Open data: Government information belongs to the public
Government information belongs to everyone and must be allowed to be used freely, for example for research or journalistic purposes. We want to clarify in court for the first time that there is such a right.
The Federal Police's 2023 annual report is freely available online. Nevertheless, the authority has “reserved all rights” and thus made any form of further use, for example for journalistic purposes or research, subject to written permission.
Our plaintiff and open data expert requested this written permission - with an application for a free license. He wanted to use information from the annual report for Wikipedia articles and photos for the Wikimedia Commons media archive. The response from the Federal Police: rejection by official decision. We initially lodged an appeal against this decision and have now filed a lawsuit.
Government information is politically relevant
The annual report contains politically relevant information, for example on the number and type of crimes recorded, foreign deployments or the controversial internal border controls. This information is central to an informed public, journalistic work, scientific research and civil society engagement.
If government agencies legally seal off their publications, public criticism and scrutiny are prevented. This not only harms democracy, but also jeopardizes freedom of information, academic freedom, freedom of the press and professional freedom.
Legal right to open data
The European Union's Open Data Directive obliges member states to make data collected by the government freely available for use. Germany has implemented this directive through the Data Utilization Act (DNG). According to Section 4 DNG, data published by the state may be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes - “all rights reserved” is an obstacle to this. In addition, Article 4 of the Open Data Directive expressly permits applications for free use. However, this possibility has not been fully reflected in German law. We are therefore deriving the claim in the proceedings from an interpretation of the DNG that conforms to the Directive.
We want to legally clarify that everyone has a specific right to the free use of information published by the state - without a specific purpose. This will set a precedent for open data in Germany. Our goal is a ruling that makes it clear: Information published online by a government agency must be unconditionally free to use. If this is not the case, there is a right to demand that free use is made possible. The plaintiff is represented by the law firm KM8 from Berlin.
