Draft 3: Is this too wordy? Let me know if there's anything I can lose or
correct.
Toronto Police Service,
Please provide electronic criminal justice disclosure in free formats. By
“free” here, I mean certain freedoms, and not price. Free formats are
fully documented. Adopting free formats would make criminal justice more
accessable in a few ways:
Free formats can work on any platform. Adopting free formats would address
format-and-platform incompatibility. I understand that Crown counsel, defence
counsel, and accused people share this interest.
Free formats are not locked to an exclusive service provider. The change
would allow counsel and accused people to choose service providers, from a
competitive market. Free formats would also allow for gratis service
providers.
Disclosure in free formats would accommodate a more conservative approach to
confidentiality. Proprietary (non-free) formats require counsel and accused
people to install proprietary software. Free formats work with both
proprietary and free software. The option to use free software matters.
Free software licenses allow the public to audit the instructions that make
up the software (whether the free software is commercial or gratis).
Proprietary software is not transparent in this way. The opacity allows those
who control proprietary software (not the user) to use it as a window into
the contents of users' computers. The controller can cooperate with third
parties.
Some proprietary formats address the first two concerns. Free formats
address all three concerns.
Could you please provide electronic video disclosure in OGV, WebM, or DVD
video without CSS? You can find more information about some of these free
video formats here:
http://theora.org/
http://www.webmproject.org/
I would be happy to discuss how adopting free formats could help the criminal
justice community, and any related specifics.
M
