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City Fights Blogger On Display of Public Information
rokkaku writes "When the gadfly blogger Claremont Insider went searching for information about employee compensation on the city of Claremont web site, they never expected to find scans of pay stubs for all the employees. Nor did they expect the city attorney to demand that they remove copies of those pay stubs from their web site. They found it especially odd since, according to California law, the compensation of public employees is public information."
Dear Rokkaku:
You are very confused. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Yes, a California judge has recently ruled that the compensation of public
employees is public information. But all of the pay stubs that I have
seen in, oh, the last 20 years have more information on them than that.
Many pay stubs have the employee's social security number on it. Is that
public information?
Are all of one's deductions for various benefits also public information?
What about the ones dealing with health care?
Or one's marital status?
Or amount of tax withholding?
In fact, an employee's pay stub probably has enough information on it
to steal that employee's identity. Yes, the public has a right to know
what a public employee earns. The public doesn't have a right to steal
a public employee's identity.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
(And love how the article is tagged "censorship"...)
Also, there is a lot of "public information" that isn't online and instantly searchable and accessible en masse. There are other issues here, which I'd hope someone who stops to think about it for a few moments can imagine.
And the bottom line is that anyone can still determine the compensation of a public employee if they wish to do so.
For example, the University of Wisconsin System made its budget summaries, including compensation - known as the Redbook available on the internet. However, now the personnel salaries are only accessible via computers with UW System IP addresses. Else,
Why? Because it was being abused. So now it's not universally available and publicly searchable on the internet. That doesn't mean the information still isn't "public". And before you say that the government's job should be to use technology to make access to such information easier, e.g., via putting on the internet, ask yourself if you'd want all information about you that is technically "public information" aggregated and made quickly and easily searchable by anyone on the internet on a whim, or if you'd rather that people have to actually have a legitimate need for specific pieces of information, and be willing to go through the processes to get it?
Would you want anyone to see images of your entire pay stubs, even if you work for a public agency and your compensation is "public"?
When things like the Redbook and Wisconsin Circuit Court Access became more restrictive, most of the complaints I heard over time were from people who could no longer do the essential equivalent of casual stalking of individuals' salaries and civil, criminal, and traffic court records. Persons who still have a legitimate need for it can still easily get access to the information, and any member of the public can easily obtain any information they might need.
Further, this case seems a little odd...if all of the pay stubs were available on the city's web site, why did they have to aggregate them all? They were already publicly available, right? Obviously the city didn't intend for them to be displayed or obtained the way they were, and regardless of how much "their fault" it was, how incompetent they were at running their web site, or whether it was a data leak, even if it it is "public information" doesn't mean it needs to be, or should be, aggregated en masse on a third party internet site.
Also, while the individuals' compensation may be public, actual images of pay stubs may not be at all (and probably isn't). Again, even if the city had this out in the open through their error, that still doesn't mean it should be fair game for everyone until the end of time, regardless of whether some of the content of the image is "public information". A mistake is a mistake. The city isn't filing charges against someone for "hacking"; they're asking that images of pay stubs of city employees be removed from the internet. The public can still discover the compensation of the employees if they wish,
The compensation is public. Pay stubs are not compensation. Pay stubs contain fun stuff that may lead to the compromise of the financial security of the individual. Requesting the takedown of the pay stubs was more than reasonable.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I deal with FOIA type stuff all the time, and the truth of it is, most government employees have no idea what is public and what is not. They fire off knee jerk threats, and withhold stuff all the time.
Used to be the media kept them in better check, but if your local newspapers aren't suing the crap out of them every time they step out of line (and mostly they're not these days, because it's expensive), then they start power tripping and keeping secrets.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
let me repeat: the yro color scheme sucks. Particularly the part where comment titles are a slightly darker shade of red than the background box.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
First, I apologize to the Slashdot community for moronically making my previous posting under this same title without using preview. If I had, I'd have seen that all of my spacing was lost and I thereby made the post almost unintelligible. Moderators, if you would be so kind as to delete the previous post then I would be in your debt. Second, here's the post as it should have appeared:
/========== ...the fair use of a copyrighted work... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
>"It doesn't make any sense," said Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware. "First of all, I doubt that it's a fact that the city copyrights the pay stubs. I don't know why it would."
They wouldn't. Why not? Because it's no longer necessary to register something for the author to claim copyright. That does not mean that it's not copyrighted.
>"And secondly, it's not clear to me that the display of the pay stubs would violate the copyright act anyway. It's simply displaying an image of them, it's not making a copy of them."
An image *is* a copy.
>Francke added that if the documents are indeed copyrighted, the posting by the blog of the pay stubs would qualify as a "fair use" - meaning it would pass legal muster - because there is no market value lost by the publication.
Fair use is defined by 17 U.S.C. 107 and by various judicial decisions. 17 U.S.C. 107 sayeth, in part:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
\==========
This may or may not be "fair use", but it's easy to use the statutory definition to make an argument against. If the blogger accepts advertising or otherwise profits from his blogging then this can be construed as a commercial use; he nature of the pay stubs, or of any pay stub, is typically private; and the entirety of each stub is used rather than quoting a subsection such as stating only the name of the employee and the compensation.
I don't know the whole story on this one, but it's not just government-oppresses-blogger.
Don't give in just because the city attorney says he wants it all back. He is not the law. Only a court can decide what's legal and what isn't. Taking legal advice from a city attorney, or the policeman who just arrested you, is some of the worst advice you will get.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Generally you WRITE a REQUEST for this information, not snoop around and find it. Bad on the City to leave stubs lying around as that's just more stuff for identity thieves to pillage.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
>>"It doesn't make any sense," said Terry Francke, general counsel of
>Californians Aware. "First of all, I doubt that it's a fact that the city
>copyrights the pay stubs. I don't know why it would."
>
> They wouldn't. Why not? Because it's no longer necessary to register
> something for the author to claim copyright. That does not mean that it's
> not copyrighted.
You'd be right in most cases - individuals and organizations are granted copyright by default. But the general rule with respect to *government* is, "if the government creates a copyrightable work, that work is immediately placed into the public domain by default." Why? Well, since governments are - in theory - merely the embodiment of the public itself, hence anything they create naturally belongs to the public.
In other words, if you or I create it, it is copyrighted by default and a positive action must be made in order to put it into the public domain. If, however, the government (including its employees in the course of their duties - the equivalent of "works for hire" if they were employed in private industry) creates it, **it is in the public domain by default** unless a positive action has been made to place it under copyright.
So, long story short, you're dead wrong. If the government made it (in this case, a City Government) and didn't specifically file for copyright, it's almost a lock that it's NOT copyrighted.
IANAL. TINLA.
First, he seems unaware that if something is copyrightable, copyright is automatic. So, if paystubs are copyrightable, the city would not have to do anything special. They would be copyrighted the moment they are printed.
Second, he says that they aren't copying the paystubs, just making images of them to display, so it would not fall under copyright. An image of a document is a copy as far as copyright law is concerned, so that's strike two.
finally, he says that this would be covered by fair use because there is no market value in the pay stubs. Affect on market value of a work is just one of the four factors considered in determining whether a use is fair use. Strike three.
Lawyers who do not specialize in copyright often make mistakes, but this guy seems to be setting some kind of record here!
I live in California, and our local newspaper prints every local government employee's salary every year in a special edition of the paper. They print everyone's - from the city manager and the mayor, down to school principals and secretaries. They have done this for as long as I can remember, and it always sparks controversy about pay rates and such, but I never remember anyone complaining that it shouldn't be public.
People here in the U.S. need to understand that just because they have certain rights provided by law DOESN'T mean that they should be assholes.
I mean for example, just because I have the right to access public employee information doesn't mean that I have to go around publicly displaying the employee's pay stubs.
Some people might disagree, saying that we should be able to find out what people are being paid (as ALOT of public officials get paid six, sometimes seven, figures just to play golf and ski), which is true, but that doesn't justify the overt publishing of employee's personal information. If you want to find out what public officials are earning, you should just do a simple FIA request yourself. Keep in mind that the claim is to keep an eye on excessive spending of taxpayer dollars. However, what about the wasteful spending of funds by corporations? Corporate executive abuse their funds too, not just governments.
Naysayers should ask themselves if they would publicly post their own information. Think about it: If you are a public official, and someone publishes your personal information, it is ok, while if someone posts your personal information, and you are NOT a public official, it is an invasion of privacy. So what? A job is a job is a job. Period.
My beliefs are this: If you were elected to office through a public election, then your information should be available. If you were hired in the same way that private employees are, then your information should be kept private, with the obvious exceptions for budget analysis and allocation (departmental allocation, travel expenses, office expenses, fees, etc.), but amounts/figures only.
Why should we force the city street sweepers, meter maids, library Reference Desk clerks, or librarians to be publicly scruitinized and have their own personal privacy invaded and compromised in the same way as police chiefs, fire chiefs, city council members, and mayors? (I think that there is less of a chance that a Librarian is corrupt and being overpaid, rather than the mayor or council members.)
Just because you work for the city/state/federal goverment, and not a private business doesn't mean that your personal information should be available for the world to see and become somebody's bitch.
Simple Rule:
Elected Official (Term Jockey) -> Public Information.
Hired Employee (Clock Watcher) -> Private Information.
Remember: Just because you have rights doesn't make it right to abuse them by being a dick.
Be polite and respectful of other people's privacy, even if you have the right to abuse and violate it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I would NOT want my pay stub on the internet. Yes, what I make is public, but there is a process in which said information is given. It must be requested and then they are given only the information that is requested.
Mike http://thenextgenerationofradio.com