[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 32, Volume 5]
[Revised as of July 1, 2005]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 32CFR701.46]

[Page 77]
 
                       TITLE 32--NATIONAL DEFENSE
 
                   CHAPTER VI--DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY
 
PART 701_AVAILABILITY OF DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY RECORDS AND PUBLICATION 
OF DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY DOCUMENTS AFFECTING THE PUBLIC--Table of Contents
 
                           Subpart C_FOIA Fees
 
Sec. 701.46  Aggregating requests.

    Except for requests that are for a commercial use, a DON activity 
may not charge for the first 2 hours of search time or for the first 100 
pages of reproduction. However, a requester may not file multiple 
requests at the same time, each seeking portions of a document or 
documents, solely in order to avoid payment of fees. When an activity 
reasonably believes that a requester or, on rare occasions, a group of 
requesters acting in concert, is attempting to break a request down into 
a series of requests for the purpose of avoiding the assessment of fees, 
the activity may aggregate any such requests and charge accordingly. One 
element to be considered in determining whether a belief would be 
reasonable is the time period in which the requests have occurred. For 
example, it would be reasonable to presume that multiple requests of 
this type made within a 30-day period had been made to avoid fees. For 
requests made over a longer period however, such a presumption becomes 
harder to sustain and activities should have a solid basis for 
determining that aggregation is warranted in such cases. DON activities 
are cautioned that before aggregating requests from more than one 
requester, they must have a concrete basis on which to conclude that the 
requesters are acting in concert and are acting specifically to avoid 
payment of fees. In no case may an activity aggregate multiple requests 
on unrelated subjects.