Still may get appealed but here's the latest:
http://www.kjonline.com/news/man-wins-case-for-cheaper-electronic-access-to-deeds_2011-04-18.html
And the day after the ruling, my county's website began offering free viewing of deeds and plans. We think they did this to "entice" us into using their website as opposed to MacImage.
Not gonna do it. Simpson is still way ahead of the individual registry sites in terms of price and ease of use. And best of all, he will build a central repository of all state records.
"All" State records? Aye, there's the rub. The Registry closest to me has scanned deeds only back to the early 1980's. So you can't even do a full title search online, much less thorough boundary research. What incentive will they have to scan more stuff once MacImage gets all this up?
I believe that is Simpson's intent - to scan every instrument in each Registry back to Book 1 Page 1.
Re: "I believe that is Simpson's intent - to scan every instrument in each Registry back to Book 1 Page 1."
Has he ever stated this explicitly? Because there has never been the slightest obstacle to his scanning whatever he wants. My understanding is that his intent is to acquire that which the registries have scanned or will scan for him -- a very different project.
I don't believe he overtly made this statement. I am referring to the portion of his Open Letter to Maine County Commissioners and Registers of Deeds found on his website where he states that for Hancock County he hired locals to scan and index that registry's entire collection of land records.
I am making an assumption and am hopeful that he would, over time, apply the same model to the remaining registries.
But Simpson was under contract, and being paid, to do the scanning for Hancock County at the time. Now, if I understand the suit correctly, he's demanding files that the registries have already created on their own, not the right to create files for them. I believe he is already free to start scanning stuff at all or most of the registries, and has not done so.
I'm all for better online access. But if Simpson prevails, I can't see what incentive the registries would have to scan older records, especially the very early ones that only surveyors and the occasional geneologist care about. Whatever profit the registries make on their sites, I can't believe the early 1800's scans (such as Kennebec, for example, has made) are a huge cash crop. So I must believe that there is at least some portion of the public interest in their motivation, and that would likely disappear if the process is privatized.
Even apart from the appeal, Simpson is not yet out of the woods: