I'm not familiar with CA's public records laws to say for sure, but I'm familiar with other public records laws, and have submitted ~1k requests throughout the US.
Technically, yes, you can request records from FOIA and sell them. Though, many public records laws are very specific about whether you are requesting as a for-profit org, and can deny your request on that basis. If that isn't the issue, then your request can be rejected for being voluminous, so generally you have to find a public interest argument for the release of records. That public interest argument very, very likely doesn't exist in the case of the info being sold here. It ends up being a major PITA to get large amounts of data.
So, orgs instead go down the contract route. There's really no need to go through the hassle of public records nuance if your contract includes access to those records.
(This is a super deep subject, so I'm just scratching the surface.)
chaps|6 years ago
Technically, yes, you can request records from FOIA and sell them. Though, many public records laws are very specific about whether you are requesting as a for-profit org, and can deny your request on that basis. If that isn't the issue, then your request can be rejected for being voluminous, so generally you have to find a public interest argument for the release of records. That public interest argument very, very likely doesn't exist in the case of the info being sold here. It ends up being a major PITA to get large amounts of data.
So, orgs instead go down the contract route. There's really no need to go through the hassle of public records nuance if your contract includes access to those records.
(This is a super deep subject, so I'm just scratching the surface.)
https://mchap.io/that-time-the-city-of-seattle-accidentally-...