Open data and cost recovery
Sunday, September 30th, 2007I don’t just find Peter Brantley’s post about the Library of Congress’ rate for charging for data interesting due to my own work, but also because of the similarities to the parcel data “brouhaha” here in California. I’ve posted before about the court case to determine whether the digital descriptions of the parcel boundaries* are subject to the California public records law. Santa Clara county has charged a great sum for the data in the past, but if the data falls under the public records law, the records should be “provided to anyone requesting them for no more than the cost of duplication.” Santa Clara is appealing the decision on Homeland Security grounds. * parcels are the land units on which property taxes are assessed.
In looking for an update to the appeals story, i found this 2007-05-07 article from before the decision. It notes that Santa Clara county hired an outside consultant to examine the cost and after that study, officials noted that the fees might be dropped from $250,000 to $22,000. At least the $22,000 is the same order of magnitude as the copyright registration database. On the other hand, my spouse got the parcel data (for noncommercial use) for San Mateo county (immediately north of Santa Clara on the San Francisco peninsula) for a buck. (The cost of the CD on which it was distributed.)
Brantley reports that the copyright renewals database is congressionally mandated to be made available “at a charge of production and distribution cost plus 10%,” and reports that cost is ” $55,125 to obtain the retrospective online database, and $31,500 for a current-year subscription that must be annually renewed, for an entry cost of $86,625.” Assuming “production” doesn’t describe running the Copyright Office but production of the distribution copy, it’s somewhat difficult to understand how data distribution — not a live database serving hundreds of concurrent users but collection of records in MARC format — could run $50,000 in the digital age. However, the LOC notes a “recent cost savings,” so perhaps the new prices will be reduced by an order of magnitude or two.
The restriction Christine encountered of “for noncommercial use only” did stir up my memory of a different federal agency, the National Weather Service, and a noncompete clause proposed in 2005 by Senator Santorum. [Information Week overview, and opinions from the WeatherUnderground's Director of Meterology in April, May, and June of 2006.] I wonder if the amended law had gone into effect whether these forecasts would have been available under a FOI request.
