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Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

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Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#11

Post by dsiegel2275 »

andrewem wrote: post #9
NoblePublius wrote: post #4

I’m willing to wager Ancestry does digitization better, faster and cheaper than any non profit would.

The counterexample to your claim is FamilySearch.org, which worked with Reclaim the Records on digitizing a set of records. (It's a nonprofit run by the LDS church, which is a behemoth in genealogy records.)

Couldn't upvote this enough. I have done significant genealogical research over the last 6 or 7 years, using primarily Ancestry and FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch, particularly for non U.S. records, offers access to an order of magnitude more resources than Ancestry, though not all of them are digitally indexed. Ancestry, with its larger budget, seems to have invested heavily in digitizing and making available a small subset of commonly used resources, resources that will enable more casual users to make quick progress. So records like the 1940 U.S. Census and state-based death certificates (usually up to 1960) are digitized, and thus made widely available to keep and draw new subscribers.

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#12

Post by jhall1468 »

altitudinous wrote: post #10

"suspects". I did not read the article because of this. The internet slanders many based on only suspicion. I suspect that we are not alone in the universe. I suspect that Elvis might still be alive. But I have no proof. Get some proof. I'm not going to write some article stating Elvis is still alive and pass it off as fact.

The article explicitly states they are doing to get information as to how Ancestry was so promptly serviced, and for how much.

They are trying to get some proof. That's the purpose of the lawsuit. You should try reading the articles from now on.

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#13

Post by Asparagirl »

andrewem wrote: post #8
zzleeper wrote: post #3

Never heard of reclaim the records until now. What they are doing is amazing! I was even moved to donate, even though I have no US ancestry ("Donation Confirmation Thank you for supporting Reclaim The Records!")

Reclaim the Records has done amazing work. HN user Asparagirl is the founder and runs it ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Asparagirl ).

waves hello

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#14

Post by Asparagirl »

cwyers wrote: post #7

If you read the article, Reclaim The Records filed a FOIL (NY state version of FOIA) request for the records, which were stored on microfilm. The state quoted $150k for the request -- you still need to pay to have copies made. The group thought the state's quote was too large. Then Ancestry.com comes in, pays for the microfilm to be digitized, and the state tells the group "nevermind, we can do it for free now." And…

Hi, I’m Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder and president of Reclaim The Records. Your comment is misleading as to the substance of this lawsuit and the issue at hand. I would urge you to read this backstory, and the actual lawsuit text:

https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-req...

and

https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67da...

The short version: we had many onerous requirements put upon us by the New York State Department of Health when we tried to get the records through FOIL, only ONE of which was a crazy-inflated $152,000 price tag that had nothing to do with the actual cost of digitizing the microfiche. The state made up the price. This is illegal under FOIL’s requirement that a requestor pay only the actual costs of digitization. In the links above, you can read the story of how we on our own calculated the actual costs, and provided multiple price comparisons from commercial firms and from the National Archives (NARA), which were a tiny fraction of that inflated estimate.

Getting the records for free after a seventeen month long fight was unexpectedly awesome. But apparently-preferential treatment by government agencies for commercial entities instead of non-profit or individual records requestors is really disturbing. We’re trying to figure out what happened and why. And that’s where this lawsuit, for copies of agency e-mails and contracts and meeting notes and such, is important.

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#15

Post by Asparagirl »

If you enjoyed reading this story, which is about our fifth Freedom of Information lawsuit, you might also enjoy reading about our eighth and newest lawsuit, which we just filed against the parent agency of the New York City Municipal Archives a few days ago:

https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/22/

Teaser: “Welcome to the single stupidest lawsuit that our organization has ever had to file.

Alternately, we could subtitle this story let’s all gather round and watch the NYC Department of Records light taxpayer money on fire!”

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#16

Post by nowarninglabel »

Asparagirl wrote: post #14
cwyers wrote: post #7

If you read the article, Reclaim The Records filed a FOIL (NY state version of FOIA) request for the records, which were stored on microfilm. The state quoted $150k for the request -- you still need to pay to have copies made. The group thought the state's quote was too large. Then Ancestry.com comes in, pays for the microfilm to be digitized, and the state tells the group "nevermind, we can do it for free now." And…

Hi, I’m Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder and president of Reclaim The Records. Your comment is misleading as to the substance of this lawsuit and the issue at hand. I would urge you to read this backstory, and the actual lawsuit text: https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-req... and https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67da... The short version: we had many onerous requirements put…

Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their request was fulfilled first?

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#17

Post by [deleted] »

cwyers wrote: post #7

If you read the article, Reclaim The Records filed a FOIL (NY state version of FOIA) request for the records, which were stored on microfilm. The state quoted $150k for the request -- you still need to pay to have copies made. The group thought the state's quote was too large. Then Ancestry.com comes in, pays for the microfilm to be digitized, and the state tells the group "nevermind, we can do it for free now." And…

[deleted]

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#19

Post by dplgk »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #16
Asparagirl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I’m Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder and president of Reclaim The Records. Your comment is misleading as to the substance of this lawsuit and the issue at hand. I would urge you to read this backstory, and the actual lawsuit text: https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-req... and https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67da... The short version: we had many onerous requirements put…

Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their request was fulfilled first?

Does it matter? The point is that the state made the cost prohibitively high.

Re: Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives

#20

Post by MrEldritch »

dplgk wrote: post #19
nowarninglabel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their request was fulfilled first?

Does it matter? The point is that the state made the cost prohibitively high.

It matters for "does Ancestry.com get preferential access" if they did, in fact, jump through all the same illegal hoops and just had the money to pay for them
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