California Public Records Act (CPRA) and Free Spatial Data

In the US digital spatial data collected at taxpayer expense is available from the Federal government at no cost.  The best known example is the TIGER/Line (R) files, which comprise a digital database of geographic features, such as roads and streets including street numbers, railroads, rivers, lakes, legal boundaries, and census statistical boundaries covering the entire United States, see TIGER .  These data files can be freely downloaded with the only apparent restriction being that the Census Bureau has trademarks on several TIGER(R)-related product names. The purpose of trademarking is not to restrict reuse of TIGER(R) data even in commercial derivative products, for example simply reselling exact copies of the data in a pretty box, but so that customers buying products with those names can be confident of the origin of the data being sold.

At the state, county, and municipal level the situation is not so clearcut.  For example, in California the California Public Records Act (CPRA) requires that state and local government records should be accessible to anyone requesting them for no more than the cost of duplication.  But there has been disagreement as to whether this act applies to spatial data, specifically, parcel basemaps maintained by the 58 counties in California.  Apparently until recently, 21 of California's 58 counties sold their digital parcel basemap data at higher prices than the cost of copying.  The Attorney General of California issued an official opinion to the effect that digital parcel data is covered by the CPRA, which convinced eight more counties to make their digital parcel data available for free or at nominal cost.  That left 13 counties who continued to maintain a high cost spatial data distribution policy.

The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) took one of the counties to court after the county denied CFAC's request for the county's parcel basemap data at the cost of copying.  The California Superior Court for Santa Clara County supported CFAC and directed the county to provide the parcel basemap data to CFAC charging only for the cost of duplication.  This means that in California there is now a legal precedent supporting the application of the CPRA to spatial data.  In other words in California access to spatial "information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state."

Comments

[Trevor]

They should have taken Orange County to court. They circumvent the law by shielding their parcel data with some kind of licensing agreement with the Southern California Gas Co.

[SBW]

Someone should look into challenging the County of Orange. They are bound by a licensing agreement that they signed with SoCal Gas Co. in 1994, and charge everyone for the data (even Cities within their jurisdiction).