Update: Sierra Club Loses Fight to Get Orange County Parcel Data at Cost

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined the fight against the court decision by filing an amicus brief (pdf).  “Our amicus brief argued that simply because information is stored in a specific electronic file format, that format does not change the public nature of the information itself.” Among the others who joined the brief:

The First Amendment Coalition (FAC), who led the effort, the Associated Press, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press , the Citizen Media Law Project, and Wired, among numerous other public interest and media organizations dedicated to open government and freedom of information.

- EFF Announcement

—- original post 5/25/2010——

The ruling(pdf) by Orange County Superior Court Judge James J. DiCesare basically states that the data in question (640,000 taxable parcels in Orange County, California) are not data but software and thus do not fall under the state public records law. If the data did, they would have to be available at the cost of reproduction.

The Sierra Club filed the suit to gain access to the data at reasonable cost to use in its conservation work. The county currently charges $1 per parcel for what is called the “Landbase data” with a cost break after the first 100,000 parcels. The club says a license for the whole dataset would cost $375,000. Word is that the Orange County Fire Authority pays $75,000 per year, with a five year commitment, for its license.

Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition said DiCesare’s ruling was “most unfortunate. The court clearly got it wrong.”

The Seirra Club may appeal.

- OC Watchdog at the Orange County Register (Note comment with two corrections from data advocate Bruce Joffe.)