International Law

"People can do what they do with public information"

Tell it to the NSW Greens and the state Opposition who voted to make it a crime to play around with published data on school performance to produce "crude and simplistic league tables" if published in a newspaper but not elsewhere. And to the NSW Law Reform Commission which says in the report on a privacy cause of action referred to in the previous post [5.28], that publicly available information, say in a paper record buried away somewhere but theoretically available for public inspection, may in some ( they should have emphasised extremely rare) circumstances still retain a privacy character. But the NSW Food Authority has the right attitude to the arrival of an iPhone application, FoodWatch NSW, which brings the Food Authority's list of restaurants that have been issued an order in relation to food hygiene practices near your location to your fingertips.According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

A NSW Food Authority spokesman said it did not have a particular view of such applications, but would encourage the public to use the information wisely. "We don't endorse any of those products," he said. "We just provide the information for anyone to use. We just encourage people to be cautious because the information is frequently changed. They should check back to the original source before they make a decision. "People can do what they do with public information."

An improvement on Railcorp's threat to sue to protect intellectual property over something similar for train and ferry timetables. And the start of what should be a new era for the use and reuse of government information at a time, place and in a format to meet public needs. As to all those copyright and cost recovery policies that have dominated thinking in the past ???

Full post as published by Open and Shut on August 16, 2009 (boomark / email).