ASSOCIATION DES
BIBLIOTHÈQUES DE DROIT DE
MONTRÉAL
ASSOCIATION OF LAW LIBRARIES

The Montreal Association of Law Libraries (MALL) is a professional association of law librarians from private law firms, law faculties, government departments and agencies, corporate law departments, as well as the Bar Association and the Chambre des notaires. We are intimately involved, therefore, with the provision of information to a broad cross-section of the legal community. Our primary sources (statutes, regulations and decisions of courts and tribunals) are indeed "government information", and so we are directly and closely concerned with the current issue.

Our concern is based on the following premises:

The exercise of our profession gives us a unique understanding of the needs of users of legal information and the problems of access to it. We have an appreciation of the role and place of electronic information, and government electronic information in particular, in the larger body of legal resources: a role complementary to other information services that a law library offers.

By virtue of our role as providers of legal information, we have the practical expertise as researchers, particularly in the area of computer-assisted legal research, that allows us to evaluate the methods and tools used to access such information. We are well acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of current electronic retrieval systems.

As managers responsible for the budgets allocated for information services in all forms, the costs associated with access to information constitute one of our primary concerns. We are constantly struggling with the need to provide the same quality service as ever in the face of ever-increasing costs and limitations on our financial resources.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1) Copyright Acts Amendments

Phase Two of the amendments to the Copyright Act should include the following changes:

a) Eliminate Section 12, which provides for automatic Crown Copyright in any work prepared or published by or under the direction or control of the Crown or any government department.

Existence of Crown copyright allows the government to place obstacles in the path of private enterprises wishing to re-publish government information and develop "value-added" products.

Automatic Crown copyright is not needed to protect the intellectual property of government which, under the general provisions of the Copyright Act, can register its rights in any given property, in the same way as any other author/employer.

Personal information gathered by government will always be protected by privacy laws, regardless of whether or not Crown copyright exists.

b) Include in the Copyright Act a specific statement that primary legal materials (statutes, regulations, judicial decisions and decisions of administrative tribunals) are in the public domain and cannot be subject to copyright.

In a democracy, the public has a fundamental right of access to the "law of the land". There should be no possibility for the government ever to require permission and/or charge royalties to reproduce primary legal materials.

2) Standardization of Government Automated Systems

Government must immediately begin taking steps to standardize, across all departments and agencies, the electronic systems used.

If this is not done, we will be faced with an increasing proliferation of different systems, using different software, each one requiring its own special command language to access the information. The difficulty inherent in learning to use many different systems effectively limits access to the information they contain.

3) Non-Exclusive Rights for Dissemination of Government Electronic Information

Government should grant the private sector non-exclusive rights to their "raw data", for development and dissemination of "value-added" products.

Competition, as opposed to monopoly, leads to a better quality of product. Prices are controlled by market forces.

4) Distribution of "Raw Data" as Opposed to "Value-Added" Products

By "raw government data" we mean information as it is originally compiled, with no value-added features. In the legal field, the most commonly used form of raw government data are reasons for judgment without any headnoting, indexing, etc.

When such information is made available electronically, whether this be by the private sector or by government departments or agencies, the cost of accessing this information should reflect only a minimum support cost, which would be expected to be very much lower than that charged for value-added products.

Government has a responsibility to provide access to the "law of the land", compilation of which is financed by the public purse. Access entails making it available at a minimum possible cost.

Submitted by:

Judith M. Bird President

20 September 1991