This is a sad state of affairs IMHO. The gentleman who runs Oyez, the privately-run US Supreme Court audio archive, is set to retire. But it seems that he wants to sell the database for $1million dollars! He unironically doesn’t want to sell it to a private company because “They’ll put it behind a paywall and charge people to use it,” and “That’s against my values.” Harvard Law School has offered to take over the operating costs of the service. Here’s hoping that there’s a kickstarter campaign or some such that will assure that the public domain content remains in the public domain!
It’s not on Craigslist yet, but Jerry Goldman says options are narrowing for Oyez.org, the private online archive of Supreme Court materials he has been building since the early 1990s and providing free to the public. Mr. Goldman, 70 years old, retires from teaching in May, and when he goes so does Oyez, currently hosted at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
The project, which has two full-time staff members and several student employees, costs between $300,000 and $500,000 annually to operate, he says.
The sticking point, however, isn’t the annual budget; Harvard Law School, for one, has offered to pick up the operating cost. But Mr. Goldman also wants to be paid for the sweat he’s put into his baby–or at least the intellectual property it represents—something he estimates is worth well over $1 million.
via Future of Oyez Supreme Court Archive Hangs in the Balance – Law Blog – WSJ.
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