Public Resource Org

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Description

Peter Suber:

"In 2007, Carl Malamud, founder of the Internet Multicasting Service and former chairman of the Internet Software Consortium, launched Public.Resource.Org (PRO), a heroic new organization deserving a section to itself. With boldness and energy, PRO systematically collects public-domain information held by US government agencies and then provides open access to its own copies, sometimes after a polite request and successful negotiation and sometimes after negotiations fail. It started in May 2007, when it found that the Smithsonian Institution was selling public-domain photographs. PRO bought copies and posted them to Flickr. In June it set up a Web interface to help citizens buy public-domain documents sold by US federal government agencies; it asked the buyers to donate them to PRO, which then hosted OA copies on its own Web site. (Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, started a similar program in 2007 to liberate the CRS Reports of the Congressional Research Service.) In August PRO began scanning new US judicial opinions and hosting OA copies. In September it asked the US Copyright Office to provide open access to its database of copyright registrations. When the office admitted that the data were in the public domain but said that it had no control over the access policy, PRO harvested the information and hosted its own OA copy. In November, it teamed up with Fastcase to launch an OA collection of US federal case law, including Supreme Court decisions back to 1754. Fastcase donated digital files for which it had previously charged access fees. Also in November, PRO persuaded the US National Technical Information Service (NTIS) to give it 10 to 20 government videotapes every month, which PRO would then digitize and post online for open access. Until this agreement, NTIS sold access to the government information in its collection. And once more in November, PRO created an OA mirror of the entire Web site of the US Government Printing Office. In December, PRO and Creative Commons "committed to freeing all federal case law by the end of 2008," and PRO and the Boston Public Library agreed to work together to digitize government documents for open access. PRO is like an energetic Robin Hood, but even more subtle and satisfying for leaving the Sheriff no grounds for legal complaint." (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0011.110)


More Information

Open Government Data