Worth pointing out that Germany is having an ongoing battle over our FOIA equivalent, in which a host of people who were bitten badly by it (most notably Jens Spahn) are proposing to allow exactly this kind of prohibitive fee, as well as reducing access to natural persons (so the individual reporter, not the newspaper) and only to people who have a reasonable interest, etc.

Sure, the current form of the law has some issues on the receiving end, but boy is this an obvious move to cover their own corruption better...

In a just world, someone arguing against open records laws because they’ve been personally embarrassed by them would spontaneously combust in shame.