[Also posted on the Judgmentals list]
Alongside my request for information on the relationship between the MoJ
and Bailii, I submitted a near-identical one about that between HMCTS
and Courtel for the information published on the courtserve.net website.
This has now[1] been answered:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_provided_to_courtel
Executive summary: Courtel have exclusive access to the data (including
an explicit commitment by HMCTS not to publish the lists on their own
website), but aren't paying anything for it despite the fact that they
charge for end-user access. Also, they appear to be in breach of their
licence agreement with HMCTS by not allowing members of the public to
subscribe to their services.
I think this sucks. It sucks far more than the Bailii situation. At
least Bailii does make the material available to anyone who wants to
read it; the problem with Bailii is mainly incompetance - they're
genuinely trying to perform a useful service, but are making a pig's ear
of it. But Courtel appear to have somehow persuaded HMCTS to grant them
a private monopoly over publishing rights, with no benefit to the
taxpayer and at significant cost to ordinary members of the public who
want to obtain the information they distribute.
http://mark.goodge.co.uk/2011/07/the-unseen-side-of-justice/ goes into
my thoughts in a bit more depth.
[1] It was actually answered on Friday, the same day that the Bailii
request was answered, but in this case Gmail decided that the
notifications from WDTK were spam. Meh.
Mark
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