An interesting bit of fall out in California as Santa Clara County has been ordered to pay up for essentially trying to hoard their data and “stick it” to those who want access to it. Fees for data, cost recovery, ownership, public information, national security, you name it, all these points have been brought up at some point in this case (and others that are similar). Of particular interest (and quite laughable) is the fact that the county tried to charge $250K for a “duplication fee” – ya I guess dumping all that data on an external drive is quite labor intensive – and then when that failed they played the national security card. Oh, and also a bit laughable was the fact that in addition to the $250K the purchaser was supposed to sign an NDA and guarantee they would not redistribute the data… ohboy! The result of the county trying to lock-down their data.. they have been ordered to shell out $500,000 to the non-profit org that was seeking the information from them… Dang, that half a mill could have built you on hell of a fine GIS for the tax payers, perhaps the California First Amendment Coalition will take all that cash and invest it in a state of the art GIS and webmapping portal to serve up all that public information… hmmm! take that tax payers! You have to wonder how many counties have the same feeling and seem to have forgotten that the tax payers have paid to collect and distribute that data already. See more on Wired or see the San Jose Mercury News