Comments on: Suggest a dataset – IdeaScale competition part three http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/08/suggest-a-dataset-ideascale-competition-part-three/ Design by Ben Crothers of Catch Media Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:51:50 +1000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: cb http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/08/suggest-a-dataset-ideascale-competition-part-three/comment-page-1/#comment-1279 cb Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:15:00 +0000 http://gov2.net.au/?p=912#comment-1279 Court documents - eg statements of claims. Currently the Federal Court allows default access to court documents unless there is a confidentiality ruling (<a href="http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/courtdocuments/publicdocuments.html" rel="nofollow">link</a>). The Court even has a e-filing system which shows you all the filings for each court case (<a href="https://www.comcourts.gov.au/file/Federal/P/NTD4/2007/actions" rel="nofollow">link</a>). There is no online access to these documents though, you have to apply to the registrar. This isn't a problem for professional journalists, but if you want to encourage citizen journalism, bloggers providing informed analysis of important cases, you need to make it free and easy to access court documents. For an example of how well it can be done, see the US Justia website, which looks like it is a privately owned website providing easy access to US court filings. See eg, <a href="http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/new-york/nysdce/1:2005cv08136/273913/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, all the documents relating to a copyright case about google's online publishing of books. <a href="http://www.llrx.com/features/googleprint.htm" rel="nofollow">Here</a> is a 2005 blog post analysing the copyright arguments being made in the statements of claim, informed legal analysis and discussion of matters of public importance years before any judgment is written and released. Court documents – eg statements of claims. Currently the Federal Court allows default access to court documents unless there is a confidentiality ruling (link). The Court even has a e-filing system which shows you all the filings for each court case (link). There is no online access to these documents though, you have to apply to the registrar. This isn’t a problem for professional journalists, but if you want to encourage citizen journalism, bloggers providing informed analysis of important cases, you need to make it free and easy to access court documents.

For an example of how well it can be done, see the US Justia website, which looks like it is a privately owned website providing easy access to US court filings. See eg, here, all the documents relating to a copyright case about google’s online publishing of books. Here is a 2005 blog post analysing the copyright arguments being made in the statements of claim, informed legal analysis and discussion of matters of public importance years before any judgment is written and released.

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