semi-public data?? (Re: phone lookups)

[Adam Back]

I think a more pertinent question is:

- is the information public or not?

if it's public it's public -- no semi-public, or public but only to
people who pay 200 pounds, or public to people who show up at an
office.

The reason is if one were to say that it's semi-public (public but
somehow restricted), then some one can simply place the CD contents
online in another jurisdiction and there won't be anything that can be
done about it.

Now if you care about privacy, complain about the collection, or
public release of this information.  For example make being in the
public sub-set opt-in instead of opt-out.

Adam

On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 05:05:16PM +0100, John R T Brazier wrote:
> 
> >> On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, John R T Brazier wrote:
> >>
> >> Yes, anyone could purchase the CD, and then proceed to use/abuse its
> data.
> >> However, I have not purchased the CD. Therefore I do not have a right to
> >> use its data, and I shouldn't receive the data from the CD. The situation
> >> seems to me to be analagous in terms of principle: agencies who have
> >> a right to traffic data shouldn't "quote" its contents to agencies that
> >> don't. In exactly the same way, people who have purchased the access to
> >> Experian's mega-demographics databases shouldn't quote their contents to
> >> people who haven't.