On 13 July 2010 16:27, Francis Irving <[email protected]> wrote: > Legally, the ICO is right. >
I haven't looked at the request in detail, but that seems correct to me. > If an authority already makes information available by another means, > whatever license or charge it makes, it doesn't have to release it to > you under FOI. The FOI is, in this respect, more restrictive than the EIR. The FOI requires that the information be "reasonably accessible" - where "reasonably" will exclude placing information at the bottom of locked filing cabinets (etc) but can include the payment of a fee. The "free" in "Freedom of Information" doesn't mean "without charge". The similar caveat in the EIR (section 6) requires that the information be "publicly available and easily accessible to the applicant" (so an objective/subjective approach), which is I think a little tougher. The EIR also contains a positive duty in section 4 to "progressively make the information available to the public by electronic means which are easily accessible ; and take reasonable steps to organize the information relevant to its functions with a view to the active and systematic dissemination to the public of the information.". If this is information falls within the EIR then you might be able to argue that the section 4 duty is not being complied with because it is awkward to access, but not because it is released under a licence. > > Moreover, release under FOI itself gives you no special rights to do > anything with the data at all (e.g. redistribute). Any such rights > would, in theory, have to be separately granted. Yes. And this is clearly barking. If everyone in the UK can, as of right, obtain the same information under FOI for free, preventing its republication without charge by a third party seems just exactly the kind of silly legalism we should not have in the 21st century. If there's an intention to commercially exploit information - there are exceptions to cover that case - otherwise it should all be out there and reusable by everyone. My Society is, I hope, using its influence to move us towards such a situation. We do what we can. Things are much better elsewhere. Earlier this year I gave a talk (ironically about copyright in images of pictures held in public libraries) and wanted various pictures to illustrate my talk. I was forced to do a lot of work to find images that were either free of copyright or for which I was able to obtain a free licence, but one image I used was contained in a German postage stamp which was free to reuse. Some places seem to take the role of the state more seriously than others. [good suggestions by Francis I snipped]. -- Francis Davey _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
