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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

#51

Post by Dayshine »

oh_sigh wrote: post #44
privateSFacct wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, I can kinda see his argument.

They have this data which is not digitized. Someone requests the data in a digitized form.

So, they go down their normal process for digitizing. They have certain standards for digitizing, and it hits the minimum threshold for going to tender (Maybe $10k).

It's a government organisation so they have to create a tender which organisations would bid for, and everything has to be certified to correct standards, insured, etc.

Reclaim The Records might be able to do it cost for $3k, but it still has to go to tender, and Reclaim the Records would have to prove they can meet all the requirements and such, which would probably quickly increase the cost.

Once it goes to tender, all the costs are waaaay higher, because you have to cover the costs of bidding and such.

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

#52

Post by acct1771 »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #47
matthewmacleod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Their communications regarding this are now FOIA-able, no?

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

#53

Post by Spooky23 »

Asparagirl wrote: post #29
Spooky23 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a detailed cost estimate? New York government entities are required to use preferred source vendors (usually workshops for disabled people) for certain items when an item or service is available, including scanning. Preferred source vendors aren’t competitively bid and must be used by law. When I was in school, paper copies of fiche from the state archives cost like $1-1.50 per fiche. If you do some googl…

”Do you have a detailed cost estimate?” Indeed we do! Several pages, including methodology. Here you go: https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10... Just a quick sample: ”By way of background, our research would indicate the industry standard for fees for a job of this size – turning existing microfiche sheets into scanned digital images – would be approximately $3,000, not $152,000. This would in…

I admire your mission and understand your approach.

My only comment for what it's worth is that you may want to pursue a different path for these historical records. Using FOIL to access archival records is not a cost-efficient strategy for any stakeholder.

In my opinion, as an observer with no skin in the game is that investing the legal resources you have and working with someone like the library association to lobby the legislature to fund digitization would perhaps be a more productive avenue.

When I look at your website, and find the headline "CORRUPTION'S SUCH AN OLD SONG THAT WE CAN SING ALONG IN HARMONY, AND NOWHERE IS IT STRONGER THAN IN ALBANY" with respect to the city clerk office in a tiny place like Albany, NY. I take pause when I see that.

A handful of old ladies processing dog licenses in a broke upstate city isn't clutching to old death records to help big companies, particularly for data they may not even possess. Albany is not NYC, and the approach your org seems to take is like bringing a stereotype to life.

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

#54

Post by Asparagirl »

acct1771 wrote: post #52
SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Their communications regarding this are now FOIA-able, no?

That’s the whole point! We’re not asking questions of the New York State Department of Health, we’re asking them for copies under FOIL of their e-mails, contracts, bids, evaluation materials, meeting notes, and such.

And the NYS DOH was like “nah”. Which is shady, and possibly illegal. So here we are.

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

#55

Post by danaris »

Dayshine wrote: post #51
oh_sigh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Actually, I can kinda see his argument. They have this data which is not digitized. Someone requests the data in a digitized form. So, they go down their normal process for digitizing. They have certain standards for digitizing, and it hits the minimum threshold for going to tender (Maybe $10k). It's a government organisation so they have to create a tender which organisations would bid for, and everything has to be…

But it doesn't matter what their "normal process" for digitizing is, because there's a law that says that they have to provide the requested information and restricts the kinds of expenses they can pass on to them.

So, sure, their "normal process" would say, "If this is to get digitized, we need to make sure that it will go into our existing system of digitized records, and it has to meet these standards of quality, and it has to have three people review it to make sure the OCR got done properly" etc etc.

But that's what it would take to get it into their system. Not what it would take to provide the records to the requestor.

If the requirements of the law can be satisfied and the requestor is happy to accept a simple scan costing a few thousand, the state doesn't get to say "we'll only do it by our full six-month six-figure process."

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

#56

Post by squirrelicus »

Ancestry developed relationships with many archival sources for a damn good reason. They have developed non trivial processes, equipment, and trained staff that treat the records with care. When I worked there it was a badge of honor for their document processing division that they were the only entity essentially allowed to just walk into the National Archives and take whatever they wanted to digitize, because they were known and trusted to return the extraordinarily fragile documents unharmed. Reputation matters. Presumably the cost that the plaintiff incurred was a form of insurance or "are you really seriously sure you have the capital to treat this stuff with care?"

I am not a lawyer and I might be making it all up.

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

#57

Post by squirrelicus »

dplgk wrote: post #22
MrEldritch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

ancestry might not have gotten preferential treatment specifically but generally corporations did because charging that amount is a gate to keep out people who can't afford it

Which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing. You can't have randos coming in and ruining your documents. There must be an element of "are you seriously sure you can treat these things with care?" and 150k isn't a lot for a serious document digitizing entity.

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

#58

Post by jhall1468 »

altitudinous wrote: post #23
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.

Trying to get proof is absolutely NOT proof. I'm not going to read articles where someone has made something up. You may as well start preparing for the forthcoming zombie apocalypse.

Trying to get proof is called Discovery and is quite literally one of the key points in filing a lawsuit. You can't argue something invalid because it doesn't have proof when the entire purpose of the lawsuit is to get proof.

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

#59

Post by jhall1468 »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #47
matthewmacleod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Because nothing requires them to explain what happened.

Actually that's the point of discovery in a lawsuit, and discovery absolutely compels both New York and Ancestry to provide explanations via evidence.

So you managed to be wrong on multiple accounts in a single sentence. You keep talking about "evidence". The point of discovery in a lawsuit is to discover evidence of wrong-doing.

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

#60

Post by Asparagirl »

squirrelicus wrote: post #57
dplgk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ancestry might not have gotten preferential treatment specifically but generally corporations did because charging that amount is a gate to keep out people who can't afford it

Which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing. You can't have randos coming in and ruining your documents. There must be an element of "are you seriously sure you can treat these things with care?" and 150k isn't a lot for a serious document digitizing entity.

The law is very clear: either the state hires an approved vendor, but only charges the actual costs of duplication plus hard drive or other media (no mark-up allowed), or the state allows the requestor to digitize the files themselves onsite for free. This is long-established law in most states, and more than forty years old in New York.

The state’s quote of $152,000 was more than fifty times the actual costs of digitization. We provided them with a breakdown of the costs, using both commercial and government sources as comparisons, even though that is supposed to be the state’s job, not the requestor’s.

The state still denied our request and our appeal.

So, no. Inflating estimates of the costs of public records by fifty times is flat-out illegal.

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