Good point Jan,

The individual records are public however, recently some federal judges have taken the position that the collection as a whole, or significant subset of the whole, belongs to the county. "public" in this case meaning the public entity that has been given the duty of acting as the repository. 

The county clerk of Salt Lake County Utah has taken this approach to protecting the community records. Mr. Ott has gone so far as to copywrite the collection as a work in progress while lobbying his state legislature for community control over the asset they created. A similar approach was tried in Florida but Mr. Ott  put a new spin by copyriting the collection as a work in progress, which it truly and perpetually is.

The federal courts decision in the Michigan case Jarrod wrote about last summer made it clear when the judge ruled the county maintained the right to negotiate the fees for bulk sale. A similar decision came with the more recent case in Cook County, Illinois when First American demanded they be given every document image without any charge at all.