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The records should be free, but our glorious leaders farm them out to private companies (where else are they doing that I wonder?), so those private companies need to recoup their huge costs. I don't begrudge them one bit.
Sorry - I don't understand?
Why should they be free?
I can understand what the poster meant by "The records
should be free" but I suggest he/she does not understand the implications of that statement.
I agree we have already paid for the record to be taken and archived, we have even paid for the facility to access them free of charge at the archive that stores the record, however we have not paid the vast sums it takes to digitise, index and host the records on line. That is the point many if not most of the people who complain about the cost miss.
The local archives and even the National Archive does not have the funds, the equipment or the expertise to host such data sets on line. If they were to do so the taxpayer would have to pay a larger contribution and that would risk the argument that the cost of storing the records outweighed the value of those records to the public. If that were the case the result could be the destruction of many archived records to save money (this has indeed happened in the past when local archives have been cut back resulting in records being thrown out).
The system in place is I believe fair, the taxpayer pays for the storage and the facilities of the National Archive (and local archives) and the user pays for the luxury of accessing data sets in the comfort of their home.
This is a win, win situation which spreads the burden between taxpayer and user.
Cheers
Guy
