Pam Fisher wrote:
>However, local record offices and libraries will be
>allowed to buy the fiche for their county and we shall have to hope they
>will
But what is to stop local record offices and libraries charging people
to look at the fiche? Local authorities are pretty much commercial
organisations these days.
Information, even that collected by governments at tax payers' expense,
is not these days free and there is a world wide move to make more and
more of it a commercial commodity. In fact there is an international
organisation, an offshoot of the World Trade Organisation called the
World Intellectual Properly Organisation, which seems to be dedicated to
doing just that.
Anyway I am grateful to Barney Tyrwhitt-Drake for dispensing some very
useful information and doing it for free!
--
Frank Sharman
Wolverhampton, UK
tel: +44 01902 335517
Look! No quotes, no graphics!
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