OpenAustralia.org

Begin forwarded message:

From: Katherine Szuminska <kat[at]openaustralia.org>
Date: 6 May 2009 21:59:11 GMT+10:00
To: secretariat[at]parliament.act.gov.au
Subject: Hansard Copyright request ACT

I'm writing from OpenAustralia. We are a group of volunteers who run a website, http://www.openaustralia.org which republishes the Hansard from Federal Parliament in a user friendly searchable format. We also support email alerts and rss feeds by keyword.

In future, as well as the Senate and the House of Representatives, we're also intending to republish the State and Territory Hansards in the same format, making it even easier for all Australians to have access to their elected Representatives and be easily informed of Parliamentary proceedings at all levels.

Specifically in this case we'd like to republish the ACT Hansard at www.openaustralia.org

Many thanks, Kat Szuminska

this correspondence:
Date: 15 May 2009 01:22:10 GMT+10:00

Hi Val,

Thanks very much for your lovely reply.

We don't publish every bit of information that comes in from the Hansard, but the republishing we present does include all speeches, and recently procedural text too. We're still working on getting voting information in for Federal Hansards.

I'm very happy you asked about formats. We would really rather not deal with PDFs if we don't have to, an intermediate format such as XML is much better. Do let us know if you are able to accommodate this request or if there is any other machine readable format you could make available to us? Is there something you use internally which could be made available?

I can also confirm that we do link back to the source speeches back at aph.gov.au, and we'll treat State Hansards the same way.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'll be away next week, but back on 25th May, but if you have any follow up questions or comments on formats, Matthew Landauer will be able to talk through that kind of issue. He's cc'd on this message.

Many thanks, Kat

On 13 May 2009, at 17:36, Barrett, Val wrote:

Dear Kat

I have had a look at your site and you appear to be republishing the Hansard text in full, and providing a link back to the Hansard table of contents.

Do you intend to publish the ACT Legislative Assembly Hansard in full or would you be publishing extracts of it which may be able to be taken out of context? Our Hansards are available on the Assembly's website in PDF format. Is there anything we would need to do or would you be taking them straight off our website?

I will look forward to hearing from you.

Val Barrett
Manager
Hansard and Communications

ph. 62050126

sent just now.

Hi Val

Can you tell me if there has been any progress on my request?

Many thanks, Kat

flipped to @trib last week. Has been update, but don't have further details. He's not on the system so I can't reassign to him (yet).

My intro to Val.

from Stephen Collins <trib@acidlabs.org>
sender-time Sent at 3:01 PM (GMT+10:00). Current time there: 11:18 PM. ✆
to "Barrett, Val" <Val.Barrett@parliament.act.gov.au>
cc "OpenAustralia.org" <contact@openaustralia.org>
date Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 3:01 PM
subject Re: Hansard Copyright request ACT
mailed-by acidlabs.org

Val

Hi! I'm helping the OpenAustralia folks out on the ground in the ACT.

If you've any questions you need answered, I'd be more than happy to
talk to you at any time.

Thanks very much for your help and encouraging position thus far.

Steve Collins
–
Stephen Collins
Cell +61 410 680722
Skype trib22
www.twitter.com/trib
www.linkedin.com/in/stephencollins

www.acidlabs.org

acidlabs
Conversation. Collaboration. Community.

This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private

Response from Val. A theoretical win.

I need to contact her and ask what format we can get in. Or if we have to scrape. Which would kind of suck. Lots...

from Barrett, Val <Val.Barrett@parliament.act.gov.au>
sender-time Sent at 5:18 PM (GMT+10:00). Current time there: 11:21 PM. ✆
to Stephen Collins <trib@acidlabs.org>
cc "Duncan, Tom" <Tom.Duncan@parliament.act.gov.au>
date Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 5:18 PM
subject RE: Hansard Copyright request ACT
mailed-by parliament.act.gov.au

Dear Stephen

We can make available to you the Hansard transcripts which appear on our
website at www.parliament.act.gov.au subject to the following conditions
of access:

Copyright of the material belongs to the Australian Capital Territory
and no unauthorised use may be made of that material. The ACT
Legislative Assembly makes Hansard available on the following
conditions:

The material shall not be used for:

the purpose of satire or ridicule;
advertising for or by political parties or electioneering;
commercial advertising or sponsorship

Hansard transcripts are made available in a complete and unaltered state
and those transcripts published by the Legislative Assembly are
protected by parliamentary privilege. Extracts or excerpts of the
broadcast are protected if they constitute fair and accurate reports of
proceedings. The ACT Legislative Assembly is not liable for any loss or
damage arising from use of the material or from delays or interruptions
to its publication.

You will appreciate that we are a very small parliament with limited
resources. Therefore, we cannot make any special publishing arrangements
and hope you can make use of the material published on our website.

Please note that the Proof Daily Hansard, which is published within four
working days after the day of sitting, is replaced by the Official
Weekly Hansard within 10 working days after the last day of a sitting
week. We replace the Proof Hansard when the Official Weekly is
published.

Val Barrett
Manager
Hansard and Communications

ph. 62050126

Email to Val re format availability.

from Stephen Collins <trib@acidlabs.org>
sender-time Sent at 8:00 PM (GMT+10:00).
to "Barrett, Val" <Val.Barrett@parliament.act.gov.au>
cc "Duncan, Tom" <Tom.Duncan@parliament.act.gov.au>,
"OpenAustralia.org" <contact@openaustralia.org>
date Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 8:00 PM
subject Re: Hansard Copyright request ACT
mailed-by acidlabs.org

Val

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Barrett,
Val<Val.Barrett@parliament.act.gov.au> wrote:
> We can make available to you the Hansard transcripts which appear on our
> website at www.parliament.act.gov.au subject to the following conditions
> of access:

This is great news! I have a couple of questions below that it would
be incredibly helpful for you to answer.

I'm certain that your copyright and legal concerns are of a like
nature to other jurisdictions. Open Australia won't have any problem
with them.

My questions:

1. What form is Open Australia able to receive copies of your
transcripts? The original electronic version you use to publish to the
http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/ site would likely be the most useful.

2. What do we need to do to ensure that Open Australia receives the
transcripts on a regular basis, ideally as they are published?

I keenly anticipate your response.

Steve

Hey Trib,
If you speak to Val on the phone again it would be great to sound out if they could assign a technical contact to OpenAustralia for the future.

tiny note. OpenAustralia is all one word

Kat

there you go!

Latest from Val. Looks like we scrape.

from Barrett, Val <Val.Barrett@parliament.act.gov.au>
sender-time Sent at 1:27 PM (GMT+10:00). Current time there: 4:49 PM. ✆
to Stephen Collins <trib@acidlabs.org>
date Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 1:27 PM
subject RE: Hansard Copyright request ACT
mailed-by gmail.com

Dear Stephen

The original electronic version we publish on the web site this year
will be available at:
http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/2009/links/download.htm

We can add you to our non-members notification list so that you will get
a standard email as soon as each day is published.

You can then download it and save it by right clicking and selecting
"Save Target As"

Val Barrett
Manager
Hansard and Communications

ph. 62050126

Nat picking this one up - catch up from Trib

Spoke to Trib, he said everything he knows about this has been posted here. So I've read through it, and it looks like we got to the point of getting on some mailing list to let us know when PDFs are online ... but I'm guessing we actually want to see if we can gain access to a pre-PDF format?

Sent an email to Val, CC'ed to contact@OA. Trying to set up an in-person meeting with her for 17 Nov.