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Comment by _kst_ | Hacker News Reader

I can see this backfiring if someone requests data in some ancient and obscure format just to be annoying.

Data needs to be provided in a reasonable and usable format; that imposes some responsibility on both the provider and the requester.

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The FOI laws in the UK contain a reasonableness hurdle:

  http://ico.org.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/refusing_a_request

You can't ask a state agency to do an unreasonable amount of work to generate the data you ask for & in the future I imagine that threshold will apply to the choice of data format just as it currently does to collecting the data itself.

Would there be anything to prevent someone from creating a one off file format that requires a license fee and just start making FOIA requests in that format. If not, this seems like something that could be exploited for profit.

Don't FOIA requests usually require you to pay reasonable fees? I know they're not free....

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