WV Assessor Sues to Keep Tax Maps Off the Internet 222
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."
OK, it's three things that are certain in life... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OK, it's three things that are certain in life. (Score:5, Funny)
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lawsuits, taxes, and then death.
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Public Record? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Public Record? (Score:4, Informative)
A quick Google search confirmed that many municipalities do consider them public record (whether they are or not); Sacramento, CA's site is very helpful (I picked one at random), but also protects identifying data like parcel ownership.
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http://www.dcassessor.org/ [dcassessor.org]
However, they do display parcel ownership. In fact, by name is one of the search options..
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Re:Public Record? (Score:4, Interesting)
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For example, one of the factories is valued at just under $185M: http://www.traviscad.org/travisdetail.php?theKey=535002 [traviscad.org]
Layne
In Texas... (Score:2)
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Umm, that counts as a matter of public record as well. You can go to any county office in the country and, theoretically, pull the deeds for every parcel in that county (though in many places, they consider that their little fiefdom and make it as hard as possible, without paying the outrageous fees mention in TFA, for a cheap photocopy).
They shouldn't "protect" that information, they should just make it a removeable overlay (since most uses pro
Re:Public Record? (Score:5, Informative)
All the tax assessors in WV have been doing a very poor job at property assessments and for years have buried it in poor paper maps. I have been to municipalities that haven't updated their tax maps in decades. I've also seen the quality of these maps and believe me, until recently they were very sketchy at best. We have had the difference between tax ticket method of determining Fair Market Value with a multiplier of 4.0 and appraised value of over double. In a properly assessed county by contrast, a 1.67 multiplier yields the appraised value. What that means is that Kanawha County is losing out on a huge amount of taxes all because the assessor's office is corrupt as all get out. This causes politicians to panic as they see dwindling taxes and before you know it those that are paying a fair share are having their property taxes increased all because the assessor isn't doing their jobs properly.
More broadly, municipalities have relied on the fees charged for paper copies of public documents so much that they feel threatened by electronic distribution. In this case it is the assessor's office but I have seen this in other areas such as deeds, birth / death certification, building permits, etc. They are seeing it as a revenue stream instead of something the public already paid for. This thinking needs to be defeated as well as those that oppose full and free disclosure.
I agree with you that all the information in a tax assessment of real property should be public record if for no other reason than the fact that the public has already paid for that information.
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Re:Public Record? (Score:4, Informative)
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http://www.co.clark.nv.us/ASSESSOR/Disclaim.htm [clark.nv.us]
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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.
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"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).
Fair enough. However, it should be possible to see the records for free if you are willing to be in the same place as the record. A $3-$5 fee for a police report seems about right (which is to say just a tiny bit overpriced) when you consider the copying costs, mailing costs, and the costs of the associated labor. (Paying the officer to find the record, copy it, replace it, fill out the envelope, place the copy inside, apply postage, and place in the mailbox.) I mean sure it sucks, but they still need to r
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Just go down to your local County Assessor's Office and/or County Clerk's Office and/or Court Clerk's Office and you may well be surprised what are in public records. (Of course, the hours of operation are M-F 8-5 typically) I have to tell you, it beats Googleing someone (if you know what county they live in a
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-This is about a private company profiting from the derived works of the Tax Assessors from the actual public records.
The written documents they are created from by the County Assessor's Offices' are Public Records. It is these *written* Legal Tax Assessment Records (written descriptions, not maps) that are Public Documents not the plat maps of surface ownership created from them (unless one is filed into the record).
Re:Public Record? (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Public Record? (Score:4, Interesting)
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 $8 per physical paper plat map copy to anyone who wishes to have one (without said watermark) and do it only from the County Assessor's office.
Without this level of security and quality control over my records as a County Assessor, I would cease and desist any and all scanning and publishing of digital plat maps and ONLY have paper copies on file and for distribution from then on.
Furthermore, I would require an Affidavit similar to the above one on file before copies of the public documents are delivered (because the very same documents could be easily used for criminal activities)
Abuses of public records by criminals have historically been low due to the records being physically located in a County Courthouse with cameras and Assessors and Cle
There shouldn't be any profit involved (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the article says, taxation should be a transparent process. This isn't in any way similar to the argument over physical music costs vs. digital downloads; this is something where profits shouldn't be involved at all. And if they truly weren't, she would have no problem publishing them on the internet for free (or only a nominal cost to cover bandwidth and hosting, which really should be included in taxes since it's a public service available for all; 0.0025$ per resident per year should be more than enough to cover it).
Small fish in even smaller ponds - local gov ftl (Score:5, Insightful)
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She is filing suit be she wants the money...
So you consider a public official selling public records for a profit a hero?
Lets let all public officials in on this plan, I wonder what the president has for sale...
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Using that logic, government should pay since they have the most money.
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So if the corporations pay more, including tax, do you really think that they won't pass those costs on to the consumers by higher prices? Corporations don't pay tax, only people do, you and I. Taxes are to the national economy as overhead is to any business. To have more money in the taxpayer's own pocket it is necessary to cut down on the national overhead, all taxes collected. It makes absolutely no diff
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You know, you're right. Only
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Do you really think that if businesses paid none and individuals paid all of the cost of government, that employees wouldn't need higher wages to cover it?
It'd work (financially) much better if businesses paid all of the cost of government. Kaboom: less paperwork, fewer people required to process it. Lots more money in individuals' pockets.
It'd be a horrible idea for other reasons, but do the math: if the businesses are honest, prices go up by le
Re:There shouldn't be any profit involved (Score:4, Insightful)
When digital came about, they probably started loosing money (revenue income) and carried the copy fee over to all copies. A lot of county engineering departments across the country use a portion of the copying costs to supplement their budgets. This is probable why she is fighting the putting them on line. IT would mean even less people pay for the services.
However right or wrong that might be when it is public information or record is up to whoever is judging it. I know a lot of government offices started charging fees to get around lack of tax revenues and budget problems. In my home town, it went from $125 for an engineering and zoning approval to open a business to almost $500. SO it is obvious that governments are attempting to cover more then actual costs if you ask me. It seems to piss off less people then raising taxes so they will get away with it unless someone sues like with WV.
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Or .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or she still has that monster size paper copy machine that still needs to be paid off (they are not cheap in the versions needed to handle the large maps involved).
I agree, in this day and age, we should have such maps for no more than the cost of digital reproduction when we get them in digital form. And we should be able to. But just keep in mind why these tax assessors, and other government office officials in other circumstances like this, might be trying to collect the same money for digital data as
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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, jus
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Where's the same? (Score:2)
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Freedom of Information (Score:5, Informative)
(1) Every person has a right to inspect or copy any public record of a public body in this state, except as otherwise expressly provided by section four of this article.
(3) The custodian of any public records, unless otherwise expressly provided by statute, shall furnish proper and reasonable opportunities for inspection and examination of the records in his or her office and reasonable facilities for making memoranda or abstracts therefrom, during the usual business hours, to all persons having occasion to make examination of them. The custodian of the records may make reasonable rules and regulations necessary for the protection of the records and to prevent interference with the regular discharge of his or her duties. If the records requested exist in magnetic, electronic or computer form, the custodian of the records shall make such copies available on magnetic or electronic media, if so requested.
http://www.legis.state.wv.us/WVCODE/29B/masterfrmFrm.htm [state.wv.us]
I don't believe the assessor can reasonably claim financial damage... generally copying fees are limited to nominal processing costs, or a close approximation thereof, and only in a few cases around the country have I ever heard of a government treating copying fees as a profit center... and those were only for specialized documents such as police reports being furnished to an insurance company.
This is such a backwards way of thinking. I work for a software company that is involved in document management, and everywhere we look, cities, counties, and states are looking to pass the savings on to their citizens, not trying to nickel and dime their way into mediocrity. The tax assessor's office's budget can always be fixed if they truly are relying on those $20 fees. Even those organizations that do make some money off supplying documents are constantly trying to improve access and let people access documents online and so on.
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I don't see why this case should be treated differently. Why are they charging insurance companies? If the records are public, they are public, no matter who's getting them.
Re:Freedom of Information (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise their costs and they will pass it to the customer, plus tax and profits. Lower their costs and more companies will enter the market, with better services and lower prices.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation [wikipedia.org]
Also the movie "The Corporation."
Re:Freedom of Information (Score:4, Insightful)
This means the USA has a lot to learn from the UK. It is an ongoing profitable business over here. DVLA records, electoral register, land registry data, ordnance survey data, you name it. Everything is for sale and everything is for a profit. Privacy? Yeah, we heard about it. A person with a criminal record till last year could obtain anyone's details (provided that they own a vehicle) for mere 5 quid. Checks? What checks. Provided that the buyer pays the price checks should not get into the way of government officials conducting business ya know.
Protection of investment (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally, the copying should not be a profit operation. However, this copying is a big part of what such an office does. That requires some equipment investment. And these are not small 8.5x11 sheets that typical copying equipment can serve. I've been to one of these offices in a West Virginia county, before, and these are on the order of 3x2 feet in size for the original paper copy. To some extent, the concern may be to protect that investment in reproduction equipment that could go underutilized if the maps go online.
But the world is changing. I should be able to click on "tax map" on my GPS equipped phone and have it automatically pull up the map of where I am standing, and overlay that with a satellite/aerial photo view, with names and addresses from the phone book, etc. I should not have to make a trip down to the county tax assessor just so they can pay off an antiquated copy machine due to their inability to assess the pace of technology development.
These maps are not accurate in terms of exact positioning. The assessment information is official, but the land shape and position is merely for identification purposes, only. Ironically, however, this very technology could also help make such maps much more accurate. Integrated with standardized survey data and low level aerial photos, and the assessments can be much more accurate in terms of things like valuation.
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That requires some equipment investment. And these are not small 8.5x11 sheets that typical copying equipment can serve. I've been to one of these offices in a West Virginia county, before, and these are on the order of 3x2 feet in size for the original paper copy. To some extent, the concern may be to protect that investment in reproduction equipment that could go underutilized if the maps go online.
Perhaps some offices make available the larger maps, but I've gotten copies of tax maps from several WV counties and they don't give me a large copy nor do they even use the original large maps any longer. They provide an 8.5x11 or 8.5x14 printout from their digital source, just like I can get from Seneca's online site.
But the world is changing. I should be able to click on "tax map" on my GPS equipped phone and have it automatically pull up the map of where I am standing, and overlay that with a satellite/aerial photo view, with names and addresses from the phone book, etc. I should not have to make a trip down to the county tax assessor just so they can pay off an antiquated copy machine due to their inability to assess the pace of technology development.
These maps are not accurate in terms of exact positioning. The assessment information is official, but the land shape and position is merely for identification purposes, only. Ironically, however, this very technology could also help make such maps much more accurate. Integrated with standardized survey data and low level aerial photos, and the assessments can be much more accurate in terms of things like valuation.
And now you've hit on why the county is fighting this move. Some county maps are so in accurate that they are almost useless while other counties have taken the time to create nice maps.
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You got a link to back this up? Or should I just file it under baseless accusation?
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You got a link to back this up? Or should I just file it under baseless accusation?
I haven't bothered to Google it, if that's what you mean. Feel free to do so yourself.
To those who grew up in these fiefdoms, a link to a Wikipedia article isn't necessary. I'm sure you can find articles about Lincoln County's Assessor of 25 years recently going to federal prison for his involvement in the long-standing county-wide voting buying programs. This corruption was well-known to locals for decades but you wouldn't have found an online news report about it before last year. A coal company al
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But if they can be digitally redistributed for free (as they are here - someone else is even picking up the bandwidth tab), then that equipment can be reassigned where it's really needed or sold. They don't get to justify maintaining expensive equipment forever simply because it's expensive.
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The country/city engineers department (road/street department) typically needs to get copies, make alterations, refile, and so on. The landowners, after they (either themselves or by paying someone else) make changes, will want copies when turnin
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You cannot copyright 2+2=4, you cannot copyright mathematical formulae (but you can copyright the book in which they appear), and most definitely a map showing which area has what taxes is not protectable by copyright.
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Obvious Web 2.0 solution to the revenue loss (Score:5, Funny)
Ot : The title (Score:4, Funny)
Just wondering, am I the only one stupid enough to think it had to be about Volkswagen upon reading the title? I'm worried.. :-/
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Well, if you read WV as VW it means your dyslexic.
I'm actually dysgraphic but anyways it's close enough, I mean it's two short waves and one large wave instead of one large wave and two short waves, plus the logo of Volkswagen is a V on top of a W, and the W is larger, so it's kind of up to you to decide which is more important than the other.. :-)
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Make these bitches give us INFORMATION, FREELY (Score:2, Insightful)
The public is what gives them power, and if they seek not to comply reasonably, they ought to be stripped of that power one magnitude greater than their infraction, to remind them who is putting them in charge.
This is not a business or a company. These people are there
Hey guy -- they did! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not free? I'll tell you why: if I were pissed off at a department in my town, I could just stroll in and request everything. Flood them with requests for information. It takes time to gather all of that information and fill the requests, and that takes away from the other duties those employees must attend. Placing a nominal fee serves to significantly reduce the action of those who seek simply to waste time, but doesn't serve as a substantial burden to those who want the information for productive purposes.
Finally, given that this is being settled in the judicial system, your call for angry mobs is more than a bit premature.
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if I were pissed off at a department in my town, I could just stroll in and request everything. Flood them with requests for information
I'd just throw it on a computer and tell you to knock yourself out.
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Sadly, they typically come from disgruntled people who claim the government offices are slow, unresponsive to the publics needs, and wasteful among other things. Then they act like requesting everything will teach them somehow. Sort of like buying every piece of merchandise or music in sight so they can burn it in protest of something the people selling the stuff said or did. Yea, punish me by buying my inventory out and then destroying it.
I guess people just don't th
Re:Make these bitches give us INFORMATION, FREELY (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll let you figure out how to do this, in the role of a county tax assessor.
Before automatic reproduction equipment came along, you could not even have a copy of the map unless you paid a map maker to hand create a copy. That would be half a day effort for just one sectional map. The cost: half a day's wages. Want the entire county? Several weeks wages.
Along comes photo copy machinery. But this isn't cheap because the maps are huge. Even in 2008 this means investing a huge sum of money for the specialized (and hence, no economy of scale which means very expensive) equipment needed to make the copies.
Now you are a tax assessor. You don't have the budget to just buy the equipment. So your office has to take out a loan to buy it, to be paid back through the sale of copies. This is in no way a profit operation, as all the money collected for copies goes to pay off the loan. Now consider that along comes the internet and suddenly no one wants your paper copies anymore. But you're stuck with a big piece of equipment no one else has any use for, and a loan that still needs to be paid off.
I'm sure part of that money, especially after the loan is paid off, ends up supplementing the office operation itself. But that's actually typical for a great many government operations, where the routine servicing needs of a very small segment of the population has to be paid for by those that use it. A tax assessor general operation probably should not qualify for this since the general operation affects all property owners and potential buyers and a few lawyers with property cases ongoing. But it is not that far out of line, as $8 for a copy of a large sheet at 3 feet by 2 feet and larger is close to the real cost considering things like the special equipment and handling needed.
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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.
podunk speed tr...er, "rent seekers" (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as they are up to date ... (Score:2)
paaardon? (Score:3, Interesting)
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WV genetics (Score:4, Funny)
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
She just wasn't thinking big enough. She should have tried to claim copyright on the whole globe. Just think how much money should make on those royalties. That's more money than a fellar could make collecting aluminum cans his whole life.
And that, kids, is why cousins shouldn't get married.
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Local Gov Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
Also, having possibly out of date maps available in a central archive does kind of worry me. I'd rather have people getting them from us directly. Citizens have a habit of getting the wrong end of a stick on something and storming into town hall irate out of their minds over problems that don't really exist. I've had irate people in my office banging on the counter and screaming waving printouts of some web site somewhere they found that they thought was our official one. Part of managing a municipal website is trying to figure out ways in which information can be presented where citizens will not be confused and assume the worst and where it will be kept accurate and fresh.
Having said that, I agree with most of the people here. These are public records. All our GIS layers are on our website in addition to the ones that are on MassGIS, which includes a viewer. We're adding PDF'd tax maps as of our next update. Our property record cards are available online. I think and our town thinks these are records that should made as widely available as possible. But IMHO that's not the only legitimate way to look at things.
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Of the things you said, the following catches my eyes:
"...but here in Mass local government is very very lean,
Not that I want don't trust you, but when someone starts telling me a government, be it local, state, federal, or for the entire universe, be "very very lean"
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As long as the taxpayers can get it for free, I don't see how anyone can be concerned with it costing too much money to produce. I use a lot of the state's GIS data (park b
Re:Local Gov Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm asking because I'm ignorant of the workings of such agencies, but why would the gov't ever need to pay to have their maps updated? Do you have rogue developers laying out new subdivisions without telling you? It seems like part of the permit to build a road could include the cost of maintaining the official maps.
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In which case, your only option is to make the data available via the web, for free or for a very small fee.
As soon as you try to make money reproducing something which is public (and which anyone else has the right to reproduce), someone else will step in and compete with you.
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Whoa - this is about Tax Maps - Auditor's schematic record of parcel ownership - the visual index if you will. Aerial mapping is (in the states I have worked in as a surveyor) not a primary mission of the Auditor's office.
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Particularly as most of the users of mapping are businesses--this doesn't apply quite as much to tax maps, but our GIS layers are pretty expensive to produce and when 90% of your requests for GIS maps are from business who would otherwise need to do the survey work themselves, it's a fine line between public access and corporate welfare.
What's the problem? They pay taxes just like you and me - no, wait, they pay even higher rates. Should companies not get similar services to idividuals for their tax dollars as well?
firehisass (Score:3, Funny)
You cannot copyright an idea (Score:4, Informative)
(Disclaimer: IANAL, but I did take a graduate law course on IP about a year ago. This post is not intended to be legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for legal advice before you take any actions based on the conjectures contained in this post. Have a nice day.)
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The creativity part is best ignored. It's so restricted as to be essentially non-existant.
PS: IANAL, so do take this with a grain of salt.
Is there a privacy issue here? (Score:2)
But still is there a privacy issue lurking in the wings?
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Besides, I don't care. If these are documents produced by the government, whatever info
Paying Fines in Pennies (Score:3, Funny)
As a West Virginia Property Owner... (Score:4, Insightful)
Party affiliation meaningless below national level (Score:2)
Re:Party affiliation meaningless below national le (Score:2)
Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress (Score:3, Interesting)
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http://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=446 [ansi.org]
Longer version: Local guy loses, loses again, appeals to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and wins.
"It is also possible that ANSI and others may seek a legislative solution to clarify that a government entity at any level cannot in effect turn a privately copyrighted work into a public good solely by referencing it into law."
Good luck with that. What the government giveth, the government
There is an argument for charging for public info (Score:3, Interesting)
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... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 st
A claim of threat of material harm? (Score:2)
Most states require that a claim of material harm be inherently anti-competitive, and many states require that a material harm claim be built around some claim of malice. You can't just claim material harm because the other guy's idea makes your idea look sucky.
Also, aren't tax maps a matter of public record? I've seen something of the like in the Arcfile data from the Census.
Financial Damages? (Score:2)
Re:Defending the State (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Defending the State (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is with tax dollars - which means taxpayers already paid for the information and now are getting charged a second time for something they could 9and by WVA law should) make available electronically for free or nearly free.
Look at the company that is actually suing to get government records for free!
RTFA - it sued to only pay a reasonable copying cost, not what the state demanded. Winning that is a win for all taxpayers seeking public records. WVA wants to prevent them from making the data available in order to protect their revenue stream.
They are creating a system using publicly funded tax records, that is for profit, and even worse, ultimately going to be used to enable corporate spying on the American people. While you think the government should just hand over all of its digital data for $20, I think it is absurd that a well financed and well capitalized corporation cannot pay a few hundred thousand dollars for data that it is going to make millions on.
Because anyone else can get the same data for the same price; making money by adding value is no sin; it's a good thing.
We - the citizens - paid for that information through taxes, individual and corporate, and ought to have access to it to use as we see fit. If tax assessments were private records it would be a different story, but they aren't.
Re: (Score:2)
Minor point - the company is giving the info from the state away. That's what is pissing off one tax assessor.
You should be able to get the whole set, from the state, for $20 under the FOIA.
That's where I'm coming from. If the information was so important, and so valuable, that you can make a billion dollar business with it, then, why is it so wr
Re: (Score:2)
According to the article the company that got the assessor records intends to make the files available for free for download; and charge for analysis / data mining.
Re: (Score:2)