273:, made or received by any officer or employee of any agency, executive office, department, board, commission, bureau, division or authority of the commonwealth, or of any political subdivision thereof, or of any authority established by the general court to serve a public purpose, or any person, corporation, association, partnership or other legal entity which receives or expends public funds for the payment or administration of pensions for any current or former employees of the commonwealth or any political subdivision as defined in section 1 of chapter 32, unless such materials or data fall within the following exemptions found
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See G. L. c. 66, § 10(a) (public records are to be provided to “any person”); see also 950 CMR 32.05(5) (custodian prohibited from inquiring into a requester’s status or motivation); but see G. L. c. 4, § 7(26)(n) (a records custodian may ask the requester to voluntarily provide additional
360:"Those records created by Massachusetts government agencies and institutions held by the Massachusetts Archives are not copyrighted and are available for public use. Copyright for materials submitted to state agencies may be held by the person or organization that created the document."
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prevents state law from overriding the author's right to copyright protection that is granted by federal law. For example, a state agency may post images online of the final appearance of a building under construction; while the images may be "public records", their creator (eg.
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206:. This copyright does not extend to those records created, received, or under the custody of municipalities by M. G. L. c. 66, § 7, unless otherwise stated, nor does this apply to copy-written materials for commercial purposes received by employees of the Commonwealth.
225:"With the exception of situations in which a records custodian is withholding records pursuant to Exemption (n), inquiries into a requester's status or motivation for seeking information are expressly prohibited. Consequently, all requests for public records,
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This template is based on official statements by the
Secretary of the Commonwealth, which are not definitive in the way a statute or a court ruling is. This formal statement only speaks to public records
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Public records are defined in A Guide to the
Massachusetts Public Records Law, Published by William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Division of Public Records, (Updated January 2017) at
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A Guide to the
Massachusetts Public Records Law, Published by William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Division of Public Records, (Updated January 2017) can be found at
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that copyright protections exist for state regulations based on technical codes developed and copyrighted by private organizations. Where such works/allegations are concerned,
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Works that are considered "public records" but were not created by a state or municipal government agency may be copyrighted by their author; the
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all books, papers, maps, photographs, recorded tapes, financial statements, statistical tabulations, or other documentary materials or data,
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or to assist the requester in a lawsuit against the holder of the records, must be honored in accordance with the Public
Records Law."
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The information provided, especially the list of agencies permitted to claim copyright, may not be complete. Wikimedia
Commons makes
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architecture/construction firm) retains copyright rights to the image unless the contract with the agency says otherwise. See:
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Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual: To what extent does federal law preempt state law regarding public inspection of records?
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Uploaded a work by Town of Natick from https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-mantk.html with UploadWizard
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information in order to reach a “reasonable judgment” regarding disclosure of responsive records).
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public record disseminated by a
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Concerned wikipedia editors have noticed that the
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Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
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https://www.mass.gov/files/2017-06/Public%20Records%20Law.pdf
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https://www.mass.gov/files/2017-06/Public%20Records%20Law.pdf
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Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents
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Commons is a freely licensed media file repository.
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