Dear Venkat
We are trying to assist Ramnarayan for the query he has posed.
We all know that the Indian State can be capricious, arbitrary, high-handed and vindictive etc. The examples of false prosecutions under OSA are too numerous to be listed. Thus we have to work on conservative principles recognising that the OSA regime which is still in force.
For Ram's purposes Section 3 of the OSA reads (in its most diluted form) thus ...
"3. Penalties for spying
(1) If any person for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State
(c) obtains, collects, records or publishes or communicates to other person any sketch, plan, model, article or note or other document or information which might be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy, he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years."
sub-section 2 of clause 3 is the kicker (the police state flexing its muscles) to establish the presumption that the "spy" is acting prejudicially to the State.
"(2) On a prosecution for an offence punishable under this section it shall not be necessary to show that the accused person was guilty of any particular act tending to show a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, and, notwithstanding that no such act is proved against him, he may be convicted if, from the circumstances of the case or his conduct or his known character as proved, it appears that his purpose was a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State; and if any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information relating to or used in any prohibited place, or relating to anything in such a place, or any secret official code or pass word is made, obtained, collected, recorded, published or communicated by any person other than a person acting under lawful authority, and from the circumstances of the case or his conduct or his known character as proved it appears that his purpose was a
purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State, such sketch, plan, model, article, note, document, information, code or pass word shall be presumed to have been made, obtained, collected, recorded, published or communicated for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State."
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE FOR OUR MEMBERS: Do not collect or publish or circulate information which attracts OSA's draconian mischief.
RTI Act permits a limited avenue for a citizen to lawfully access and secure a copy of "some" Govt information. Nowhere does RTI Act (or any other law for that matter) EXPLICITLY grant reproduction rights to people obtaining "copies" of documents in RTI which are not in the public domain. Hence I felt it necessary to additionally clarify the legal situation for FURTHER REPRODUCTION RIGHTS in cases where applicants have been so lucky as to get copies of information in RTI. As such there is no question of my abandoning any ground, or moving out of OSA, shifting my baseline etc.
I reiterate that there are many circumstances mentioned in the RTI Act wherein the State can give Mr.X information and deny the same to Mr.Y. As such, the citizen should not confuse himself with the State and attempt to do the PIO's job for disclosing non-public information.
Regards
Sarbajit
--- In rti_india@yahoogroups.com, "Venkatesh Nayak" <venkatesh@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Sarbajit,
> You need to read my arguments carefully before jumping to conclusions. I
> have made a clear distinction between information where IPRs may exist and
> where IPRs cannot be clearly identified and how OSA is not a factor to be
> taken into consideration for such matters. I have clearly mentioned in my
> previous email where intellectual property rights are involved the issue of
> mass distribution and commercial re-use of data obtained under RTI Act
> becomes more serious. This possibility I have recognised while you may have
> missed reading it. Now you are moving out of OSA's domain and entering the
> IPR domain to win your argument. A common way of obfuscating the issue to
> win an argument is to shift the baseline. That is what you frequently do. It
> may work in courts, it does little good for public debate where
> non-specialist members look for some plain language guidance.
> Thanks
> Venkat
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: rti_india@yahoogroups.com [mailto:rti_india@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
> Of sarbajitr
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 11:13 AM
> To: rti_india@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [rti_india] Re: Rules Governing republishing of Information
> acquired under RTI
>
>
>
>
> Dear Venkat
>
> 1) I am not participating in this (or any) debate as "Moderator". In fact I
> do not even claim to be "first among equals".
>
> 2) Due to shortage of time, I propose a civilised way to settle this debate
> finally - as follows.
>
> A) Venkatesh will apply to the CPIO Bureau of Indian Standards for the set
> of 6 (at last count) CDs containing all BIS Standards at the prescribed rate
> of s 50 per diskette. As per the RTI Act this should cost about Rs.300. It
> is undeniable that these standards are of larger public interest (so there
> should be no problem for Venkatesh to get around the BIS' standard defence
> of 8(1)(d), my favourite exemption). It may help Venkatesh to know that many
> P/As have independently uploaded individual BIS standards used by their
> employees to their own websites.
>
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