In both areas the answer is that a balance is needed, because legitimate interests are at play.
First, on the cost issue, there is no doubt that the freedom of information and open government reforms impose an additional cost on agencies in dealing with individual FOI Act requests and also in moving information onto the web and making it available in different formats.
To some extent, government accepts that that's a program cost it necessarily bears. And were it not for FOI reform, technology would be driving these changes in any case, but technology also offers efficiencies.
Because it's such an early stage, we don't have any accurate figures on the costs. Government agencies, in my experience, are bearing it happily, though there are concerns. We've tried to take up those issues. For example, I've had discussions with our disability discrimination commissioner, who says if we are too rigorous in requiring that all information published be in PDF, HD, and now Word format, then government agencies will simply stop publishing. We've got to accept that some information will be available in different forms on request but there has to be varying practice. Open government's important enough that we need that adjustment.
Equally, on copyright protection, while government can make freely available the information it has generated, which it calls proprietary interests, a great deal of the information government holds is information on which somebody else holds a copyright interest. When government publishes submissions online, when they publish photographs and so on online, often somebody else has a copyright interest.
Again, there's a need to balance a proper protection of the copyright interest of other holders with free reuse, creative commons licensing of information. Our role is to acknowledge that there's a balance but to drive hard that freedom of information has to be balanced. Don't use copyright and so on as a reason, a justification, an obstacle for not doing more. I think that agencies are now engaged in that balancing process in all areas.