{"id":35233,"date":"2026-03-16T08:06:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T12:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=35233"},"modified":"2026-03-16T08:06:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T12:06:04","slug":"decatur-prohibits-commercial-use-of-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/16\/decatur-prohibits-commercial-use-of-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Decatur prohibits commercial use of records"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can look at all the City of Decatur records you would like, even have copies made, but you can no longer use those records for commercial purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As many other communities have done, city council recently approved an ordinance that prohibits the commercial use of public records stored in the city&#8217;s electronic data storage system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>State law allows the restrictions to be employed by municipalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"389\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Decatur-City-Hall-from-south.jpg?resize=640%2C389&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31685\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Decatur-City-Hall-from-south.jpg?w=933&amp;ssl=1 933w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Decatur-City-Hall-from-south.jpg?resize=300%2C182&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Decatur-City-Hall-from-south.jpg?resize=768%2C467&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>According to state law, commercial purposes includes selling, advertising, or soliciting the purchase of merchandise, goods, or services, or selling\/loaning the information to others for these purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Officials stressed that it in no way restricts the use of the records for \u201cthe preparation or publication of news, for nonprofit activities, or for academic research.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ordinance states that anyone who violates the city law may be prohibited from obtaining a copy of any further data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com You can look at all the City of Decatur records you would like, even<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,15,21],"class_list":["post-35233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-decatur","tag-featured","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35234,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35233\/revisions\/35234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}