$1 Million earmark for CrimeReports.com = less real public data access
Dan Knauss
Appropriations Requests, there is a $1 Million request for the Major
Cities Chiefs of Police Association which would be used to purchase
services from CrimeReports.com.
http://bennett.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommerceRequests
CrimeReports.com is a private company that makes contracts with
municipal police forces to provide their crime data to the public on
the CrimeReports.com website--but according to the PDs' specifiations.
In the process, the public information that the source crime data is
may seem to become more accessible, but this is not the case.
CrimeReports is contending in a current federal case that public crime
data becomes CrimeReports' own proprietary product in the form
provided on CrimeReports.com. (See links below and The Citizen Media
Law Project's article, "Public Engines to World: Look, But Don't Touch
the Crime Data"
http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2010/public-engines-world-look-dont-touch-crime-data)
In this view it would be technically illegal for someone to duplicate
or republish material from CrimeReports.com by other means, which many
PDs may use as their sole or primary means of providing public access
to crime data. (It is not access to data, it is access to a limited
representation of some data.) This is not only bad for public and
media oversight, it is bad for technologists who wish to tap public
data for research and applications.
From the appropriations document:
Project: The National Crime Map Expansion
Amount: $1,000,000
Purpose: The National Crime Map currently includes more than 800 law
enforcement agencies across the country; its aim to make incident
level crime data available to the general public at the neighborhood
level within 24 hours of occurrence.
Location: Draper, Utah
Recipient of Funds: Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association
Explanation/Justification: Very few members of the public have ready
access to street level crime information on a timely basis. This
funding will allow any law enforcement agency in the United States to
connect to the existing National Crime Map, CrimeReports.com.
Currently, more than 800 agencies have already joined at an average
total cost of $110 per month. Through this funding, CrimeReports.com
will be able to expand the map and drop the cost of integrating and
deploying the system to roughly $20/month per agency, regardless of
size, population served, or members of the community served. In
contrast, cities that build their own portals spend $50,000 - $100,000
per agency to implement local crime maps.
Further reading:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100614/0208019805.shtml
http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/public-engines-inc-v-reportsee-inc
Rick Blum
should look at the actual language of the earmark to be sure they didn't
write in an exception, and also check the contract. The 2007 amendments to
the FOIA should have dealt with this problem in 5 U.S.C. 552(f)(2)(B), which
says that FOIA covers records "maintained for an agency by an entity under
Government contract, for the purposes of records management."
Please let me know what you find out.
Full section (f) reads:
(f) For purposes of this section, the term-
(1) "agency" as defined in section 551 (1) of this title includes any
executive department, military department, Government corporation,
Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive
branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President),
or any independent regulatory agency; and
(2) "record" and any other term used in this section in reference to
information includes-
(A) any information that would be an agency record subject to the
requirements of this section when maintained by an agency in any format,
including an electronic format; and
(B) any information described under subparagraph (A) that is maintained for
an agency by an entity under Government contract, for the purposes of
records management.
Rick
______________
Rick Blum
Coordinator, Sunshine in Government Initiative
Browse the FOIA Files -- over *500* stories relying on FOIA at
sunshineingovernment.org
>From the appropriations document:
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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
> This is not only bad for public and
> media oversight, it is bad for technologists who wish to tap public
> data for research and applications.
This is probably like throwing a grenade into a crowd, but...
I had a thought about this case a month ago: Given that some
people/orgs/etc. add specific value to raw sources of public data,
might we not want some sort of protection for that value? That is, in
the U.S., at least, pure data (without an expressive element) doesn't
get copyright protection, although firms like CrimeReports.com can
bind people through contracts and licenses (and terms of service, I
guess, harumpf).
But maybe there's a need for a sort of Creative Commons for derivative
works of public data. That is, a more informal (although CC is not
necessarily informal!) type of agreement that asks, "We spend a good
deal of sweat and tears on improving this data, we'd appreciate x, y,
z in response to that."
This could take the form of something like the new-fangled
"Creator-Endorsed" mark that the good folks at Question Copyright have
worked on:
http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed
Anyway, as an IP skeptic, you all will probably think I'm off my
meds... but I started a paper on this topic ("How can we best
incentivize adding value to open government data?") and I got a bit
stuck here (esp. in the sense that it's a local issue... the EU has
the data directive which allows copyright-like interests in data) and
haven't done more with the idea since.
best, Joe
--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate
UC Berkeley School of Information
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
http://josephhall.org/
Karl Fogel
>This is probably like throwing a grenade into a crowd, but...
>
>I had a thought about this case a month ago: Given that some
>people/orgs/etc. add specific value to raw sources of public data,
>might we not want some sort of protection for that value? That is, in
>the U.S., at least, pure data (without an expressive element) doesn't
>get copyright protection, although firms like CrimeReports.com can
>bind people through contracts and licenses (and terms of service, I
>guess, harumpf).
>
>But maybe there's a need for a sort of Creative Commons for derivative
>works of public data. That is, a more informal (although CC is not
>necessarily informal!) type of agreement that asks, "We spend a good
>deal of sweat and tears on improving this data, we'd appreciate x, y,
>z in response to that."
>
>This could take the form of something like the new-fangled
>"Creator-Endorsed" mark that the good folks at Question Copyright have
>worked on:
>
>http://questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed
>
>Anyway, as an IP skeptic, you all will probably think I'm off my
>meds... but I started a paper on this topic ("How can we best
>incentivize adding value to open government data?") and I got a bit
>stuck here (esp. in the sense that it's a local issue... the EU has
>the data directive which allows copyright-like interests in data) and
>haven't done more with the idea since.
Interesting idea (and thanks for the Creator-Endorsed Mark shout-out,
Joseph).
Just to clarify, the CE Mark is not informal -- it's just not a license.
It's a certification mark: distributors have the right to display the
mark when they meet the artist's (or "creator's") terms. It's enforced,
but by trademark law, not copyright law.
I'm not sure whether that clarification helps address the issue you were
speculating about. It may well be that data certification can be the
basis of a business model in some cases; that's sort of what real estate
title companies do, I guess.
Best,
-Karl