4 ms·
Funny that you mention it. German laws are published via the 'Bundesanzeiger Verlag' which is a fully privatized publisher owned by the DuMont Group. This lead
by Flockster 7y ago
Funny that you mention it. German laws are published via the 'Bundesanzeiger Verlag' which is a fully privatized publisher owned by the DuMont Group.
This lead to the fact, that you couldn't search, copy or print laws online for free. In reaction to this the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany then opened up a guerilla portal in late 2018 which allowed this.
Because of this, it is planed for 2022, that all german laws will be published online and the contract with DuMont comes to an end.
- hobofan 7y agoAlmost as bad is the monopoly of "Bundesanzeiger" in regards to the mandatory publishing of the annual balance sheets of companies beyond a certain size. Everyone has to publish there, and you only get access to an API (which AFAIK still gives you fairly unstructured data) if you pay a hefty sum. This makes any open/reproducable research into industry trends really difficult.
- oneplane 7y agoYeah, I have seen similar thins in a lot of modern and (modern-ish) countries where due to historical reasoning or organic growth some commercial business gets hold of a piece of public functionality that really should not be encapsulated that way. But as long as it's only a few unheard voices complaining about it and no broad law stating 'public money, public data, public access" it's pretty hard to turn it back in to a real public service.