Author Archives: dcornwall

In my last installment of Nonlawyer's Journey through Title 44, I stated:

"In an age of paper, the Sales Program helped provide some of the funding needed to make publications freely available to the public through Federal Depository Libraries."

I was wrong about this. Thankfully Superintendent of Documents Judy Russell caught wind of this entry and sent me the comment below:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell, Judith C. (SuDoc)" To: "'Discussion of Government Document Issues'" Cc: Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 5:05 AM Subject: RE: New Discussions at FGI: July 24, 2006 In his most recent analysis of Title 44, Dan Cornwall states: "In an age of paper, the Sales Program helped provide some of the funding needed to make publications freely available to the public through Federal Depository Libraries." The GPO Sales Program is by statute a self-sustaining program. Revenue from the Sales Program has never been used to fund the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), which receives its funding from annual Congressional appropriations. By providing a means for individuals and organizations to purchase copies of Federal government publications, the GPO Sales Program complements free public access through tangible depository collections and free online access. It will continue to serve the public by providing an alternative to using tangible Federal publications in libraries or downloading/printing copies from the Internet. Judy Russell Judith C. Russell (jrussell@gpo.gov) Managing Director, Information Dissemination (Superintendent of Documents) U.S. Government Printing Office Phone: 202-512-0571 Fax: 202-512-1434

Judy also made a comment on the mistaken entry which I've now incorporated into my commentary as an update. I do regret the error and hope others will be as willing and quick as Judy to correct mistakes as they come up. Thanks Judy! Continue reading →

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Another unusual venue that net neutrality popped up in today was on show 76 of the Celtic Music News Podcast during an interview with Newfoundland musician Jim Fidler. His short remarks on how the end of Net Neutrality would doom musical creativity and political diversity show up around the 15 minute mark. Be warned that a good chunk of the interview is NOT work safe if profanity isn't smiled upon at your place of work. Net Neutrality. It's not just a good idea, it SHOULD BE the law. Update: July 25, 2006 to reflect correct spelling of Mr. Fidler's province. Thanks to the anonymous alert reader. Continue reading →

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People across the country are beginning to understand what is at stake with preserving net neutrality. The July 24, 2006 edition of American Catholic Radio has an interview with Michael Copps, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission starting roughly at the 20 minute mark. He talks about the need to avoid Internet toll booths and how the loss of network neutrality would hurt minority non-commercial voices including Catholic media. Also some good discussion of how media consolidation has made it harder to hear local voices and new music. Net Neutrality is sometimes presented as a liberal issue, but the reality is that it cuts across ideology, and based on the above interview, religious lines as well. Continue reading →

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From time to time we at FGI hear from people who don't think that federal government information should be free. They talk about how giving information away that the private sector could sell is "unfair competition." While we at FGI have talked about how government information is already paid for through citizen taxes, the Government Accountability Office released a report last week that shows that citizens are already charged twice for information -- once through their taxes and again by the many hours they are compelled to do government paperwork. The study: Paperwork Reduction Act: Increase in Estimated Burden Hours Highlights Need for New Approach, GAO-06-974T, July 18, 2006 has this to say about the number of hours Americans spend filling out paperwork:

After 2 years of slight declines, OMB reports that paperwork burden grew in fiscal year 2005 and is expected to increase further in fiscal year 2006. Estimates in OMB's annual report to Congress show that the total paperwork burden imposed by federal information collections increased last year to about 8.4 billion hours--an increase of 5.5 percent from the previous year's total of about 8.0 billion hours.

In nearly all cases, not filling out these forms is non-optional and in many cases is used to build government information products. How much does this time contribution translate into dollars? If we make the absurdly conservative assumption that every person filling out a government form is paid the federal minimum wage of $5.15/hr, then 8.4 billion hours works out to $43.6 this year alone. Nearly forty-four billion dollars a year in confiscated time to generate the raw data to build federal information products. If Congress appropriated a tenth of that amount just one year, I bet it would be enough to endow the Government Printing Office (GPO) with enough funds that they could scrap their sales program and provide free information to every citizen for the next century. With that much money, we could probably endow the sales only National Technical Information Service so it could become a free information dissemination service too. So to subject Americans to buying government information projects isn't just double billing, it's really triple billing! We say no! Just to clarify, the GAO report did not directly address the dissemination of government information, but does clearly show the citizen's burden in providing raw data to the government. Continue reading →

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This entry is aimed squarely at the 133 of you currently subscribing to our RSS feed through Bloglines. If you subscribe to the RSS feeds through another reader service, please keep reading. As we've mentioned before, we at FGI are trying to get feedback on the types of stories and topics users would like us to cover. So we set up a poll. But so far only 12 people have voted in our poll and none have left comments. Since you've gone to the trouble of subscribing to the FGI feed, it seems like you have at least a passing interest in what we post here. So we'd like to hear from you. So please take just a moment to open our poll and vote on the kind of stories you'd like to see in the future. If you're NOT reading this post through a feed reader, we'd still like to hear from you!. If you don't want to vote in our poll but still would like to help steer our coverage, please either leave a note in the comments below or e-mail us at admin "AT" freegovinfo.info. Thanks! Continue reading →

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