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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

#41

Post by matthewmacleod »

privateSFacct wrote: post #35
Asparagirl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we are a company or were bidding for a government contract. We are not and were not: governments are required to provide copies of public records like these, or else required to allow us access. We’ve sued and won settlements in Freedom of Information Lawsuits like this one three times in the past four years (and won attorneys fees twice!), and currently have five mor…

You seem to be under the mistaken impression, that burdened under 100's (literally) of rules, the govt can do a one off special project like this for $3,000. Seriously, I've fought the goverment too, and won, on some stupid requirements that were explicitly revoked at higher levels of govt but hadn't filtered down. That one issue (went through chain to their legal team, and back a few times) cost more than $3,000 of…

With reference to the last paragraph, the point is that nobody seems to know exactly what happened here and something seems a bit fishy. Isn’t it reasonable to follow this up and find out what happened?

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

Asparagirl wrote: post #31
privateSFacct wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks - this is what makes government nervous. You have irreplacable records, and then a group comes in and considers all the rules "stupid" and "silly" and calls the microfiche machine "magical". I don't think folks realize how risk averse government is. Literally, they probably use ONE brand of machine they KNOW works to deal with these records that go back over 100+ years. This is not some big conspiracy, this is…

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we are a company or were bidding for a government contract. We are not and were not: governments are required to provide copies of public records like these, or else required to allow us access. We’ve sued and won settlements in Freedom of Information Lawsuits like this one three times in the past four years (and won attorneys fees twice!), and currently have five mor…

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by matthewmacleod »

privateSFacct wrote: post #37
jhall1468 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dude, trying to get proof is not proof. For all they know ancestry didn't even ask the state to do the work but did it for them for free, and then after doing the work themselves gave it to these guys (not required). So no cost estimate needed, no fight about cost needed. You've got one group demanding detailed costs estimates, demanding names of vendors (the government probably doesn't even have yet because they've…

You have made the same misleading comments over and over again and it seems unreasonable.

The situation we have here is that something seems suspicious. From the perspective of this group, who have a fair bit of experience at this, either Ancestry stumped up what they consider an unreasonable sum, or they performed digitisation under what they consider unreasonable circumstances. Why is it unreasonable to require the state to explain what happened?

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

#44

Post by oh_sigh »

privateSFacct wrote: post #30
oh_sigh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn rates of tech companies are irrelevant. The question isn't whether or not ancestry paid the 150k but rather if it was appropriate for NY to charge 150k for preliminary access to these records.

If they are asking NY to do the work, then yes, that price sounds fair. And this illustrates the problem here, they have no clue. What they are asking is for NY to bid this, fight the bid appeals, contract this, manage this, supervise this, etc. Govt does not do well with new stuff, and everything goes through the big bureaucracy. And vendor side, all the requirements (the forced source hiring so you can't use your o…

> If they are asking NY to do the work, then yes, that price sounds fair.

What exactly does the work entail? You appear to be speaking from a place of knowledge, even though you got the basic facts of the case incorrect as posted above.

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

#45

Post by dannyw »

privateSFacct wrote: post #39
toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me make a suggestion. Follow the ancestry model. Offer a free service to agencies, backed with some quality, and if you then give them even a hard drive with the images you will make them very very happy. Seriously. This advice is terrible, and Asparagirl has every right to hold government to the standard the law demands, as well as ensuring certain requestors are not receiving preferential treatment.

Have you done a lot of public records work? The government will generally give you access (reasonable non disruptive access). If you think you can do something for free / cheap - you can then simply do it yourself. This tends to work out well. In fact, entire businesses are based on this approach around govt public records - some very lucrative. This is because a lot of govt records are valuable and even just indexin…

I’m really not sure why you’ve changed the topic, because the lawsuit here is over the government not following FOIL. Everything you have bought up is completely irrelevant to the legal arguments in this case.

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

#46

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

dannyw wrote: post #45
privateSFacct wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you done a lot of public records work? The government will generally give you access (reasonable non disruptive access). If you think you can do something for free / cheap - you can then simply do it yourself. This tends to work out well. In fact, entire businesses are based on this approach around govt public records - some very lucrative. This is because a lot of govt records are valuable and even just indexin…

I’m really not sure why you’ve changed the topic, because the lawsuit here is over the government not following FOIL. Everything you have bought up is completely irrelevant to the legal arguments in this case.

I think the reason for the changed topic is that privateSFacct is trying to be a pain in your ass. I have no idea what his motivations are, but shifting goalposts is one of the techniques he is using. It's obviously working.

Asparagirl keeps saying things like "you seem to be under some misapprehension that we are a company or are “bidding” on a project. Please educate yourself about state Freedom of Information Laws or Sunshine Laws."

privateSFacct seems intelligent and informed. I suspect that he knows that he is making absurd arguments. I recommend you stop engaging.

My full-time job is entirely based upon requesting, obtaining, and disseminating otherwise-unavailable public records. Good luck with your lawsuit. Who is representing you?

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

#47

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #43
privateSFacct wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, trying to get proof is not proof. For all they know ancestry didn't even ask the state to do the work but did it for them for free, and then after doing the work themselves gave it to these guys (not required). So no cost estimate needed, no fight about cost needed. You've got one group demanding detailed costs estimates, demanding names of vendors (the government probably doesn't even have yet because they've…

You have made the same misleading comments over and over again and it seems unreasonable. The situation we have here is that something seems suspicious. From the perspective of this group, who have a fair bit of experience at this, either Ancestry stumped up what they consider an unreasonable sum, or they performed digitisation under what they consider unreasonable circumstances. Why is it unreasonable to require the…

> Why is it unreasonable to require the state to explain what happened?

Because nothing requires them to explain what happened.

With a few notable exceptions, public records statutes only provide a right of access to extant records. They do not require agencies to answer questions or provide information.

That's just the way it is.

Reclaim the Records:

I read all of the publicly available court filings in your lawsuit. I'll reserve my comments on its merits for now and will simply recommend that you focus your PR efforts on the actual violations you are alleging in your lawsuit, and not on the possibility that Ancenstry.com was treated favorably vis-à-vis Reclaim the Records.

To be brutally honest, your focus on the latter sounds like whiney sour grapes at this stage, as you have zero solid evidence indicating that anything nefarious happened.

I completely understand the 'hot news' value of some public records. (I earn my living from it.) I also understand your suspicions about what happened as well as your interest in obtaining all records relating to the Ancenstry.com records request and its processing.

But until you have those records, your only potentially legitimate complaint is that they have not fulfilled their obligations under the FOIL. That's it.

Focus on that, otherwise you are going to see this thread repeating itself.

(For examples of what I mean, your website's page linked to in this very post literally highlights that Ancestry.com "received their copies of the records first" and that Ancestry.com "cut-and-pasted" "the exact words" of your organization's FOIL request. Unless you are suing Ancestry.com for copyright infringement, come on. People "steal" my request language all the time. It's only significant if something funky happened regarding preferential access.)

Good luck.

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

#48

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

Asparagirl wrote: post #25
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?

Hi! That’s exactly what we’d like to know! Our lawsuit is asking the New York State Department of Health for copies of “all correspondence, e-mails, proposals, drafts, notes, agreements, contracts, meetings and calendar entries, phone logs, meeting minutes, budget items, receipts, vendorization forms or data, bids, evaluation materials, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) records requests and their associated correspon…

> But then they’re a for-profit company, acting as a de-facto vendor for the state. So shouldn’t there be a contract for the work?

I assume that you are familiar with the contracts NARA has entered into with its "digitization partners"?

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

#49

Post by dbatten »

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…

Is it possible that Ancestry's secret sauce was simply threatening legal action?

A couple of years ago, I was trying to get some public records from the University of North Carolina. I submitted a request by email, as their website said I could. They responded a week later and said they needed a letter. I sent a letter. They responded to the letter and said that the letter needed to include my cell phone number and email address to process the request. (There was no mention of this before. Records could have easily been mailed to me at my address, and they already had my email address from the aforementioned email incident.) So, I provided the info. I heard nothing for months. I asked for a status update. They said the request was "delayed." I heard nothing for months. I followed up, told them they were in violation of North Carolina state law, and that if they weren't going to provide the records, I'd pursue legal action. Boom, got the records within a couple of days. Like magic.

Also, during my years as a state employee, I noticed that one of the few things that could get the lumbering bureaucracy moving (as an entity, there were plenty of hard-working well-meaning employees) was a threat of a lawsuit or a fine handed down by the feds. The institutional terror around that sort of thing was almost comical at times.

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

#50

Post by Asparagirl »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #48
Asparagirl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! That’s exactly what we’d like to know! Our lawsuit is asking the New York State Department of Health for copies of “all correspondence, e-mails, proposals, drafts, notes, agreements, contracts, meetings and calendar entries, phone logs, meeting minutes, budget items, receipts, vendorization forms or data, bids, evaluation materials, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) records requests and their associated correspon…

> But then they’re a for-profit company, acting as a de-facto vendor for the state. So shouldn’t there be a contract for the work? I assume that you are familiar with the contracts NARA has entered into with its "digitization partners"?

Oh yes. The ones where the records are supposed to become public (instead of “exclusive”) five years later, but in practice have not been made public...
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