Westlaw passe au libre pour les données juridiques australiennes

Signalé déjà sur Précisément, par Emmanuel Barthe, reprenant une info de slaw, on apprend donc que l’éditeur privé Westlaw décide de descendre ses bases payantes de droit australien au profit des bases libres (et incidemment gratuites) du LII australien AUSTLII, qu’il reconnaît de meilleure qualité.

Je ne sais plus quoi en penser. Une victoire du document libre ou celle du ’grand capital’ ? Les deux peut-être.

C’est à mon avis, et plus sérieusement, la démonstration qu’il faut un LII pour la France (ou quelque chose qui y ressemble : est-ce que le SPDDI n’en est pas déjà un finalement ? : il ne lui manque que l’aspect "recherche", donc quelques universitaires, et que les éditeurs reconnaissent qu’ils peuvent trouver un intérêt commercial à disposer de données publiques libres.

Le communiqué de Westlaw :

« Thomson Legal and Regulatory is pleased to announce a new strategic alliance with AUSTLII, (the Australasian Legal Information Institute), which expands and enhances the provision of full text legislation content to our online customers. Research conducted with Thomson customers indicated that customers were seeking access to a comprehensive range of current Australian legislation (Commonwealth, State and Territories jurisdictions).

The new alliance with AUSTLII enables Thomson to significantly improve the range of services that are enriched with hypertext links to legislation, and to expand jurisdiction coverage to cover the States and Territories, as well as the existing Commonwealth coverage. By partnering with AUSTLII, Thomson is able to provide this improved service to our online customers at no additional cost.

From 30 September 2005, references to Commonwealth, State and Territory legislation on Lawbook Online will link to legislation provided by AUSTLII. 13 online titles will be enhanced in the initial batch ; other titles will follow in October.

The existing Commonwealth Legislation databases on Westlaw Australia and Lawbook Online will be removed on 7 th October and 9th October respectively.

The new linking functionality is easy to use. When a user clicks a link to a particular section of legislation on Lawbook Online, a new window will appear containing the full text of the relevant section of legislation. This legislation will be provided by AUSTLII, and will be identified as such by the AUSTLII logo in the top left-hand corner of the new window. From this window, users will be able to perform standard AUSTLII functions (such as search, noteup, or view Next/Previous sections). Legislation appears in its consolidated form ; compilation notes are available to assist with historical research. Users can close the window and return to their Lawbook Online research session at any time.

Thomson plans to similarly enrich content provided on its TAXPOINT and Thomson CPD platforms at a future date. »