclues these maps. Said agency is entitled to a "reasonable fee" to cover the reproduction/distribution costs. It does not cost $20 per TIFF to save them to CD/DVD and they're not entitled to SELL the data for any reason (including to re-coup costs).

Those maps created for "in house" use are still created by a government institution. Whether internally or on contract (i.e. gov't subcontracted the work out) they were paid for with public funds. Those documents, therefore, are PUBLIC. A government office is not a legal entity (i.e. person or corporation) can not hold copyright. The assessor herself can not hold copyright to this information as 1) she did not pay for it and 2) it's not hers. It's their job to create these maps and they're not being created FOR seneca. They're being created because they're necessary for government use. Before Seneca requested them, the maps still existed. I could have walked in and requested to see them. I could have requested copies too.

I don't believe Seneca technologies misled the judge. I feel they ARE legally entitled to this information. What I'm not sure of, is what they can do with the data afterwards. I don't know if they can outright sell the data or sell a ... call it a mini-search engine with a copy of the data provided free or for a nominal reproduction charge. That's a different issue though and related, but not directly relevant to the judge's ruling.

Re:Public Record?

[Zymergy]

Reluctantly, I do admit guilt in being loquacious on this subject. (Part of my job is to work in County Courthouses conducting land, tax, and title research.)

Just because the FOIA may not restrict the free/paid publishing of obtained public records does not mean that is ok to do so. Some public records DO expose individuals and property owners to significant criminal activity potential. I argue that tax records in the form of maps with physical locations and values of said property with names and addresses irresponsibly places an easter egg of data to be exploited. I say let the users be physically seen in the County courthouse records rooms (on camera) gathering data on West Virginia taxpayers and property owners. Scammers now have an easier way to find their targets... just call those who have the highest property taxes first, the location of the isolated million dollar house in the hills to rob... etc..
Note: The single $20 fee was what the judge ruled Seneca Technologies would only have to pay West Virginia for all 20,000+ TIF map images. (I am guessing on DVD-R, etc..?)

This company appears to be attempting to be an online Abstractor of public records in West Virginia. I am unsure if this requires special legal permits, agreements, and security procedures to obtain and to publish public records in West Virginia.
But, in my home state (Oklahoma) we (the public) are required to sign a free Affidavit to the Court Clerk stating that we are (1) not abstractors and (2) are collecting said information and documentation for personal or professional private use and are not publishing or distributing public documents and (3) the documents are not to be distributed to other third parties nor (4) will the documents be treated as official information. Etc.. (I could not find a copy of my Affidavit for the exact language but that is close..)
IANAL, but really we are disagreeing on differing sides of the root legal questions:
-What is the legal definition of a "Public Document" in West Virginia?
-If any derivative County Assessor's Office works are created from said 'public documents' are they too then defined as 'public documents'?
-What then are reasonable "entitlement rights" the "public" defined as, if any, to said County within West Virginia? (Simple M-F 8-5 Paper Copies only may be legally sufficient.)

Based on the above answers, who then is legally entitled to be the official distributor/publisher for the West Virginia County Assessor's for Plat Maps, etc..? (this is an easy one, the office that produced the documents only)
Solution: Produce the requested Plat map files in a 'flattened' state and in the requested TIF format with a FAT 50% gray Watermark loudly stating "NOT AN OFFICIAL RECORD" in bold diagonally over each Plat Map. (This in no way would hinder the information content of the produced records nor its usefulness to any individual and it would ensure the integrity of the derivative alleged "official public record maps".
(This is what Oklahoma Court Clerks already do for their online records, and they require the above Affidavit before they grant you an online login and password to access images of the files, but non-watermarked copies cost $1 but they are not maps)

Now, charge $8 per physical paper plat map copy to anyone who wishes to have one (without said watermark) and do it only from the County Assessor's office.
Without this level of security and quality control over my records as a County Assessor, I would cease and desist any and all scanning and publishing of digital plat maps and ONLY have paper copies on file and for distribution from then on.
Furthermore, I would require an Affidavit similar to the above one on file before copies of the public documents are delivered (because the very same documents could be easily used for criminal activities)
Abuses of public records by criminals have historically been low due to the records being physically located in a County Courthouse with cameras and Assessors and Cle