Met news wrote:
The Sierra Club told the newspaper that the county asked $375,000 for a license to the entire Landbase system
Well, that's one way to for the OC to help recoup some of the overhead costs.
This seems like a relevant fact the Court did not address. This demonstrates if the act is read like the Court says, the city can deny the public this information by charging outrageous fees.
It seems to me the Court's mistake was it examined the legislative history in today's context instead of the context of when the bill was passed. The bill was passed several years before ArcView 1 came out. So when they used a "computer mapping system" they were clearly talking about the
combination of a computer program the city wrote and data that was useless without the city's software. So in order to meet the definition of a computer mapping system, it had to include software and data. Back then data without the software was completely useless. This is perfectly consistent with every bit of legislative history they cite. However today, ESRI makes the software the city would use - so the city cannot sell the ESRI software.
The issue is if a shapefiles a "computer mapping system" not if a computer mapping system contains data. So instead of deciding if a "computer mapping system" includes data, the Court should have been asking if a shapefiile alone a is "computer mapping system.” The law said computer mapping systems, not the components or parts of a computer mapping system:
"As used in this section, `computer software' includes computer mapping systems, computer programs, and computer graphics systems."
If the legislature meant what the Court says they meant, they would have said:
"As used in this section, `computer software' includes computer mapping databases, computer programs, and computer graphics systems."
Particularly when you consider ArcView 1 had not come out when the bill passed, it is clear the law only exempts the combination of software the city created and data for their system.