Slashdot Mirror
Democracy in the Dark?
scubacuda writes "Melissa Bar has written an insightful article on how Westlaw and Lexis Nexis restrict public access to case law databases. She writes, '[T]he courts and the court's words belong to us. In more ways than one, the American people have already paid for the case law produced by our courts. Commercial vendors must not be allowed to highjack our law or dictate who may have access to it. By refusing to allow public libraries to purchase electronic subscriptions that can serve their patrons, Westlaw and LexisNexis are closing the door on information.' Individually purchasing the documents over credit card is incredibly expensive, making it virtually inaccessible to most library patrons."
What if you wish to act as your own attorney? Seems like the deck is stacked towards the pros - while understandable for the companies that do this, it is nonetheless your right to represent yourself. This just makes it hard.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
make so much more than IT people. All the lawyers references books are bound in leather and make matching sets, making an expensive, intimidating wall of knowledge buttressing their skills.
In contrast, I look at my bookshelves, and see a hodge podge of O'Reilly books, Dummies books, Various OS Bibles (yeah, heretical, I know), few of which match, and few of which are leather bound.
I'm hoping that once IT stabilizes, O'Reilly can come out with a huge set of matching leather bound tomes that would make an imposing background for my IT work. Then I can charge $100/hour.
Of course, that would cost a lot, raising the barrier of entry, just like Lexus/Nexus does.
A. Rightmann
It isn't like Lexus Nexus and Westlaw have a monopoly on the information. You can still look it up on your own. All these services do is provide convienence via their search engines.
If you don't want to pay for it, look up the information yourself...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Say Lexis Nexis has "hijacked" our access to the cases is not entirely accurate. What you're paying for is the service of bringing you that data.
It's like saying the water company shouldn't be allowed to charge for a natural resource which is rightfully everyone's. Again, you're paying for the service of bringing it to you.
Globe199
"If you don't want to pay for it, look up the information yourself..."
Where? And how many states do I have to drive thru to get to it?
We only pay for the trials, not the searchabilaty of the proceedings. If you have a problem with that, why don't you write a DB that has all that info in it so we can all search it for free? Oh yeah, it costs lots and lots of money! And no, I'm not paying any more commie taxes just so you can search a database of case trials.
" IANAL, but among them there is a saying that goes something like this: 'A man who represents himself has a fool for an attorney.'"
Doesn't stop "/." from IAASL, everytime a topic having to do with the law and/or politics comes up.
www.findlaw.com
My roomate who is a corp lier in NYC uses findlaw.com when he is doing casual research, since he normally has to bill his Lexus time out to a client at a huge fee.
Google Law anyone?
"The only thing I enjoy more than doing the crossword puzzel, is actually finishing it."
You can get access to case law from the courts themselves. Westlaw and Lexis provide a service allowing people to get this case law electronically and indexed very well. Don't we support companies value adding services to free information and charging for it? Isn't that the entire basis of the GNU public license. Some courts are putting their decisions online, where you can get it as well. But Westlaw and Lexis employ people to put all of this information together in a database, index it, and write abstracts. What is wrong with them charging for that?
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
This is just part of the larger picture. The government believes that the american people should be treated like little babies, with everything filtered through a specific viewpoint. This is in line with the fact that courts want to make it hard for people to actually read what is going on in courts, and to have to hear about it in the mainstream press, if they deem it worthy of little babies' attention. It's more an issue of control than anything else. Imagine if *gasp* we could read about all the things the U.S. government has done, without telling us! Oh, the horror! Better not let poor little snookums know about the little peccadilloes daddy's done in the name of democracy, freedom, and everything.
*Ahem* anyway, why would american's want to learn about what decisions the courts are making? Go back to your regularly scheduled trash on that tube in your house, isn't Judge Judy good enough for you?
OK I admit I'm being a troll.. Oh well. Blame it on the code orange alert =P
Without going into the debate over whether lawyers suck, etc... In the article, the author gives 2 competing services that libraries can utilize that are in direct competition. While the author may not like Lexis or WestLaw, there are other options available online, not the mention the old tried and true way of getting your ass down to the courthouse and using the law library there!!! I have never been in a courthouse that didn't have a publicly available law library.
I hope that Ms. Barr realizes that she is a troll, but sadly most do not even know what they are doing.
Lexis Nexus and Westlaw don't own a monopoly on the law, but they do have a monopoly on publishing it via the internet. The only thing that I would like to see is ability for more companies to be able to publish the law, creating competition for these seach engines.
It's expensive to keep all that data online , easily referenced, and searchable. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to gouge us. More competition in this area would be good.
Also, these guys should really talk to google, Lexis Nexus lets you search for free, (though payment is required for viewing). What about a search on Google that mixed references to the law in with your normal search results?
http://www.findlaw.com
http://www.law.cornell.edu/
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/law/
I find this article to be just a bit whiny. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are not hijacking caselaw. Anyone that needs to access the caselaw can go into any library at a lawschool and search through the many, many, many indicies to find the cases and law reviews that they need to gain access to. I find it amazing that people expect to get access to something for free, especially when there has been a huge expense in creating the infrastructure to provide these resources. 15-20 years ago EVERY lawyer had to "look in the books" to find the caselaw that they wanted to cite. Now, it is easier, because of computerized search engines.
Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are not like google, where google just creates a large cache of webpages. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw also provide analyses of the various cases in their databases, as well as a list of every case that has ever cited the case that you are currently read and whether those cases agreed or disagreed with the outcome. The citatations can be extremely important to have because a lawyer does not want to cite a case that has been overruled by a higher court. To provide this service takes money, alot of money. It takes alot of employees to manually check everything is typed in perfectly and it takes alot of computer equipment to run the who database.
There are plently of companies which do this with public data, not just WestLaw, LexisNexis, who are the largest in their field.
The problem is this: The government either outsources the electronic publication of their information, or these companies hired people to go out and scan the public documents.
If it is the latter, then they have every right to charge access to their database- they've complied the data on their dime! However, if the government outsourced the publication, then the database should fall into public domain.
I recall one other database which did title searches on property, which were built completely from public data, and was sold back to the county and state because such a tool did not exisit until then, and to redevelop such a tool wasn't worth the effort (at the time). The data was public domain, but the relationships inside the DB was not.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
In the early nineties, I worked on a website: the Legal Information Institute, which is still going strong, I think. Our goal was to provide public legal info for free. We got our opinions straight from the courts, and (at least then) maintained local copies of legislative text (eg, US Code).
Lexis and Westlaw were going strong back then, too. As tempting as it may have been to just lift their versions of the documents we wanted to publish, we didn't. Their versions were copyrighted, just like a map maker can copyright a map. Following with that analogy, their versions (I believed) even contained intentional, hopefully harmless typographical errors to prove up theft. They also added value by providing analysis and indexing (keyword, etc.) that were totally absent from the public text.
So the point is -- contribute! There are dis-aggregated (free) sources for most of the public information anyone could want. The trick is bringing them together and providing useful analysis. We've done (IMO) a great job of that at LII, and there are other sites as well. When you start to appreciate the labor involved in providing such a service, you start to see why Lexis and Westlaw charge...
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
I'm afraid I don't understand this complaint. I can go down to my local state courthouse, wherein is housed a law library, which is publicly accessible, and avail myself of anything that West pubishes. I don't have to be an attorney to get in; the only difference between this and a public library is that you can't check anything out. I can even get printouts and copies made at the cost of reproduction only. There's a librarian there to help find stuff, although there's a plethora of signs reiterating the obvious - that they cannot offer legal advice.
Clean water, being a prime necessity should be accessible to everyone, even the poorest. Through charging for distribution, you deny this access. Hence water distribution should be ensured free of charge, on your relunctantly paid "taxpayer's money." Same goes for air, food and medical services. Of course, food is a little different, as delivering the same to everyone would contradict some people's belief. That's what welfare money is for.
Culture, you don't need to live, though this is arguable, so a price for the service given may be acceptable. Of course, this price should be fair, but what's fair, esp. in a country ruled by rich parasitic morons?
All your words are belong to us.
This article is a misdirected rant. It is beyond dispute that Lexis, Westlaw, et al. do not own any copyright to public records-- i.e. the actual text of the case decisions. What they do own-- and rightly charge for-- are enhancements they provide: case summaries, research aids, and, yes, the text in a searchable electronic database. It costs them money to develop these aids, and there's nothing wrong with charging for them.
The public is not deprived of access to the actual law-- every law school, almost every courthouse, and many large universities have collections of case reporters, statutes, and other legal materials in book form. Are they as easy to search as an electronic database? No. But they are available and can be used without charge, and, in the hands of a knowledgable person, used as effectively (if not more so*) as databases.
Contrary to the author's position, the internet has made the law much more accessible to regular people than it was a decade ago. Free databases may not have all of the old cases that pay services do, but they represent a huge step forward when compared to pre-internet days. Moreover, for most people untrained in the law, old caselaw is of much less use than current decisions.
*Databases like Lexis and Westlaw are, in some ways, harmful to non-lawyers. It is easy to simply plug words into a search query and assume that the result is reflective of the law on a particular issue. In fact, careful analysis of legal precedent is difficult, and to the untrained, legal databases can yield results that are more misleading than traditional book research, where points of law in a particular category were grouped together, allowing a researcher to see the development of trends or dissenting views.
That's why you pay them: To locate and retreive it for you.
Allow me to make a comparison: Is it a threat to democracy that I have to pay for the morning paper? How am I to stay informed about events if that information isn't free! It belongs to the public!
In both cases the information is still there, I'd just have to find it myself. Sure, I could spend my mornings calling the local police office to hear what's happened since yesterday. I could call various government branches and ask for their latest press releases. I could call all my friends and ask if something interesting happened in their neighborhood. I could call the sports teams I follow and ask how they did yesterday. Or, I can pay the paper 50 cents a day to find these things our for me, my choice.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
LN, like they say themselves, provide business solutions.
If you think your state should provide edited
copies of their court procedings, go and vote for somebody who'll put something like that in place, as opposed to those rabidly pro-business types who'll happily favour near monopoly free market solutions for ongoing campaign contributions.
I guess a searchable federal library is what you're looking for here.
because nobody can understand it anyway. The stuff we refer to as "the law" is an impenetrable maze of barely-English in which lawyers frolic, nothing more. Nobody can make sense of it.
People don't understand that there was time, effort and money put into creating and maintaining these databases. The combination of an entitlement-oriented attitude and a lack of basic economic principles makes Slashdot seem like one big whine-fest sometimes.
The information is available to all with no cost (or whatever cost the government may charge), just not through these services. You are paying for convenience.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Either Lexis and WestLaw should do the right thing here, or the government should invest in putting cases on-line at least so Google can index them.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
When I went to college, the entire school was eligible for the university's Lexis-Nexis site license. This didn't mean just the law school... this meant everybody. Software was available that I could have loaded on my PC, and I could have searched from my dorm room.
The university's library computers (and computer labs) had the software on them as well.
Now here's the interesting part -- if you were a resident of the surrounding towns (not affiliated with the university in any other way!), you were eligible to use the library -- and all its' resources.
Yes, that included Lexis-Nexis. (And JAMA, and The Lancet, and a hundred other publications that cost more than some cars.)
I have no illusions -- Lexis-Nexis was getting a considerable amount of money for allowing such use... far more than they'd ever be able to wring out of a public library. The university needed the subscription, it was just a happy circumstance that everyone else benefited.
Here's to libraries with deep pockets.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
High price causes increased supply. Anyone who needs to earn some cash can publish transcripts.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Westlaw and Lexis are very savvy business enterprises. Through deals with the ABA and/or my individual law school (I'm not sure which), I was required to take instructional classes from both Westlaw and Lexis representatives on how to use their services. Both systems are provided free for law students, as well. Law students form dependencies on Westlaw and Lexis very early, and many rely on the much speedier web interfaces to legal research over the cumbersome task of trudging through dozens of dusty law books (Note to /.ers: Can you blame us? Both services are fantastic from and end-user perspective).
By the time you graduate, you're hooked. The thought of going back to manual research would be like asking an engineer to go back to his Commodore 64. Icky.
I don't think you can blame Wetslaw or Lexis for being shrewd about this. Besides, all the information is available offline in law libraries. It's just in a format that puts you at a decided disadvantage.
-FC
All the information in these programs are still available to the general public. All these programs do is make searching for the info a little easier. You can still go to the law libraries and find the cases in print.
"LexisNexis offered to publish the code in exchange for temporary copyright access to some materials. "
I'm a college student, and we've got Lexis-Nexis and all the other stuff. The neato thing is it's IP based. Soooo, if the school's got a proxy ( or you've found one) you just redirect to the proxy and get free Nexis searches.
I cant say what School I'm with, but I can say this: Search the 134.68.0.0/16 block (Indiana University). It's a gold mine of proxies, FTP's, SMB shares, and other things.
Whether its illegal to do this is if you go to the school or not (its included with tuitution). Anybody who downloads unpaid MP3's, uses warez or whatnot shouldnt care.
I have to say Meah.
.357 has to pay them a fee to get your new address. So does the mafia hit man. It's priced at a level that makes it merely a corporate tool for enslaving the masses. Plus companies love that they can make a few bucks selling your data to them.
...searchable. Stayed at a major hotel/motel chain? Rented an apartment that required a credit check? -- People have been hunted down and killed this way. Abortion doctors, lawyers, spouses, people that owed money to loan sharks, witnesses...etc
Nexis has files on over 1.6 billion people on earth -- everything from what kinds of pizzas your ordered, how you paid for it, what you had on your last one -- to credit information, sweepstakes entries, court records, voting registration, sometimes even travel information, often they collect corporate applications for employment and resumes "truth maintainence" as well.
In comparison to "So they want you to pay per page on case law" -- their other activities make them a far more sinister corporation. Of course, your disgruntal ex spouse with the restraining order &
Don't think your enemies can't find you with it either. Paid your taxes? Got a credit card? Bank account? Registered to vote? Entered a sweepstakes? Mailed in a warranty registration card? Bought a car? Bought a house (deed records)? Live in one of those states that sells drivers license data? Subscribe to any magazines? BMG record club? Bought a Domino's pizza? Even the act of filing the restraining order
You can make your phone number unlisted, change your name, move, open up new accounts -- and their service will even index the changes. So don't think that will help you either.
Onto the topic at hand.. Why isn't Uncle Sam indexing the case files and entering them all to be searchable over the internet?
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Just have one library purchase the documents and make coppies for everyone else anonymously over a p2p network.
And sure you can put up your own version if you have lots of money for servers and bandwidth. It would be an interesting exercise to see how far computer prices and bandwidth would have to come down before you could have a Google like service or one that would be a flat rate.
IAALS (I am a law student). There is no restriction on the actual court documents. You can get them free from a variety of sources. In fact, odds are, if you go to your local law school library, there is probably a referrence assistant sitting at a desk who would love to help you find exactly what you need. (It is a slightly complex system simply because there are *so* many documents to catalog.)
However, to call it a right to get it from Westlaw or LexisNexis (who pays for the hosting, the translation of the documents to electronic format, the additional features such as cross-referrencing, case history, and search tracking, in addition to having access to hundreds of law journals that are not public domain), ignores all the investment they put into it. Not to be a jerk, but if you think it should be free, you can go do it yourself and bear the cost of it.
I am the first to admit that there is too much money and greed in the legal system. Westlaw and LexisNexis are not to blame for that.
Boom Shanka
She's really asserting a right to purchase what she wants, at the cost she wants it. As a law student and a law clerk for a county court judge (in Ohio), I have seen where and how legal information is available.
LexisNexis and West provide FULL access to almost every newspaper, court case, statute, and regulation to all law students, free of charge. Why do they do this? So when you graduate, you're only used to getting information from them, and then will be willing to pay to get it.
But what is she demanding reasonable access to? Full text copies of opinions? Keeping in mind that opinions are generally NOT published initially in electronic text (signed hardcopies are the norm), rather they are scanned, proofread, and annotated by any of the electronic publishers. More often than not, these opinions are online through West or Lexis within hours of their print release. None of these services come inexpensively, and offering free public access to them, while a socially good thing, doesn't necessarily follow as a deserved right.
Furthermore, libraries, and the public in general are not precluded from access to the cases and research (perhaps, just her library). Law libraries still provide the hardcopies of books, which are index searchable and provide cross-references to other cases.
Ohio, the state which the article's author is apparently in charge of some library system, even facilitates online searching of appellate-level cases since 2000 (don't expect the state to transcribe those old appellate cases). Their website is located at: http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/ROD/documents/
I really think she's complaining of the lack of a comprehensive service like LexisNexis or West that could be provided to the public. Given the associated expense for what they do and keeping in mind the information she seeks is already available, I find the point of the article is just a minor complaint.
If you need access to Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw more often than not you can walk into any public university computer lab and search to your heart's content. At the University of Kansas any computer in the University's subnet is able to access Lexis-Nexis - including the dorms.
I asked a lawyer about this the other night. He said that WestLaw in particular offers laws with references to cases. Kind of a cross reference. They pay a lot of lawyers to sit around and write stuff to add value to their content. It's not simply a search engine for court records, there's a lot of value add. That's why WestLaw can charge $300 a month per lawyer.
I don't think it's the same thing as bottling up our case law and making it inaccessable. Anyone can create a competing service, but I think you'd have a lot of work cut out trying to match the value that WestLaw provides.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Why is it that so many proponents of OSS don't carry their philosophy over to free economic activity? Rather than complain about how Westlaw and Lexus Nexus should lower prices or give their information for free, why don't you start up your own searchable database? Why not get a group together to do so? That's how it works in capitalism folks.
If they truly are "gouging" us with prices, and the entire service could be offered considerably cheaper, then offer it yourself!
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Westlaw and Lexis provide an incredibly valuable service: they make the millions of judicial opinions actually useful for lawyers. Basically, they are like the google for judicial documents, except that in order to index all this information, they have to use teams of lawyers rather than pigeon clusters. We do not yet have sufficient technical knowledge to index judicial opinions, and so for now this process is very labor-intensive.
For example, Westlaw and Lexis have teams of lawyers to read over every decision as soon as it's handed down. They have to parse through the legalese to make a judgment about whether the case narrowed some precedent or broadened it. They need to find the most important passages in the opinion and put those clippings into conceptual pigeonholes (the "West Topic and Key" classification system defies comprehension). They need to write little summaries for each of these important passages so that lawyers glancing through thousands of query results will know whether something is relevant (these "Headnotes" are difficult to write). None of these tasks are easy. Not only can we not yet automate them, but a person not trained as a lawyer won't even recognize the relevant things to pick up on. Westlaw and Lexis really do spend an enormous amount of *expensive* human capital (these lawyers don't come cheap) to do the human indexing of the semantic web of legal documents, and that's what they are charging for. Law firms gladly pay up because using the index form Westlaw or Lexis gives you such an advantage over your adversary if he's stucking doing research with law books that he has no chance. The big lawyers these days never touch law books -- they are too disorganized and slow.
Thus, these companies have not "hijacked" the actual collection of case opinions. Even if they wanted to, they can't. Judicial opinions and statutes, like other governmental work products, enjoy no copyright protection whatsoever. This is why you are free to post as many gigabytes of Supreme Court opinions for free downloading as you like.
But just getting the opinions is useless. Either we come up with a technical means to index these documents as effectively as the teams of lawyers at Westlaw (very difficult) or we decide that in the public interest we need to use some of our tax money to support a public interest effort to make a similar database for the public (even more difficult).
Some cities and jurisdictions are finding out that maybe not all cases and information should be easily searchable on the web.
Consider a divorce case. Names, addresses, financial records, employment records, etc, etc.
Home assesment value, taxes.
Now match that against the (sometimes) public bulding permits. Home floorplans and dimensions.
Armed with a little research from the comfort of his own home, a would be burgular or stalker could case the home of a recently divorced woman, figuring out vulnerable access points, when she's at work...a photo from Terraserver, and you can sometimes see fences and tree lines.
Do the job with no one the wiser.
Some things should be hard to get.
that US legal system is flawed.
Case law is trying to make system consistent:
a judgement made by one judge should be the same
as a judgement made by another.
But as time passes, case file becomes huge and
harder to search, thus making an unnessesary strain on legal system and its accessibility.
Case law should be repealed at all.
if that happens, you'll need to get only the
law texts itself, and that will be enough.
If these companies can't provide access at reasonable rates (note that the libraries ARE offering to pay for the companies' work), isn't there a case for the government to (threaten to) provide a similar free service, for the public good? That would incidentally put the companies out of business, but that's too bad. They're basing their services on documents that the state provides.
Of course, the government would never do this in a country where commercial publishers can shut down government sites just by asking nicely.
Lexis and Westlaw provide very valuable services. They do not meerly post the text of the case.
Westlaw and Lexis have a search system which make web search engines look like a children's toy. Also, theattorneys who review _each_ of these cases provide lengthey head notes and check to make sure that each case is still good law. This is all very expensive to maintain.
If they were to allow public libraries to use these systems, lawyers would just send their clerks (who are generally students) to the local public library. How will they then make any money? If they go out of business, you are right back to using books. Not an easy task for someone who does not know what they are doing.
Private entities, such as corporations (gasp!) and individuals are free to purchase these services.
As someone who uses Westlaw every day, I am very grateful for its existence. It would be a shame if some whiney, "everything should be free" leftists ruined such a great resource.
Are you aware that the rights to publish some state codes of laws closed. That is some book publisher owns the rights and you can't just post the whole thing on line. Many years ago while researching a full text search data base our group had to get special permission to use the state's full set of laws as our database. (This was at a state university too...)
Being a part of the institution that actually produces all of these documents (i.e. the US courts), I fail to see why EVERYONE feels entitled to free access to the systems mentioned.
Nothing is being withheld from the public by charging for access to these databases. Anyone can walk down to my office and use the library and the photocopy machine to access all the case law they can stand.
What you're paying for is the convenience of having a computer searchable database of court documents. I actually design a lot of this type of stuff here at work, and I can say first hand that it isn't cheap to build a system to do this. The only difference on my end is that the taxpayers end up funding my project.
Between the cost of an imaging system, an archive (remember we're talking about terabytes of information here, even if you limit yourself to a regional level), a database to index the archive, a web server to interface the system, etc, etc, etc.... you're looking at a very high cost project.
I can only see two reasons that anyone would ever want to build such a system: Save money on operating costs (like we do, in my court), or make a profit selling access to the system (like these companies do). Don't fault the companies for seeing a market opportunity and taking it.
She's not saying this information is free or should be free. She's saying that her public library can't even BUY access to these databases.
From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
And for those who say that the law is always available in hard copy volumes, I say that you can probably count on one hand the number of attorneys who don't, at some time, do research sweeps of Westlaw or Lexis Databases at some time during the research process. The volume of case law is simply too large and it's too easy to miss precedent if you rely only on hard copy.
It's not fair to let only certain parties have access to this information in electronic format - it's not bomb-making information after all. I would also argue that it's not fair for Lexis and Westlaw to set the prices for these databases beyond the reach of public institutions like libraries. As her article describes, these two companies essentially have a lock on the markeplace. Last I heard, extortion still wasn't legal.
I think "Lexus Nexus" is a car dealer somewhere.... :)
Lexis (Nexis is for news; now I guess they're calling themselves LexisNexis) and Westlaw don't have a monopoly (duopoly?) over the public domain information they publish, nor do they just regurgitate public documents. They provide editorial enhancements such as headnotes (flagging various legal issues), in some cases data input (not all of gov't is electronically available, esp. scads of older ones), various ancillary services such as notification when an anticipated case is decided, and, most important of all, a very powerful keyword search engine that blows away any of the free online tools (for example, you can specify how far apart two search terms can be, and other dependencies). You can quickly access hyperlinked services, like a database that will show you every time a given case was mentioned in later decisions, and whether it was mentioned in a good light, disapporvingly, or overruled. These other services are valuable, but could be cheap if they were sold in large volume rather than a select few.
For all this, they are very expensive. Very very expensive. LexisNexis and Westlaw are like a really cool drug that's coming off patent -- now anyone can do it. So let's run them out of business. I think it's a great idea, but we have to pay for somehow. For example, I'm surprised the author give short shrift to the laborious OCR scanning these companies did of old cases. Not only do the cases have to be scanned, but the resulting files have to be marked up for things like page numbers. The information is free, copying it is not -- even RMS says that.
It is more urgent than the author makes it out to be: it is becoming nearly imperitive to have access to these databases to practice law. Judges really do expect you to know about that case that came down 12 hours ago. The volume of decisions published increses exponentially. When the time required to hunt down the books becomes more expensive than the cost of using the database, a rich firm luxury becomes critical.
I think we shouldn't ask "how can we force these guys to lower prices" but "why isn't there an affordable public database of this material". Not just a server crammed with decisions, but also an affordable method of searching it. There is just so much data now that the Library of Congress card catalog is obsolete.
It would not be too much to expect the subscriber to contribute their own processing power to the task, or even to somehow distribute encrypted duplicates of various documents around the Net to make a huge, redundant, high performance database. Besides helping litiagants, this would also help the courts by fostering better lawyering, and help the people to learn about the law for itself.
Why not do it right now? Oh yeah, this would be really expensive. But as firms like Google have shown, there are high-performance distributed solutions that work.
Read the article. "LexisNexis offered to publish the code in exchange for temporary copyright access to some materials." These guys want to
copyright the law. That's the bitch.
They are trying to pass a law to create an opt-in list. If you don't signup for the list it will be illegal for telemarketers to call you. After all isn't that how it should work?!?!
She wanted a company with probably huge overhead, to sell a public library a license that would allow them to make their database open to the public. Why would I as a consumer ever pay for their service if the library had it, therefor they just lost my money, and all the other people that would go to the library use the service and not have ot pay for it. And since this is a service that is of specific purpose, like reference materials, they could stand to lose a lot of money. She could just get the records in the same place these companies do.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Yes, but why shouldn't the library be able to subscribe to this service for the benefit of their patrons?
Whether it's a prudent use of a library's resources is another matter altogether, but to _block_ a subscription request from a library is just nasty.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
It rains from the sky and runs through rivers, so I could get it at no charge from there. Why doesn't the store give it to me for free?
They're restricting public access to the water!
/syle
Should that not be the key point?
The refusal to allow public libraries to purchase?
--
Han Tacoma
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
Seriously though, Title 17 states that all government works are to be free and available. There are state funded universities and libraries that maintain HUGE collections of government documents that you can use for absolutely no charge. These databases are Value-Added services. I dont go demand a free GPS unit from garmin because the satellites are owned by the govt.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
once again slashdotters wade in without regard to the facts...
.02c
The problems with Westlaw and to a lesser degree Lexis/Nexis are NOT that they are claiming to own the law -- OR the ability to search their damn databases...
1) Many jurisdictions sign contracts for these companies to be the *official* source of caselaw and statutes, and while some of the jurisdictions make adequate provisions for full and open public access, many don't and that leaves folks with minimal resources in very bad positions with regards to access. they don't make it easy to get info when they're not required to.
2) And this is a biggie... While West Pub. isn't claiming copyright on the actual law itself, they do claim copyright to the citation system. i.e. how one refers to a case when you're writing a brief, etc. Many jurisdictions *require* you to cite using a West method. When another service tries to duplicate this, West sues their asses off. So you can't do research someplace else and then be able to properly cite your sources unless you use the West service to get the proper cite. Sure, you can go to the library and find the West dead-tree version and get the cite, but that pretty much kills all the benefit of electronic research don't it??
I don't lay the blame with the publishers... they're just capitalist swine like the rest of us trying to maximize their $$ (albeit in a fairly ruthless fashion if you ask me...), I blame the various govts for supporting these pseudo-monopolies for so long... the legal publishers and the legal policy makers are so deep in bed with each other it is sickening... hmmmm... wonder why there hasn't been more reform before now...
my
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Federal courts are all slowly implementing PACER.
You can view information for 7 cents/page.
Different circuits implement it to differing levels.
Some circuits image everything they can and throw it on Pacer, others just throw the docket outline online.
Involved parties can protect sensitive information via requests to the judge for filing under seal (not for public viewing).
From her article,
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
So if you go to the main branch of the local library system you won't be able to access Lexis or Westlaw case law databases. I did a search of the online site of the local two library systems nearest me (Alexandria and Arlington, VA) - they don't even mention offering access to Lexis or Westlaw.
The only issue I see is the fact that they bought out a number of other publishers. If these publishers were competitors to them, it could be considered restraint of trade. (I'd look up the rulings, but it would cost too much money to do so. ;-)).
On the fact that they charge high prices for this, I agree with everyone else, the info costs money to put together.
Once again, media being the media, misinformed and incorrect. All the caselaw that is available through LexisNexis and Westlaw is available to the public. Just not in an anotated searchable format. That's what is being charged for.
adding an expensive database will make it worse. For example, most libraries require a photo ID before issuing a library card. Additionaly, they want to know name, phone number, and address! Some libraries keep track of your book habits, so they can pass them on to Mr. Ashcroft and the rest of Big Brother, Inc.
Surely, this system is ripe for abuse by overly broad security directives and direct marketing. Reading books is an American right-one that I should be able to exercise without compromising my privacy.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Most counties also maintain free law libraries that are open to the public. Even little unus equis county seats in PA like where I live.
gf.
Lots of petrified grits
VersusLaw is $8.95 per month for a basic subscription, is fairly comprehensive for case law (although not entirely), and offers boolean searching. IAAL, and I find it to be a useful tool. Of course, any law library should have regional reporters as well as federal and its own state's stuff. You can find these libraries at law schools and courthouses.
Without a Westlaw page number, it is very difficult to cite a case in a court. Our law librarian used to rage on about this.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Please wrap your wang with plastic sheeting and duct tape.
Maybe its time to start the free law gutenberg project!
I used lexisnexus to research lawsuits agains't the company I was hired by. The university in 1987 had a humongous machine that was in the Graduate library hidden in a room where you accessed it via a 300 baud modem although 9600 baud modems were available at the time. The machine was designed to use only 300 baud. Thus, it was very time consuming and slow. I can imagine what the bill would have been.
LexusNexus also gives out the business licenses of the company for every state it is in. This includes the company names, the names of CEO and vice president and estimated earnings and body count. It was interesting to find out that the company I worked for had different names in various states for the same business line so they could compete on the same local,state and federal contract under different names(improves chances of winning). It was interesting also to find out that the people who ran the company as CEO and vice prez etc changed places in titles in each of these companies although in reality, they know who owned the company (CEO) and who the vice prez etc was. Hmmm! I wonder what benefit this would have by having the "real" CEO pretend to be the vice and the vice "pretend" to be the CEO in the other company (sometimes under different names) in each state...
So LexusNexus shed alot of light on the company I worked for. Needless to say it was an Indian company and I learned alot about how the biz game is played not only in H1B's but in winning contracts.
Without using Lexis/Westlaw, virtually every case published is available for free at the court's site and in free databases such as www.findlaw.com and others.
Simple answer: Because the business doesn't want to, and they have that right.
Is it greed? Perhaps. but if you think their business practice is bad: don't give them your green. Encourage others not to either. Write them and complain. Write an OSS version of a case database. When you make copies of documents make a couple extra sets and distribute them for free to those that need them, that's what you want them to do afterall.
Each search of their database costs them money, and I don't imagine the DB was cheap to build to begin with. They want to get their investment back and make a profit. So I don't see an issue at all here.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
And that, right there, is the one valid complaint about Lexis/Nexis. They should be perfectly free to offer this text, categorize it and provide it with a nice search engine for any amount of money they want to charge. They should not be free to introduce insignificant changes (like adding page numbers) and then misuse copyright to prevent others from redistributing those texts. That, in my opinion, constitutes an abuse of the copyright laws, which are supposed to promote progress and not simply secure a business model. It's entirely different if they're offering real, substantive commentary, but anything less is ridiculous.
I propose a small modification to modern copyright laws that requires individuals to make more than minor changes to qualify their derivative gov't work for copyrights. Adding page numbers, minor formatting and spelling should all be discounted. Copyrights on such material should be granted only where substantial original material has been offered and that offering advances progress. Essentially, we would roll back the copyright laws to the original level specified by the first Congress, but only wrt gov't documents.
For example, the author claims that adequate legal information is not available through online resources. The author then cites a case where she successfully researched a topic using various University online resources. The author then complains it would have faster if she could have used the commercial resources. Well, duh,. It would have probably been even faster if she had just hired a lawyer in the first place.
Another example of this lack of focus is the need for such packaged information for the general public. In one place the author complains that older court cases, say before 1990, are often unavailable to the general public. The author later states the statistic that in 88% of divorces at least one litigant is self represented, which in 52% both parties were self represented. First, this statistics says nothing about the number of litigants that would have benefited from 20 year old case law. Second, this is very close to lying with statistics as it says nothing of the people who would have benefited from any legal representation at all. I suspect that many of these cases involved no children and no significant property, in which case the litigants may have decided to file the routine paperwork themselves rather than hiring a lawyer.
As I have mentioned before, a library is primarily a place where professionals assist the general public in accessing information. Access of said information is beyond the ability of the general public, which is why we need people with an MLS to help us. A library should have a wide array of free information available to the public. However, the information will necessarily be limited and perhaps even not as transparent as it could be. It is true libraries are critical to out democracy, and public information should not be allowed to become private information for the purposes of denying such information to the public. However, it does not seem that does not seem to be what is happening in this case
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Actually, using the West digests at your local law library is often easier and more efficient than computerized terms-and-connectors research. Incidentally, the headnotes (and the West key numbers) predate Lexis and Westlaw by over 100 years.
how is everyone this morning?
--
Simontek
...wow, you don't think you can charge a $100/hour in IT?
what do you do?
boy, I'm certainly not going to jump on the GNU/Linux bandwagon if it means lowering my rates...
Because, other than convenience, why should law offices and others in the legal profession pay for these services when they could get it for free at the library? They could just send a team of paralegals to the library to search for appropriate cases and then report back with the results. At least, this is what these companies think.
Realistically though, legal professionals would probably still pay to have access in their offices. The convenience of full-time access to these databases most likely outweighs the costs of their use.
Another factor might be that library systems would want access at a discounted price. Conceivably there could be more use of the services at a large public library than there would be at a large law firm, but they would be paying less than the fees for a small legal office. Factor in the increased strain on their servers for database access and searches for a lot less money and you begin to understand why they aren't too quick to offer subscriptions to library systems.
Here is a story from almost two years ago on a case where there was a debate on the text of the law itself being copyrighted by a company. Seems a guy had the temerity to believe that since he and all his neighbours were bound by the regulations of the local building code, he should be able to post that text on the web. A court had ruled that he could not do this, that a company owned all rights to publication of the code.
This story today is not even on the same plane. Neither of these companies claim to own the text (the content) of the law they catalog: all they do is make it far more convenient to search. That's a service, nothing more. Sure, it would be nice if the government made an effort to publish the law for the public in a way that didn't require these expensive services, but they don't. Complain to Congress about it: it's not LexisNexis' fault! Without their service, who knows, you might be spending even MORE for a lawyer who has to do manual research through paper books and such.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
You're not going to finnish it with spelling like that"
I knew you idiots would make the purchasing books argument and I would have to point out the significant difference. What is the annoyance of getting out a book from the library. having to take it back, or if your like me you like owning books, but case law is not books, it's not something your going to keep around for entertaining reading. And besides you can print your case law out and take it home. Now, if the library wants to be charged for each individual person that uses their database, then so be it. Besides this is America, and if they don't want to give access to it to libraries than why don't all the libraries of a state start their own database, I am sure the Gov has to keep track of this stuff in a database anyhow, they could just do it themselves and make it public. Or you yourself could get all of the data and sell it to libraries if you like.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I stand corrected. I've been in academic libraries so long, the public library system seems like a distant dream.
Oh that's right cause I am going to be reading course docket on my toilet or while I am laying in bed and will want to keep it around for years like a book.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
That's not a good response. While it's nice that there's some spotty availability of publicly reported caselaw online, you'll find you can't actually use any of the information you find this way, because West blocks everyone else from providing the official citation. Courts require any citations to provide the West Publishing volume and page number, so once you found something useful, you'd have to look it up again in Westlaw, Lexis, or the bound volume. West claims a copyright on the page numbers, even though the information is public. While they've worked out a deal with Lexis to provide the page numbers, the public is left twisting in the wind. See "West's Copyright Claim."
Now THAT'S worth $300/month!
Actually, I'd say that tens of millions sounds pretty cheap. :)
Law is an industry worth billions, and with people willing and able to pay for service. If something could be developed that rivaled Lexis and Westlaw for accuracy and efficiency, even law firms would switch. Even the law librarian author was willing to pay, just not very much. Obviously, though, you'd need to apportion rates by ability to pay, and someone needs a heckuva lot of startup money.
Eventually, we WILL see some sort of national public initiative to do this, and the resource will be taken for granted as the public library. Wasn't it Gingrich who promised to get gov't online? Well, it's not a new idea, it just needs someone behind it.
Loislaw (http://www.loislaw.com/), Quicklaw America (http://www.quicklaw.com/), VersusLaw (http://www.versuslaw.com/), and Fastcase (http://www.fastcase.com/) ALL offer online legal databases, and all of these are less expensive than Westlaw and Lexis.
Westlaw and Lexis provide attorneys with a value added product: they provide additional commentary to the cases. They each employ an army of attorneys who read EVERY case and compile the headnotes, as is the case with Westlaw, or the core concepts, as is the case with Lexis.
This commentary is copyrighted material, and the companies have a right to charge money for it. After all, most county libraries have cases and statutes in hardbound form. Believe it or not, there was a time when most lawyers used books for research. IT CAN BE DONE!
This article is the usual communist ranting about private industry not giving away products for free.
The writer should get a life.
However, they should offer something better than LexisOne or whatever they offer to smaller pockets.
access to 5 years of case law is ridiculous. In the last 60 years so much suspect law has been written nad jammed through Congress that ALL new laws in the last 5 years depend on case law created on suspect legislative intent.
The core of our legal system is defined during the first 50 years of court cases, up until the courts started allowing attorneys to act on behalf of petitioners.
My Corp Lier Roommate here in NYC says, depending on the type of search, Nexus costs his firm $10-60 a MINUTE!
I wish I made between $600-3,600 an hour.
"Hello, I'd like to start getting the New York Times delivered to my home"
Your comparison is invalid. No one wants this stuff for free. They are trying to BUY the database for the library, with a limited number of concurrent users, and neither company will sell it to them, even though they sell to universities, individuals, and companies. To use your analogy, you have ponied up 50 cents for the paper, but the paper company refuses to sell to you despite selling to your neighbors.
Read a bit before you post, for pete's sake. Oh, wait... this is slashdot.
Only $100 an hour? Most IT consultants I know already get more than that. I've never met a lawyer that billed less than $150, and even that is ridiculously low. A first year associate, two months out of law school, is billed out at around $200 an hour by large firms.
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
If you want to whine about not having access to this type of information (eg caselaw etc) then you should gripe to the DOJ or some other .gov entity. They are the ones who have decided not to publish their information electronically. LN and WL have gone to considerable expense to put together rather large databases. Having put in some time with LN I know they personally have case law dating back to the civil war. Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to make a database that large??
LN also has information about everyone (where applicable) including DMV records, deed transfers, and motor vehicle registration. (the earlier comment about what you got on your pizza was a tad far fetched). They recently added Hoovers company database into their own services. You can get expirian credit reports on companies (probobly ppl too), their business is akin to the Stephenson Snow Crash novels idea of a dominant information clearing house.
I think Ms. Barr has some relevant issues to discuss. tax payers have paid for this information. I just think it's misdirected, ask the DOJ to put all their records online. OR start filing a ton of FOIA papers and start your own.
Companies certainly shouldn't be given copyrights on laws, building codes etc, which the public paid to create. On the other hand, if somebody like Westlaw has taken the trouble to produce a legal database searching system that is faster or better than what's publicly available, I don't see that they have to give it away for free. Finding and filtering the information is a valuable service.
Such services should be publicly available, but rather than force the companies to give them away I would rather see the government hire these companies as contractors to produce public access systems. Certainly don't give them ownership of information, but by all means pay them to do the job of organizing it and to produce access engines that the public, including libraries, can use.
It seems incredible that people have to pay someone $100/hour to tell them if something they want to do is legal. Yet the list of legally hazardous activities grows constantly as the law gets more complex. This is something computers can definitely change, and case law databases are only the beginning. Imagine a legal expert system that would listen to your situation and give you a competent legal opinion, whether it's for a criminal defense or adding a second story to your house. I doubt that such systems will exist anytime soon, but I hope that when they do the government will have the foresight to buy them from the developers and make them freely available.
The writer is a librarian who wishes to provide a place where patrons can view and search legal rulings. But the two leading providers *won't license to libraries* without per user charges. It's not that they don't have a product or he's insisting they give it to him for free, they won't let him lend it.
Along the way he complains that all of the free services are incomplete in many ways and not a substitute for LN and WL.
So, the complaint "You can still look it up on your own." misses the point. The patrons of the library *can't* look it up on their own because the library can't provide the information.
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Melissa Bar has written an insightful article [...]
...or something. :)
The real moderation of course is "(Score:5, Troll)" with
Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation +5
50% Insightful
20% Overrated
10% Underated
10% Funny
5% Interesting
5% Troll
Extra 'Insightful' Modifier 2 (Edit)
Total Score: 5
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
I charge atleast $115 an hour for network work.
"As someone who uses Westlaw every day, I am very grateful for its existence. It would be a shame if some whiney, "everything should be free" leftists ruined such a great resource."
Strawman. She wasn't asking for "free". Second you may not be aware of this, but most libraries limit access in some manner to these databases. Not accessable via the internet. Have to drive downtown. Limited number of computers. Time limits on said computers. Any lawyer who's sending clerks to do all this, is shooting your "it's the convience" argument down. That's not convient, and it's not cost effective either.
I am a former employee of a Lexis-Nexis subsidiary called Lexis Document Services. I know getting information from any level of the government is not free. You either pay by taxes or user fees.
For example, if look up information at the US District and US Bankruptcy courts they charge fees.
LDS performs hard copy searches of court records in municiple, county, state, and federal jurisdications across the US. The customers paid for someone to physically to go to clerk offices and request documents on pending suits, pending judgements, UCC filings, bankruptcies, etc.. The customer could have done this themselves. They would have to know which clerk to search and still have to pay a fee to the jurisdication for the documents.
Heinlein would say TNSTAAFL
I rely on Westlaw and Lexis on a day to day basis to research case and statutory law. Legal research is indeed possible without them, but it takes a lot more legwork. Your local courthouse law library likely has all of the reporters for your jurisidiction as well as the more recent volumes for others. With old-fasioned digests and headnotes you can locate the law you are looking for - law students are still forced to learn this method before accessing the online services.
There is a great deal of law available online - see www.findlaw.com for a good example. What Westlaw and Lexis do is collect it all, substantively categorize it (by headnotes or key numbers which are West's legal work product) and make it available for searching at a level much more advanced than Google etc.
While I am sympathetic to the library's plight, West has a right to run a business and the cry for "freedom of information" cannot change that.
Most of the posts I've read here have been along the lines of 'The author of the article is just having a rant', and 'Hey, these guys have to get paid.. They did work, why does she want them to give it away for free?'.
Reading the article more closely gives the real picture.
The article's author is aggrieved that the two major Law information sellers refuse to sell a database to a public library.
Now, if this database wasn't for sale, fine, and no problem.
However, it is for sale. To libraries. Except these libraries are at Universities, and Governmental libraries.
The gripe is that a public library isn't treated in the same way as an academic library. In other words, you need to shell out the money to go to higher education that some interested layman would not be able to afford, to get access, or you would have to shell out the full cost of commercial access on the online version.
I don't think paying for the data was the problem, just that the public library was told they couldn't renew an existing subscription, or commence a new one, although it was available to Academic and Government libraries.
Which badly hits out at the guy in the street that wants to read!
It would be a sad world if the latest data on Comp Sci, or Chemistry or Physics were only held in Academic libraries, instead of available to the interested layman.
It's not a case of getting things for free, it's about the cutting off of the information to the average person. And I must admit, that irritates me.
Malk
What I'm saying here is that the current situation is less than ideal. The bar required to create a valid "derivative work" has come down too far, and it should be raised-- at least in the case of gov't-produced works. Minor formatting and page numbers should not be considered "original" enough to constitute a valid copyright, especially where the material is probably designed simply to prevent redistribution for purposes of financial gain-- rather than to actually advance the progress of arts and sciences.
Are you saying that this is unreasonable?
As an attorney, I can tell you why we subscribe to Westlaw or Lexis instead of using the libraries available to us: CONVENIENCE. If I had to go to the library for every case I worked on in a day, I'd waste an enormous amount of my time. The cost of these services is perfectly acceptable to me because I can do all the same research, more efficiently, from the convenience of my own office, which makes me more productive.
We need to understand that "entitlement" does not apply to private sector resources. If you would benefit enough from a service that the price is reasonable, pay it. If not, stop complaining.
If this is a concern why isn't somebody starting an open-source type -- or more specifically a commons-based peer-produced -- database of public cases. I imagine this would be something of a combination of the Guttenberg project and the Google Open Directory project. People could donate small chunks of their time to scan and index cases.
As has been pointed out, cases themselves are not copyrighted, nor are they copyrightable. The lesson of open source is not that things should be free, but that they can be free if a community is coordinated in such a way as to make a given product available.
So, someone put up a website, a mysql database, and everyone else start firing up those scanners.
(IANAL, but the thing has precedent: "Pro Bono" legal work.)
Which of the lead attorneys in Eldred v. Ashcroft worked "Pro Bono"?
Answer: Both of them.
Plaintiff's counsel worked for no pay (pro bono) against the CTEA (anti Bono), while defendant's counsel worked for pay for the CTEA (pro Bono).
Will I retire or break 10K?
That "right" is highly disputable. They are attempting to discriminate in their business practices and prevent the public from having equal access to what is really public domain information.
Both companies are being highly stupid here and are really playing chicken with their business. The ALA is not some haggard band of hackers. They are well respected and well organized. They are just the sort that could scream loud enough to get access on their own terms.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What if someone (group) bought the whole database and put each case up on the web? Granted, it would take forever, but the cases are copyright protected--they can't be, they're not original works. So everyone interested could chip in some time and/or money and you're set.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Lost Sheep to Shepard, you got your ears on?
If she thinks the databases should be free how about she makes her own database and serves it up for free. She wouldn't have the cash to even begin. Lexis Nexis is a quality database that I have used on a few occasions, the reason it's decent is that people are constantly putting money into it. Anything that is free or you just have to walk to your library to get will end up in a lesser quality database. It takes a lot of money to staff the people required to run a huge database website like Lexis Nexis.
The compilation copyright issue goes away when the opinions are placed in a a searchable database, because the ordering and presentation by the publisher has been removed. That's from the famous Feist vs. Rural Telephone case, the one that ruled that phone book content is not copyrightable.
Despite having won, HyperLaw doesn't seem to have come out of this too well.
The author of the article is half right, but she is blaming the wrong people. All public information, including prior decisions and the supporting case files (briefs, orders, motions etc.) should be a matter of public record (i.e. publicly accessible) unless filed under seal for a particular reason (privacy, national security etc.) In fact, as has been pointed out, most of the information is publicly accessible...just not online. If you go to the courthouse you can request copies of briefs, orders, and opinions for the cost of reproduction. If you go to a public law library (statehouse, courthouse, university, etc.) you will be able to access the print versions of the reporters (the books that hold the case law).
However, the failure of public agencies (courts, legislatures, regulatory bodies) to make their information easily accessible is not the fault of West and LexisNexis, who merely profit on the need for a public service the government is not providing. The government should take the blame, and people should advocate more (and better) online government resources. As an attorney, I am constantly frustrated by even the best publicly available government websites. (A notoriously bad one is the Gov't Printing Office (GPO) which offers the entire U.S. Code (statutes) and Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) on gpoaccess.gov). Attorneys hunger for better public free (as in beer) tools as well, since we don't like having to charge our clients the high rates West and Lexis set (and some clients refuse to pay for electronic research too).
West and Lexis do add significant value to the raw text of the case law and statutes. The added value is incredibly expensive to create, maintain and offer, so West and Lexis deserve to charge for the information they add (and prior cases have held that West cannot claim copyright to the actual text of the opinions. Also, contrary to previous post, West has been unable to enforce a copyright on page numbers in citations, what they have a copyright on is the pagination itself, so you cannot xerox a West book, pdf it and call it "free." However Lexis can cite to cases by their page number in the West reporters. The only exception is documents that are in Westlaw that are not in the print versions. There is an arbitrary page numbering West uses called "star numbering" because the numbers are proceeded by an asterix. Since those numbers are entirely the product of West's electronic database, they cannot be reprinted in other sources -- but no one uses them anyway).
Finally, the author seems to criticize the "monopoly" lawyers have in the law (even though, as she points out, in some courts a majority of people represent themselves). Law, just like a highly complex programming language, or a hardware architecture, is a body of knowledge that is neither straight-forward, nor easy to acquire. Lawyers spend 3 years in lawschool (at great cost), and take a comprehensive bar exam to earn their credentials. The reason this is necessary is that the law is not something you can "just look up," any more than you could learn to write English by using a dictionary, learn to program by using a programmers reference to a specific language, or learn to be a civil engineer by looking in a building code. Practicing law involves the application of particular facts to a set of rules, regulations and prior cases (or lack thereof), coupled with a knowledge of the system, and how it works.
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
Seems to me that if the public is restricted to accessing Westlaw, Lexis-Nexis and law libraries (that I know of, not too many state law repositories allow non-lawyer access), then ignorance of the law can be an excuse!
No question you'd be laughed out of the courthouse with that argument, however, how can one "know the law", if one doesn't have access?
-Anthony
their versions (I believed) even contained intentional, hopefully harmless typographical errors to prove up theft.
Only original works of authorship are subject to copyright, and introducing typos into a public domain work such as a federal court opinion does not create an original work of authorship according to this FAQ answer at the Copyright Office.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But you CAN go to a library and browse newspapers. Also, newspapers are cheap, and if you really have no 50 cents, you can find one lying around on the street, or in a cafe, or on a bus all the time.
Considered harmful.
There is no copyright in numbering pages.
Slightly off topic but there is a big tangental issue going on here that could effect everyone in the US (an other places that use a similar system of law).
...a little later...
I have no issue with someone writting what they interpet a law or a court ruling means. Copyright that and charge a bazillion dollars for it if you want (that is how lawyers make their living after all). I am however offended that someone can take government buisness which is conducted publicly and try to enforce a copyright on it.
I suspect The Supreme Court of the United States will sooner or later have to lay down a ruling on this very issue of copyrights vs law and public domain. Its starting to crop up in too many places now to ignore the effect of copyrighted material written into public law.
Traditionally (English Common Law??) any laws written by legistlative bodies are automatically in the public domain. Anyone is free to read up on what the legistlature passes for laws. How else is a private citizen expected to follow the laws if they aren't available publicly? Likewise, records public court proceedings held in public are in public domain (how do you expect to invoke privlage if you invovle 3rd parties?).
However in recent history there has been a shocking turn of enforcing "copyright" on written laws and court proceedings. I am not a lawyer but I can see where this can lead too:
A coporation says "We believe this publicly funded and publicly available thing we are building for you, a public government should be handled like this" they drop a lengthy book on the table
A public government says "You are right. These are good rules. I'll write up a law to make sure everyone who uses the publicly funded and publicly available thing will abide by these good rules."
A private citizen says "I want to hook into the publicly funded and public available thing to reap some benifits from my tax dollars. How do I do that?"
A public government says "The law says you have to ask a corporation over there."
A corporation says "Okay that will be $100 for the book, sign the NDA, and you can not reproduce it."
See the issue? I really hope the The Supreme Court takes a look at the issue or it will end up biting all of us in the ass. How can people claim public domain things like law as copyrighted material?
From Copyright Office FAQ:
Will I retire or break 10K?
Mod this up. From reading the linked article I understand that the Government has given West Publishing a defacto monopoly on citations (particularly interesting is that judgements can actually be reworded during the publishing process - so even attempting to find an independent source is doomed). Its a given that monopolies need to be regulated.
That's not entirely a bad idea. I'm always a bit hesitant to require a company to provide something "for a resonable fee" because that is many times up to interpetation. But to require them to provide their database in a plain text format for a reasonable fee, but allow them to continue to provide the value added service of making it easily and quickly searchable seems fair. However, I think that if we are to demand electronic copies of case law, we should be looking to the government, not private corporations.
I don't think that this is a case of corporate welfare. Just because the company is using public data doesn't mean that they are gaining any benefits from the government that is exclusive to them. This data is publically available to everyone.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I think many of the ./ posters are missing the point. This isn't about Lexus/Nexus and Westlaw being denied reasonable profits. It's about using their near-monopoly to set prices and purchase terms that are at odds with the public interest. Some insight is buried in Lexus response: "although none of the plans would allow her to do what she wanted to do -- give unlimited, unmediated access in multiple locations to the LexisNexis legal information service at an unrealistic price."
./'ers are a bit of a hypocritical bunch...
Ms. Barr was not asking for unlimited access, although concurrent access is not a popular option for commercial software publishers these days. More importantly, she was asking for unmediated access - which Lexus evidently feels is inappropriate for the unwashed masses.
How is this different from the RIAA flexing it's muscle to stop file sharing? Aren't those also copyrighted works? Aren't the record publishers also entitled to reasonable profits? (Yes, I'm playing the devil's advocate here.) It's seems the
Findlaw is a great resource and you can (or used to) be able to pull up all sorts of case law and analysis (for free). There were paid parts of the service as well, but free went a long way.
In my Regulatory class in grad school, we were expressly told to use Westlaw for our case analysis and research. That meant treking over to the library in the middle of winter (it gets cold in Indiana) to use the clunky and unintuitive Westlaw client. Instead, I stumbled onto Findlaw and did all my research there. With cases being categorized nicely and hyperlinks abounding in the texts (case histories and such having hyperlinks to other cases), I did the majority of my research on Findlaw (and linked information sites). Of course, then I had to trek over to the library to find all of my Westlaw reference numbers... but it was still easier and took a lot less time.
The news that West has acquired Findlaw is a bad omen in my book. Findlaw was built for and from the Web. Hopefully they don't mess up a good thing.
At least in this country, the role of the bar in mediating the interpretation and application of law has been recognized as having a constitutional aspect - the legal profession is required for the rule of law, upon which any constitutional society, is based to function. This is why solicitor-client communications are privileged. Is there an aspect of elitism? Probably - in Canada, solicitor-client communications are privileged, but doctor-patient and priest-penitent communications aren't, except on a case by case basis. I don't have a problem with that personally, but I suspect many would.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
i'm on your side. instead of complaining about the companies not providing the service, perhaps we should form our own public database. granted we would need the help of many lawyers to do this.
-- john
There is a law that states that non-classified government documents fall under the public domain. This means that anyone can request the information, and cannot be charged for it (though a processing/handling fee may be applied). Some courts aren't happy about this (and have signed illegal exclusivity agreements with companies like Lexis and WestLaw, but VersusLaw's owner has been pretty good about reminding them of the legalities), but most courts are have web pages and post their daily proceedings for anyone to grab (and grab they do). The trick is finding the web pages, and then getting around things like image-based pdf's with no actual text in them, etc.
When you pay for access at places like VersusLaw, WestLaw, etc., you are not paying for the case data (most of these places offer free searching, and Lexis even offers free recent case data for many federal jurisdictions), you're paying for the value-addition of the search engine, formatting, spell checking, etc - things that hard-working, relatively low-paid data entry people have laboriously checked, typed, scanned, etc.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
see this link
http://web.lexis.com/xchange/ccsubs/cc_prods.asp
They offer pay by credit card, and even allow you to have unlimited access to their service within a time period. (though not to everything it seems)
I don't think you have to be a fully accredited lawyer to get access to their system. You just have to pay them.
Not to nitpick, but her last name is Barr, not Bar. As in barr.htm.
However, the way Westlaw and LexusNexus work is kind of like crack.
They get the lawyers hooked while they are young, by offering reduced or even free subscriptions while they are in law school. They then charge the hell out of them when they go into practice.
Lawyers are generally a cheap bunch. If they could go (or send a legal aide) to the library to look up stuff on the cheap, they would.
If you don't believe me, go to your nearest law school, find the library, and ask them how many overdue books they have that are checked out to law firms. Then ask how long they've had them.
Try not to look too incredulous when the answer is on the order of years...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
In my previous life, I worked on information and billing systems for law offices, and I can vouch for that. I converted billing rate tables for big law firms and some of the senior partners billed 600-800 bucks an hour (or more for an actual court appearance). This was also over a decade ago, and somehow I doubt the rates have come down any.
I won't go into how a billing systems were designed from the ground up to cheat clients. I'm not saying all lawyers would do this (far arom it: #include <some_of_my_best_friends_are_lawyers.h>), but there had to be some level of demand for it for the invoicing system to support it from the ground up.
I have to shake my head every time I see some weed head proposing the "information is free" concept. Yes, it would be nice if it was free along with everything else. The FACT OF LIFE is that is takes MONEY to put this information online. There are servers, payroll, facilities, etc, etc, etc. This all takes money. Companies like WestLaw and LexisNexis add value to this information making it worthwhile to pay for. This information would not even be available with out the dollars to keep it online. I will step off my soapbox now....
czth
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
What's your source on this 1.6 billion records? Can you elaborate? Last I checked Nexis was an interesting news archive that also did things like push patent and copyright searches. Do you have a link with more information? Any sort of proof whatsoever that Domino's Pizza (which does NOT have a database-driven system) somehow takes pizza order slips and sells them to Nexis?
And obviously libraries, since they make things like the latest issue of Science available to those who could not otherwise afford it, are an example of this destruction of the book industry and media, right? Since they're essentially eliminating the wealth requirement?
p #H2
Number of public libraries in the U.S. in FY 2000: 9,074
source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/quarterly/fall/5_1.as
Total number of books published in the U.S. in 2000, all publishers: 60,000
Total U.S. book sales in 2000: $25 billion
Revenue per title, all U.S. publishers: $417,000
source: http://aaupnet.org/news/glance.html
Obviously the industry is suffering......
Be forwarned, IAAL. However, I am not associated with either company.
While the law itself is open and available to everyone free of charge, its analysis does cost money. This is similar to the situation with various linux distributions. The OS is free, but if you want expert help, you have to hire someone unless you are an expert yourself.
Free sources of law in Washington State: Washington State Cases, Laws, Regs, etc Laws, Regs, etc.. These are even searchable.What you get with Westlaw (I'm most familiar with it) and Lexis (I presume) is a very powerful search engine, coupled with analysis generated by those companies. By looking in the free sources published by the government, one can access the law (statutes, cases, etc). For statutes, Westlaw provides not just the text of the law, it also provides a short synopsis of most cases which have interpreted that law. West does a similar thing with case law and organizes its headnote information by "key number". All of that analysis speeds up research - but it is generated by someone who works for the companies - not for the government.
The point is, Westlaw etc. are merely adding value to something that is freely available to make it more useable. That's what any number of open source software companies do - just in a different context.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Dummies books...? not the yellow ones, please?
Your right, getting the raw text isn't a problem, but LexisNexis "owns" the page and line numbers.
;-(
These private companies own a defactor monopoly on this print information because our legal system uses those page and line numbers to cite references.
So, yes, you can get the raw text. But no, you can't figure out what line you are supposed to look at.
I seem to recall debates about this from a long time back (probably on NetNews, or something) where two important issues were discussed. 1) The government contracts with commercial entities to record and publish the case law as it emerges from the courts (one or both of these companies was mentioned, IIRC), and 2) people were trying to work on creating public databases not encumbered by IP ownership. Anybody have any references to this, or know what has happened?
It seems to me that if the raw data is technically public domain, that it would be legal to obtain copies from commercial sources (or even 'borrow' them), and extract the raw data by stripping out all the page numbers, indexes and other proprietary content. Logically, you should now have something that is completely "public domain", and be able to do what you want with it. This would be the same thing as taking a published book where the copyright to the original work is expired, and scanning it, re-typesetting it (i.e. changing all the fonts, layout, page numbering, removing later forwards, etc.). AFAIK, this would be completely legal since you are only copying the parts not under any copyright restriction.
I was recently reading some article from First Monday on the general topic of the erosion of the public space in science in this issue. The "privatization" of science is a very disturbing trend, and I claim it threatens to do long term dammage to future prosperity and freedom. This story is just another visible aspect of the "Architectures of Control" that threaten the emergence of Free and Open societies based on widespread sharing of information.
I started looking for the legal citations in the Supreme Court decision this year in Eldred v. Ashcroft and couldn't find them. At the time I thought that there should be a publicly accessible database of case law, viewable to anyone with internet access (e.g., public libraries, etc.).
Of course that would require having every geek in their community plopping themselves into a chair at their municipal and county records department with a laptop and a scanner cataloging their local records, eventually building the system out to include state and federal statutes and court decisions.
The effort might eventually gain some momentum if the database became large enough that it could not be ignored by state and federal legislatures. Perhaps we could then get our legal information back from the private contractors.
The public repository system would not preclude corportations like Westlaw and others from building their own indexing and search utilities that they could charge for, provided they were better than the generic tools that came with the public domian database.
The effort might have the positive effect of exposing 'submarine' legislative action to the light of day (bug hunting) as well as leveraging the data away from sole source contractors such as Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis. It might also provide the public with an opportunity to see old and outdated laws for the antiquities that they are so that they could be repealed.
Maybe we should start with a Law Library HOWTO.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
This has nothing to do with the Internet. The question is whether or not all existing and future case law, court proceedings, etc., ought to be available to the U.S. public free of charge. A very strong argument can be made that it should.
Remember, though, that the Internet is not the only publishing vehicle that reaches the public. Free distribution in hardcopy to all public libraries would also serve the same purpose. I'd argue that hardcopy should be available in libraries and duplicated online, to avoid disadvantaging those without Internet access.
Publishing and distributing takes resources, so "free" public access will almost certainly require the public to pay for it via taxes or increased court fees.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
But Findlaw is free:
:)
http://lp.findlaw.com/
Search for all relavent codes
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
Yes, the law belongs to all of us but their server access belongs to them. If Westlaw and LexisNexis want to charge money to use the bandwith and servers that they pay for then that's fine.
Not everything is free as in beer!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I am often struck by how the same issues come up again and again in history, and how often past struggles for liberty have to be repeated. This struggle has a pretty long history going back at least to 450 BC. In Rome at that time there was no publicly accessable writen law. Instead the law was preserved by the an upper class (the Patricians) mostly as an oral tradition. Needless to say this put the lower class (the Plebians) at a considerable disadvantage when they went into court. They had no ready way of knowing what the law actually said.
In about 450 BC the Plebians won one of the earliest and most significant victories for equality in the western legal tradition. They forced the publication of the laws. The laws were inscribed on twelve tablets and made accessable to all citizens. This established a pinciple which, has survived to this day, that the law ought to be published. (Twelve Tablets)
Even so there are several new and non-so-new developments that have really undermined this ancient victory for equality. The law has become so complex that no one really knows what all of it says, and only a privileged class of experts really know what any small part of it says. So we are again in a position where most people have no direct access to the law, and where there is a privileged class that serve as intermediaries between the people and the law. This new development of effectively copyrighting parts of the law, or limiting access to legal databases, is really just a continuation of this trend. It stengthens the hold that the wealthy have over access to the legal system.
Note to poster: You should really check the spelling in your post if you plan on making fun of someone else's misspellings.
You sir, are a moron. (I've always wanted to say that!)
---
ac4life
I agree, but also, when there are problems, there is often not sufficient will to fix them.
This article tells about some problems in Oregon:
Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash.
That's like saying anyone should be able to design a supercomputer or a suspension bridge.
If you want a brick wall, you hire someone who spends their entire life laying bricks. If you want a building designed, you hire an architect. If you want to engage in legal procedings, you hire a lawyer. It is simply stupid to expect dealing with laws to be any different than anything else - those who make it their life's work are *ALWAYS* going to be better at it than those who don't.
Should laws be intentionally cryptic? Of course not. Should they be intentionally easy? No. You wouldn't want the bridge you're driving over to be made out of legos so that the common person could put it together at the expense of it being able to support your car, would you?
paintball
> may (I don't know for sure) have gotten tax dollars to do this
Neither firm receive any tax dollars. Viva le free enterprise in action.
your making my point, no one would want the whole database or to own it, why you don't need encyclopedias because you can go to the library, but then how would these companies make money, they have to continually pay into overhead such as bandwidth usage and all the daily database work. Unlike a book that has an initial printing cost but then ceases to cost the company anything. Therefor it would be detrimental to the company to supply service to libraries.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Couldn't a pro se litigant have a legal secretary or law clerk (or whatever) verify what forms they need? Why pay a few thousand for a lawyer when all you need is to know what forms to bring?
When the Slashdot community make comments to the effect that the costs involved in creating a Westlaw or a Lexis-Nexis - with maintaining databases, OCR and so forth - need to be compensated or that these services are like the public highway system, which doesn't entitle you to a free car, you are missing the point.
Let me see if I can get at that point. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw provide a valuable service that essentially has become the standard if you want to practice law. While it is possible to look some of the information in print, you simply cannot practice law and expect the same level of performance when you are arguing against another attorney that has it - when you don't.
In most circumstances, this would be simply a matter of convenience and nothing further need be said. Convenience is convenience and you can either pay for it or you can't. However, we are talking about the law here - which means that by creating an artifical monopoly in order to support your business model, you are effectively biasing the judicial system against people who do not have access or cannot afford this service.
It's an issue. It may not be as sexy as healthcare, education, freedom of speech and other social topics of the day - but free access to information and an informed citizenry is considered one of the cornerstones of a democracy. It's the reason why we have the Federal Depository Library System. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw pose a serious challenge, and raise the question - should a privelege group be able to buy access - and thereby buy better treatment in court? I hope not.Moron, he just said this would pruposefully limit professional access, did you even read what he said. They don't want professionals getting it from the library,they want you to pay for it, since you'll then use their information to make money for yourself.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I see a LOT of posts about how the author is whining about how people can't get access to the information - the added information that these two companies provide, and how she just doesn't get it. I think they missed the point, so I'll try to restate it.
The library had access. The library was willing to continue to pay, and to accept restrictions on the number of people who could access the system at any single time (seating licenses). The library was willing to increase the payment.
The companies said (in essence, not in specific), NO, we will not sell our services to you. You are not attorneys. You are not colleges training potential attorneys. You may not buy our goods.
Some professional librarians are aware of the sources and opportunities available for alternatives. We are equally aware, however, of the additional services these two companies provide with their indexing, crossreferencing, and other annotations of law. Not all libraries can afford the material, but then the article doesn't say the companies should give their databases to the libraries for free. It says the libraries tried to pay, and were denied. It says that the raw law may be good enough for everyone, but the best tools to get current and complete understanding will only be available to a select few - based not on ability to pay, but on qualification.
Access wasn't denied because the people couldn't pay. Access was denied because the people weren't the right kind of people so it didn't matter how much they paid. I find that rather disturbing, myself.
The problem is that working in a building and being governed by it are not the same thing.
A good example is copyright law. It applies to everyone. Do you know how many people in the United States have absolutely no idea what *is* and *is not* okay according to copyright law? (Forget ethics, morality, whatever, we're just talking about the law itself.)
One author who I used to be fond of has taken to sending C&D letters to young teenagers who happen to run 'adopt-a-pet' websites loosely based on her work. She, of course, has the lawyers. They don't.
IF A LAW APPLIES TO A PERSON, THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND IT.
It's that simple. There should be no question in the mind of whether X, Y, or Z is covered as 'fair use'. There should be no question of whether it's okay to play your stereo outside--as I've heard people discuss lately, due to vaguely-worded noise statues. There should be no question of what the legal manner of passing on a highway is. (I've never yet seen anyone do it, but last I checked, Ohio had circumstances in which you're legally required to honk your horn first.)
You can't get in trouble for not knowing the mechanics of how a bridge works. (Well, you know, usually.) You *can* get in trouble for not understanding how your laws work.
p2p!!! forget mp3s; let's fill the p2p networks with laws and court decisions!
YOU are,IMOHO, an idiot, and here is why:
Laws are not like construction. Laws are not like designing a building.
Laws are the rules that bind us all as a country. As such, each of us has a right, duty and obligation to understand them.
If they grow so complex so as to preclude this, we cannot excercise our duties and obligations as citizens.
Just my opinion.
dj
MICHAEL! The original freaking political troll.
Sorry, IMHO, NOT IMOHO - fingers got awya from me :)
Hey, just because it's public info doesn't make it free. The reason why West and Lexis take this public information and bind it is to make money. They spend millions per year keeping two of the largest data warehouses in the world up and running 24/7 and completely up-to-date. They employ thousands of attorneys and librarians to write briefs on EVERY case posted in the system, cross-reference the cases for subject matter and context, and keep the warning symbols up-to-date. I'd really love to see the gummit do that effectively. Besides, the average unlimited user would have no idea what to look for, how to disseminate the information, and what the various warning symbols mean. Now, if you want to see the goods for free, just run down to your local federal despository library or public law library and they'll have every thing you want. As a matter of fact, it's pretty easy for anyone to cross reference cases and law. Here's about $6,000 worth of free advice: To look up a case, go to a legal encyclopedia and look up the subject matter you want. See the citations for cases that discuss it? Now, run over to the reporters, open that big leather and paper device call a BOOK, and flip to the page number. To look up a law, go to the common name table or subject index and look up the statute. Bam! There it is. Try FindLaw.com and thomas.loc.gov. BTW, the flat-rate contracts for firms cost millions of dollars. Seriously, the largest firm here in Omaha paid about 8 million for theirs. That's per year and can go up or down from year to year. If a public library has that much money to throw away, it would be a lot smarter to employ one or two paralegals or legal librarians and purchase a set of reporter, annotated codes, and legal encyclopedias. Shoot, most large law firms will donate old encyclopedias that are easily updateable to libraries. Oh yeah, Nebraska's web site has several areas that are play-to-pay. I think the idea is to charge user fees rather than jack up everyone's taxes. Why should I pay higher taxes for some schlub to slow down the Lexis and West systems on 50,000 document searches for DUI caselaw?
Sigh, OK, away, not awya :)
The Freedom of Information Act basically requires the following of all government agencies:
...
Documents shall be furnished without any charge or at a charge reduced below the fees established under clause (ii) if disclosure of the information is in the public interest
Why hasn't there been a loud cry for this stuff to be on the web before?
The FOIA has been on the books since 1966.
You can very well get in trouble for not knowing that your hair dryer doesn't belong near your bathtub, or that you shouldn't open the email attachment with the .vb extension. Should we redesign hair dryers so they can't hurt the people who don't know how they work?
.vb extension attachments you clicked on - OR you'll have to take your computer into the shop and pay someone else to do it, because it's cheaper for you to acquire the services of an expert than do it yourself.
It's called common sense, and it applies to the law as well - no, not everyone knows copyright law, because most people DO NOT NEED TO KNOW COPYRIGHT LAW! There's probably thousands and thousands of pages on the subject, but common sense still applies in the vast majorit of cases: Don't copy something that isn't yours for commercial purpose.
Now, if some PARTICULAR set of circumstances arises, like some num-nuts authoer writes you a silly C&D letter, then you have to get off your butt and learn something. Just like you're going to have to get off your butt and learn how to install virus protection/removal software for those
REPEAT: Lawyers exist, and are important, because while they can be expensive, they are LESS EXPENSIVE THAN LEARNING ALL THE LAWS!
But just like we don't design computers so their simple enough for every user to use without breaking them (although we sure as hell try), we don't design laws so that they're simple enough for every person to know all of them - because it's neither possible or necessary.
paintball
I know that WestLaw gives FREE access to Law School Students. Kind of a way to get them hooked in a drug dealer fashion.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
The all important indexing information and page numbers are assigned by WestLaw and they claim that those are copyrighted. You can't effectively conduct legal research without being able to figure out the references.
Given the choice, I think people would pick good buildings over good laws.
The reality of the matter is 99% of the laws are irrelevant to you and what you're doing 99% of the time. The other 1%, the law very closely mirrors common sense 99% of the time. Do you know the difference between murder and manslaughter in your state? No - but you know you're not supposed to kill anyone, and that's all you need to know. Do you know the percentage of your income that your employer pays in FICA taxes? Maybe you do, it's not likely to matter to you.
The law is not a "Special" commodity, and it's certainly no more essential than things like healthcare, food distribution, or shelter. Your survival depends a lot more on your local water treatment plant functioning correctly than it does on the law. Why arn't you worried that the common person doesn't know how to construct and run a water treatment plant?
Like any other essential service, it makes much more sense for a few people who are very well versed in providing that service to be shared by everyone than it does for everyone to spend significant time learning to be proficient in a service they will only use occasionally.
Should laws be simple? Sure. Food and shelter should be free too.
But they are not, and they never will be. Laws arn't complex as part of a conspiracy against the public, laws are complex BECAUSE THE WORLD IS COMPLEX!
paintball
You don't make everyone understand the law, nor do you expect them to understand the intricacies of the law. You expect them to find out about it when they're in a situation where they need to.
You don't expect people to know that dropping a hair dryer in the bathtub immerses an exposed wire coil in water, thus causing electrocution, but you do expect them to read the warning label when they are holding a hair dryer and not drop it in the tub.
paintball
Now, yes, these companies have spent money on creating those databases. That's fine. The government doesn't have the right to just take the products of their work for free. Perhaps the solution to the problem, a solution that would respect their property rights, would be for the tax payer to pay for scanning and capturing the old case law from original paper copies again.
But those companies are screaming bloody murder everytime solutions are proposed. West Publishing has made the ridiculous claim that they hold a coyright on the page numbers that are used to reference legal opinion, even though assigning page numbers clearly is not a creative process.
The "entitlement-oriented attitude" that predates Slashdot by a long time is that companies that have carved out a market niche think they are entitled to having that market niche protected, even if technology makes them completey obsolete. The "whine fest" is on the part of companies that can't deal with the fact that they have become obsolete and their business model doesn't work anymore. Those companies "whine" by trying to take undue influence on the political process. And because the business practices of those companies are in basic conflict with the principles of democracy, that kind of whining needs to be put a stop to.
So, again, let those electronic publishers keep their "rights"--they have a right not to have their work appropriated by the government. But they have no right to have their market protected. The government should invest the money to scan and publish all case law for free on the Internet, just like we do for patents. Technology has made that really cheap now.
> Lexis ... Their versions were copyrighted, just like
> a map maker can copyright a map. Following with that
> analogy, their versions (I believed) even contained
> intentional, hopefully harmless typographical errors to prove up theft.
Completely false. I know several people that work at LexisNexis, and they insist on accurate copies of the court records. Even one punctuation mark misplaced, whether it happens internally or externally is cause for an automated error flagging.
> They also added value by providing analysis and
> indexing (keyword, etc.) that were totally absent from the public text.
That's where LexisNexis makes their money - on the "value-add" part of the service. All those public court filings are public, and LexisNexis can't copyright them. What they CAN do is copyright the information they add to them, which is perfectly acceptable, legal, moral, etc. Sounds reasonable to me.
BTW, "Lexus" is a car, and "Lexxus" is a shampoo. Didn't Lexis sue Lexus (and lose) a while back over the name confusion?
Both Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis are subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Westlaw belongs to Thomson Corporation, which is Canadian. Lexis-Nexis belongs to Reed Elsevier, a UK-Netherlands corporation.
You'd think this would make it easier for legislators to loosen the grip these companies have on public law. But who would lobby for that? The lawyers who have to pay for subscriptions? Hah! Lawyers support any obstacle keeping citizens away from direct contact with the law. The price of a database subscription is, to them, a small price for their exclusive access to the law, and for the dependence upon them by their fellow citizens (if I can so loosely use the honorific, "citizen," to include persons without ready recourse to law).
And by the way, I AM a lawyer, but I don't practice anymore. I prefer writing software, because software systems, unlike legal systems, can be improved with ease and satisfying success.
And I'm going to quote you on it too.
Hope you don't mind.
Nobody said free. Mod down!
Do you seriously believe this?
If you want the case law go down to the court house where the case took place and get your free copy of that case. Perhaps when you've collected a large amount of these documents and compiled them into some form that allows for searches and easy access, you can give it away for free. But my money is against that ever happening.
Everyone is worth their hire.
After the injunction, West and Mead settled their case out of court. Out-of-court settlements, like any other contracts, do not create precedent except possibly in some limited applications of antitrust law. However, does a grant of a preliminary injunction create a binding legal precedent, or does that require a final judgment on the matter? In any case, does West v. Mead outweigh Feist v. Rural ?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe it's time for some clever slashdot fellows to make a GPL, peer to peer law library search tool. The content is Public Domain, why shouldn't the technology to search and catalog it be as well. It sound's time consuming, but with a million slashdot monkeys typing on a million keyboards, it's only a matter of time...
You are correct, sir. I also noticed on re-reading the article that the library eventually purchased a third company's product. Which makes me wonder why there's any complaint at all, now.
Having an accredited undergraduate degree and a BS (a total of at least 7 years in school)
A law degree is vaguely a doctorate, not a BS. Most lawyers in the US have an undergrad BA or AB or BS, and a grad degree of JD. A JD is about halfway between an MS/MA/AM and a Ph.D./DSc. in difficulty and time dedicated. A few (mostly law professors, judges, etc.) have a DLitt. as well, which is the equivalent of a Ph.D. in law and is possibly more difficult/time consuming than most Ph.D.s.
Most lawyers don't work for big firms. Friends I have in the midwest who are lawyers and have a small practice make somewhere in the $150-$200 range. I've charged as much as $75/h for my IT services, but that was at the very beginning of the .com bubble.
I wonder which LAWYER, or ATTORNEY coined that phrase ? I'll bet there is actually code somewhere limiting how much they are supposed to make. This is kind of like the US mint and the US post office making a profit on coins and stamps...Not supposed to happen.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
It seems to me that google could quite easily with most of their existing infrastructure and software break into this market and be extremely competitive.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Academic universe IS avalible to libraries, and not just school libraries.
Before we get all pissy over this, we may wish to read about the services that are avalible from Lexis to libraries. Pricing for a non school library requiers you to contact a lexis rep, but I would guess they price it based on number of terminals that can access it at once, and the products that a library selects.
I do know that very few opt for the entire Academic Universe set, and I would guess that the rep she talked to had never priced it before or didn't know how to price it, so just said it was not avalible. Next time ask to speak with a manager.
...that the Government should make readily available for anyone. It is the government's responsibility to protect us from force and fraud, and it is the government's responsibility to make its laws available to its citizens. The government can not hold us to its standards while forcing us to pay it to access those standards in writing. Okay, ignorance isn't an excuse -- I'll concede that. But discouraging knowledge encourages ignorance, placing the blame at least partially on the government. Unless the laws of the land are publicly and freely available, there is something ethically unjust about strictly enforcing every effective line of every interpretation of the law.
I think we [should ask] "why isn't there an affordable public database of this material". Not just a server crammed with decisions, but also an affordable method of searching it.
I'd settle for the "server crammed with decisions", which IMHO the government should provide.
(After all, the government claims we're supposed to know and obey these laws - or at least won't accept ignorance as an excuse for breaking them. Yet it neither makes them available nor teaches them in the public schools. Make up your MINDS, guys!)
Once we have that server, indexing and annotating it can be a distributed project, or set of them, suitable for volunteers, law departments of universities, charatable trusts, and competing political and/or religious factions with axes to grind and points of view to purvey. (Or for other for-pay indexing startups.)
And if the government wants to buy the existing doc-to-data work of Lexus/Nexus, Westlaw, or what-have-you rather than do it over themselves, that's fine, too. For starters it would give them additional return on their investment to make up for what they might lose from the competition. And that would help short out claims of government intervention in private enterprise. They'd be left, in the new competitive marketplace, with their own indexing and annotation service (along with its years of experience, well-known brand name, and customer base familiar with the tools) and with their data-conversion investment paid off at a profit.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If law school is anything like Engineering, the main point of the schooling is not really to teach you all the facts as much as to teach you how to think like an Engineer/Lawyer/etc. while giving you some of the building blocks to form a base to build on during your carreer. That is why one pays more for an Engineer or Lawyer with 10 yrs. experiance than one does for a recent graduate.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
But here's the catch. Each year, thousands of people graduate law school accostomed to using Lexis and Westlaw and not books. So when they graduate and become lawyers, they have been trained to be Lexis and Westlaw junkies, not used to using traditional paper methods. Voila, built-in market for their services.
Once again, people think they're entitled...
Yes, we do own the words -- and there's nothing stopping you from going to the courthouse and collecting the cases to look at for yourself.
Just because the cases are public record does not entitle you to take advantage of the fact that these companies have gone through some excruciating amounts of work to collect all of this information and store it in one place.
Get off your lazy ass and go down to the courthouse and bring your fscking scanner with you.
This is eerily reminiscent of the situation in science. Most scientific research is funded by governments. The 'scientiifc literature' is written by working scientists, and submitted to scientific journals, mostly run by one of three or four large companies.
Almost all journals require us to sign a restrictive transfer of copyrght, so I can't put the text of my own articles on my own web site.
Journal subscription costs are rising very rapidly, and are far beyond the reach of many libraries in developed countries, never mind developing countries.
Finally the (very expensive) online systems through which subscribers access journal articles are inconsistent, incompatible, and hard to use...
Help!!
-- Anthony Staines
Westlaw and Nexis aren't the problem.
There's nothing wrong with companies getting this information, organising, indexing, sending to subscribers etc etc, and charging for it.
what is totally an utterly wrong is when the courts, tribunals and governmetn agencies give exclusive distribution contracts to ANYONE.
they should be acting like common carriers.
and they should defeinitely be amintaining their own libraries.
if the big end of town find it easier to pay someone to aggregate that information thats their perogative.
so long as everyone else can go to the source if they need it.
If the source amterial is still publicly available then why should aggregators be forced to give access?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
This is a pretty meaningless number.
Do you know what estate lawyers think of those $40 do-it-yourself legal will kits? They're not afraid of them taking away their business - they're the greatest business generation tools ever created. People save a hundred bucks up front and their kids end up spending the entire estate (or more) fighting later because the testator didn't fill it in right or get it witnessed properly, or the instructions were just wrong to begin with.
Not all law is complicated, no. Wills, however, can be one of the most complicated areas of all because a tiny error can invalidate the whole thing.
Lawyers (at least in Canada) have two important features: very strict professional requirements; and very large insurance covers. You're not just buying someone's skill and professional judgment, you're buying their insurance cover if they @#%! up and you need to sue them. Try that with some guy running Wills'R'us out of a small storefront somewhere. A lawyer in my province can't practice without at least $1M in insurance cover, and many/most carry a heck of a lot more.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
So, we have a company (or two) that have produced a searchable law database with cross-referencing. They don't want to sell to libraries, nor do they have to. I personally think they should, but that doesn't matter since it's their database/program. It's just like how Microsoft doesn't have to allow consumers to have an OS for free. That's were Linux stepped in - a community came together to fill the void made by a corporation who wants to maximise profits.
Sounds like the perfect time for a FreeLaw project to fill the void.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
In the case of Lexis/Westlaw the presentation *is* the original work, no?
No. The existing work is the opinion of the federal court, and adding page numbers does not constitute sufficient originality to create a new work. See the Second Circuit case Bender v. West, citing Feist v. Rural.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It begins: "My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. ... "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I linked to the wrong stage of Bender v. West. This is the right stage, in the Southern District of New York, which gives the fair use analysis in Bender's favor.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Leftists Often See A Crisis... when they should see an opportunity. 1. The case law is in the Public Domain. 2. Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw transform the PD info into a more useful form, but do so on terms that are unacceptable to a particular class of customers.
Crisis: The customers aren't being served! Bwahahaha!
Opportunity: Serve them. You can try this on a non-profit basis. For example, I know a guy who used to work for these guys who specialize in presenting information on the nightmarish complexity that is tax law. IIRC, either or both of the companies mentioned in the article are their competitors, and believe you me they don't enjoy competing with a non-profit. Maybe you can also do this as a for-profit. If there are only two major players, there's a good chance they have gotten fat and lazy, and haven't done everything they can to streamline operations. Put your heads together and figure out a way to beat them, and you might not only serve the libraries, but start stealing their other customers as well.
Of course, option 2 would actually require work, and you may just end up discovering that the current players are doing all they can do just to provide the service to anybody. You might even go broke. So, if you gotta choose...
BWAAAHAHA!
...is a very appealing option.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Your own Municipal Code is probably copyrighted. What's more it may be copyrighted by a private firm that sold it to your city (and several others). What this means is that the city and its citizens cannot copy their own municipal code without permission.
With all the copyright extensions lately, we better check if we are still allowed to copy the Constitution.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I don't know if this is true in your case, sir, but technical people often discount how difficult, complicated, or intricate other fields can be.
After all, your attorney can't just jump in and start coding device drivers, right? It takes training and practise.
I am willing to consider the notion that there are a lot of things people think they need a lawyer for, but don't. Any suggestions?
I love when people quote revenue figures as though they mean something. Okay, so the revenue per title is $417,000. For all you know, the cost per title is $416,999 -- leaving $1 profit per title for the publisher.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Anyone else think West is evil?
The ancient Romans knew what they were doing when they made their laws accessible to everyone in a public place. Here's an introductory article, explaining why this was important, and here's the surviving text.
Of course, maybe in the last two and a half thousand years the patrician aristocracy has once again risen into the ascendent, unfettered by uppity tribunes of the People.
West lost their battle to copyright page numbers.
If you're using a more strict definition of 'citizen' then yes, it was designed to protect citizens.
Otherwise it was designed to protect aristocrats and to control the masses.
It has, of course, evolved beyond this. Quite to the disdain of the landed gentry. Mostly because of cricket.
Not to flame you, but I don't think you understand what you're talking about. As an attorney, I do. You absolutely DO NOT have to provide the West Key Numbers in your filings. You absolutely DO NOT have to provide the West Headnotes in your filings. All you have to do is provide the correct citation, something like Doe v. Smith, 852 P2d 1195 [1988]. Go get a copy of the Harvard Blue Book for a thorough discussion of citing cases. These citations are absolutely in no way proprietary to West or anyone else. The citations are developed by the court itself when the case is issued. If you don't believe me, Google the US Supreme Court and read their most recent opinions. You will see that they have their own citations and there is no West copyright or any private proprietary thing covering the cite in any way. Also, citations are easily obtained at any law library or free online search sites. I know, because these are the ways I do my research. Online services are OK as a "jumping off" point, but I always hit the real books to complete my research. No, I'm not a luddite. And no, I'm not hidebound- I'm only 30. With the books, I can usually smoke anyone using online research only. This just isn't nearly as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be.
I guess I was dating myself. My information was old, and it appears that West did lose in their efforts to copyright page numbers back in 1999.
Do you know that there are plenty of copies of the Federalist Papers available all over the Internet but just try to find a copy of the Anti Federalist Papers.
The Anti Federalist Papers are copyrighted and the copyright holders hunt down and procescute anyone publishing copies of them on the Internet.
Seems that someone doesn't want anyone to have access to these historical documents...
IMHO, that "nightmare" you speak of is a beautiful thing to behold. Personally, I'm proud to hear there are still people in this country confident enough in their beliefs and in themselves that they'll try to represent themselves in a courtroom.
It might not be fun having to hand-hold them and put up with all the technicalities they have to muddle their way through. But good for them! They've taken the initiative to give it their best shot, instead of giving in to intimidation and paying someone else to do it for them.
I don't care what you say about the technicalities being there for good reasons. It simply shouldn't require 652 pages of rules! At that point, instead of it being about justice, it's about game-playing. "Which lawyer is going to screw up and forget one of the minute details mentioned briefly on page 473, paragraph 6 - allowing me to "one-up" him?"
One of the most valuable (and most limited) resources in our society is court time and the rules are there to insure that when parties arrive at the bar they are ready so that we won't all end up back there again two weeks later on the same issue, or don't have to call off a hearing after an hour of argument when someone realizes they forgot to do something or one side is surprised due to lack of notice.
It's not so much one-upping as saying 'hey, hold on, I'm entitled to X and you've got to do X before we go in front of a judge according to Rule Y(Z). There's no point in showing up at court if I haven't got X because I can't possibly respond to your application/case/whatever without that important notice/document/evidence/etc. So, give it to me by the end of the day or call off the hearing - if you don't, you'll lose for failing to comply with the rules.'
And yes, it's unfortunate there's so much procedural law, but without it you just end up asking the court for directions all the time, which bogs the system down worse than having to take a bunch of procedural steps.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.