Can't do that, you're not allowed

First, the Queen’s Printer thought it was a brilliant idea to lock down the Newfoundland and Labrador Gazette. Indeed, according the security settings on the most recent issue, they still do.
Then, a Crown corp got out of sorts and worried about “the original integrity” of its environmental documentation for the Labrador-Island outstarve.

(Strangely enough, the same Crown corp had no worries about “the original integrity” of the pdf documents for the generation project itself. No digital locks. Funny that.)

Which brings us around to the latest exercise in openness and accountability, themes which ran through the whole sorry episode that Madame Justice Margaret Cameron was commissioned to enquire into.

Her final report? You guessed it: locked-down pdfs:


Content copying: Not Allowed.

Why not? “For restrictions to any change to the Commissioners Report” [sic], that’s why.

Heaven forfend anyone actually be able to quote, verbatim, from a public document, without the risk of transcription errors. In fact, concern about “original integrity” or “any change” in the documents should be factors in favour of allowing unfettered digital copying, not against it.

At best, every branch of the provincial government is now populated by official tech.idiots who fear the technology they are expected to use.

At worst, every branch of the provincial government has been infiltrated by the “freedom from information” worldview that continues, nice words notwithstanding, to make such inroads. Even, sad to say, within an organ that was created independent of the executive government, and which jealously, and properly, asserted that independence.


With every passing week, one provincial government in particular inadvertantly makes better and better arguments for the abolition of Crown copyright.