Aaron's Army
public.resource.org
public.resource.org
If you haven't seen it already, please participate in Operation Asymptote, and tell others to as well:
http://www.plainsite.org/asymptote/
I'd like to have every U.S. Attorney's full case history on PlainSite by March 31, 2013. I paid for Ortiz [1] and Heymann [2]. There are a lot more.
[1] http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/attorney.html?id=69049&#...
[2] http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/attorney.html?id=73864&#...
Also, help us with extending RECAP:
Quick question: why is the US logo on plainsite.org rendered in Flash?
If you use an iOS device you'll get a PNG instead.
With PlainSite I wanted to see if it was possible to build a business model around public information that is actually available to the public, unlike the traditional model that Lexis, West and Bloomberg use. The dockets are all available for free. The documents are all available for free. Cleaned-up USPTO data is available for free. What isn't free is analytics on the data of the kind that generally only lawyers would care about.
Furthermore, the data is being uploaded to the Internet Archive, which PlainSite then re-downloads. Anyone can use it. If you don't like what I'm doing with it, you can do something else.
Aaron was an entrepreneur as well as someone who cared deeply about open access to data. So no, I don't think there's much irony.
Excellent idea (UK resident so the actual information is of no use to me but the model is good)
Maybe Operation Asymptote could start taking donations from people from overseas?
Maybe a Paypal (or equiv) fund could be setup to buy documents.
It is eye opening to someone whose reality was subscriptions to westlaw and lexisnexis, that could be in the thousands of dollars, for access to case law, codes, statutes, rules and regulations (or in other words, public material). I am going to see if I can find some of his talks on YouTube, but it would be awesome to be able to interact with someone like this.
He had Aaron's back many times, including when the FBI was investigating the Pacer liberation. If you want to support the kind of work that Aaron believed in, resource.org takes donations in many denominations.
https://public.resource.org/aaron/pub/msg00707.html
There were other data issues, including USPS zip code data stuff that Carl counseled Aaron on how to make public legally. Carl was generous in cautioning Aaron, ordering gov files for him, digitizing files, getting Aaron server space, etc.
Carl also wrangled free legal help for Aaron in setting up a non-profit.
The way this 'game' is played it's not even possible to defend yourselves (by design). And with regards to you're rights, I'm reminded of George Calin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgj4ARfAqI0 (from 4:23).
This was a lot of pent up frustration with not only lawmakers, but also with the rest of us who were blissfully obvlivious.
This article/speech is interesting because it seems to be dropped right in the middle. I can't help but think this army vocabulary is precisely aimed at making both joining.
Let see what comes out of this.
Maybe too, its sort of beefs up the geeks. I get the impression that the government / corporate cartel treat tech folk like harmless meek geeks. Perhaps language like this helps change that image a bit?
That aside, what a brilliantly put article. It sums up in words what so many feel but cant fully articulate.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025512/-Police-Vio...
(Out of curiosity, why can't we consider the content of .gov websites to constitute this archive and simply a) petition that all public datasets be available on a .gov domain (format to be sorted later) and b) that all future datasets start out life open on .gov.)
That said, we've had success in some limited areas. For example, voting information (which was 7+ figure data for the US) is now online. This was originally a partnership I helped create with Pew and Google back in 2008 (now expanded to include MS and others as well, wonderfully):
https://votinginfoproject.org/about
After 4+ years, we now have a large number of states voting information online and free. A large number of people at various states also put their asses on the line to help make this happen over the years . I wish I could give them medals. :)
There are other example, like patent data, etc. To be honest, i'd rather us stay behind the scenes and just have the info released, even if it means people never know we were involved. It prevents a lot of issues from people who make large amounts of money off data that should be public and open. Of course, there are times/cases where it makes sense to use our name and brand to help, and when necessary, we do that.
We also fund plenty of non-profit orgs, including folks like Carl. But getting traction is simply not that easy. A lot of government agencies make revenue from data they publish by selling subscriptions to it or otherwise charging. They don't want to give it to you if your plan is to open it up, even if you are willing to pay large sums. I can't often blame them. Congress cares more about seeing agencies budget neutral than they do about "open data".
There were also mandates that public datasets be cataloged sanely and released. This led to data.gov. However, because of the way it worked some agencies had some perverse incentives, like "release the most datasets". This led to humorous things like every single separate piece of data being published as its own dataset on data.gov, which had no good search, making parts of it entirely useless.
Anyway, the short answer is: We're trying. We've been trying.
Let's say you have a large extended family and elderly grandparents that have boxes of family photos. You know that the family would love to flip through these, and digitizing them and putting them online is beyond your grandparents' abilities.
So you offer to help them digitize and share the files. On your time and dime.
But your grandparents surprise you by saying "no". The first thing they're worried about is that, mixed in with those photos, are some risque photos of grandma when she was younger. She doesn't want those shared. But also - and this is the part that really drops your jaw - unknown to you for many years your grandparents have been charging family members a small fee to access the photographs, and it's quite a little side income for them, especially around the holidays when they need it most!
How about the mass of data Aaron got from JSTOR? Surely someone else must have a copy for safe keeping.
Seems this particular subset of data deserves to be liberated. Not that the archives in their entirety do not, but since a subset is already out there, why hasn't some group released it yet?
As someone who's had to pay PACER fees for their own court concerns, I find this entire paywall mentality offensive.