Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Law
Russ Nelson writes "The U.S. Supreme Court just announced its refusal to review the 5th
Circuit's en banc decision that there can be no copyright of
privately authored laws offered to U.S. governmental bodies for adoption. The
model law itself may be copyrighted, but once it's adopted, the law
must be open source. The entire case is laid out on Peter Veeck's
page." Slashdot touched on this before, but never really covered this dispute in depth. Here's a nice legal summary of the case.
"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."
Fascinating, isn't it?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Freakin common sense strikes court system. Film at 11:00
This should really be considered "Public Domain" law rather then OpenSource. OpenSource, by definition is copyrighted material. While material in the public domain is without copyright.
Mecworks BLOG
Glad to see the court doing the obviously correct thing.
The rather shocking thing is that this matter was ever litigated in the first place. The plaintiffs should be ashamed of themselves.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
it makes little sense to refer to any law as 'open source.' Laws aren't like open source computer code that can be tinkered with by anybody with the proper knowhow. Laws are altered by a constitutionally defined procedure by the various branches of our government.
A much better term would be that these laws enter the public domain.
sig my booty, check my website
I sympathize with the standards organizations, but a free society cannot tolerate hidden laws. The standards organizations created the standards specifically to be placed into law, and that means full knowledge that it must be public. The people that care about the standards will still participate, as it's in their own interest to do so.
Then you would have no GPL and no restrictions upon who uses/distributes the code.
Slashbots are always quick to condemm copyright law and seldom realize that it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.
The law is public domain. Use the correct term, desire for buzzword compliance notwithstanding.
But it's so much more fun to use inaccurate words! Lets start with the GNU/Congress jokes now. They really aren't funny, but people will still say them.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
s/open source/in the public domain/g
No. The situation is this:
A private organization creates some specifications for building. They hold the copyright on this, as they are the creators.
The organization offers the codes to municipal governments for adoption into law.
The private organization wants to keep the copyright over the material itself. They don't want to lose control of these specifications; if that happened then another individual or private organization could freely use the specifications in their own work (such as in building handbook).
The court decided that since the private organization in question had offered the specifications to governments for use, they didn't retain ownership over what was adopted into law.
Now I think the courts made a wise decision. But, you know, it's not a cut-and-dried issue; you can make arguments for both sides. The plaintiffs in this aren't trying to copyright laws--their copyright existed BEFORE the laws were enacted. The question is whether their copyright survives the process of being adopted by governmental entities, and I know this is heresy on slashdot, but not every legal case is a matter of common sense--these are complicated issues.
All I can
say is that
the referenced
article is one
nice column.
That's for
sure.
damn i suck
then I'd have to pay someone to read it. I know ignorence isn't that great of a defence in court, but it shouldn't be the public's responsibility to go out of its way to find out what's right and wrong.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okIf there were no copyright law, any source code would leak out. Evil Corporation Inc. incorporates "our" free code into their process? No problem; sooner or later there would be employees that are either disgruntled or sympathetic to The Cause; their code would leak out and become public knowledge. Since there is no copyright law, there is no culpability for any free software hacker who uses this code, regardless of whether or not the employee violated an NDA or broke any laws while leaking the code.
The GPL plays a role in free software, but only because of the way our present copright law is written. Remove copyright and you remove the necessity for the GPL. Remember that in the "good ol' days" that RMS talks about at MIT, there effectively was no copyright; customers could get whatever source code they wanted, and would contribute any improvements back to the manufacturer and the user community. It was only because some manufacturer (of a printer?) refused to divulge the source that RMS got launched on Gnu.
Note: nowhere in this article is there any claim or statement about whether or not Gnu and/or RMS are good or evil; just some inferences and history.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Open Source laws would require that the human-readable source english be freely distributed with the lawyernary files executed by the court.
paintball
- James Madison (Fourth President of the United States)
while making sure laws remain open is a good and necessary thing to maintain a transparent state with de jure authority, it only goes so far. if the laws are open but the interests, motivations and business dealings of lawmakers remain opaque then the openess is not complete.
mit (yep, the massachussets institute of technology) has been running a site for a while now dedicated to allowing citizens to monitor and research their legislators (and executives). the mission statement says it all:
To empower citizens by providing a single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America.
To allow citizens to submit intelligence about government-related issues, while maintaining their anonymity. To allow members of the government a chance to participate in the process.
the full site is at: http://opengov.media.mit.edu/
it's a good read.
2 1337 4 u!
There is this standards setting organization, probably made up of member companies in an industry.
The standards setting organization is in the business of creating "model" codes. This is common. A better known example would be the Model Penal Code which is a set of proposed criminal laws created by the American Law Institute... in this case, the group was creating model codes for buildings (plumbing, electric, etc.) to be enacted by cities.
So, you have an organization that creates this work with the intention of it being incorporated into the law. However, they get some revenue by selling copies of the code to interested parties (probably people in the building industry, architects, developers, students). So they assert a copyright in the code that they wrote.
Meanwhile, you have this guy in Texas who is giving people access to the municipal laws in his region. The municipal laws do not actually copy the organization's code, but they incorporate it by reference....
IOW, you need access to the organization's work in order to know what the law is! So the guy gives people access to the code free of charge, and the organization threatens to sue him.
The 5th Circuit said that laws are in the public domain. This also applies to rules that are incorporated by reference into a statute even if the text of the rule is not copied into the statute.
Simply put, people have a right to know what the law is.
The question is whether their copyright survives the process of being adopted by governmental entities
Sort of, but not exactly. The court agrees that their copyright survives the process of being adopted by government entities. However, it also becomes an uncopyrightable fact, in its entirety and without modification.
It's kind of an anomoly of copyright law. If two people independently come up with the exact same poem (for instance), they both have independent copyrights on the exact same text. This ruling creates something similar. As law, it is public domain, but as model codes, the copyright stands.
Copyright is automatic you write something it has Copyright even this what I am typing has Copyright. The question for the Copyright holder is will I or will I not protect it. As a Copyright holder I have the right to say that you can use it how you wish.
Now Copyright does Not mean that all stuff you have the right to charge money on. Once decared public domain all right to charge money for it are gone. As in this case they said that laws once passed were public domain. This mean If I think up a good law and someone wants to pass it for the first time at least they have to give me credit unless I tell them that they can take the credit.
Now if it might be required to buy me out or hire me or do something to get the law. What do you think some of the public servents get payed to do.
Basicly Copyright does go on. Now a goverment might try to place a law with a read fee but this is not good as if this is required the best you could get in court
judge: did you know about xyz law.
defendat: No I could not afford to pay the fee to find out about it.
judge: You are Free to go.
Now the reason why is simple you can not be charged for doing something wrong if they was not a fair chance to find out about it. And the judge could not tell you the law with out paying the fee if the judge to tell you the law there is a fair chance that you would just get of with a warning and get to know the law for free anyhow.
Now lets get to the tricky bit there is no reson why laws could not be a licence simlar to gpl not this would have to be stated when the law is passed. That another ruling body (goverments) who wanted to use the law would have to buy it. But every one else could read it for free and use it for free so no Judge problem.
Now there is no reason why the law could not be rewrite by working backward how the law effected people and writing a new law that did the same thing just a different way. Basicly copyright is extramelly weak. And normally from a developers point of view can not afford code around.
Orbit nine heavenly bodies
And each
Reflects the morning light differently
Across its day side
There...I've just come up with some incredibly crappy free-verse poetry that also happens to be factual in nature. Furthermore, I claim copyright on the poetry. Does this mean I've also laid copyright to the fact? Bollocks! Of course not. As you pointed out, it's impossible to copyright fact.
The statement of fact, on the other hand, can be copyrighted. I can copyright the poem as a whole without copyrighting the ideas evoked by the poem. Similarly, the issue at hand was: can a particular wording of the law be claimed as intellectual property? And the Supreme Court's answer was no. The text of a model law, once it has been adopted and recorded into the lawbooks, enters the public domain.
the average citizen has no chance in HELL of even possibly knowing a fraction of a percent of them, much less understanding them
Fortunately, the average citizen has no chance in HELL of ever needing to know most of them. Quick! What's the statutory quorum for a meeting of your local water board? How many days before trial can you file a motion for summary judgment in your state? How many parts per million of formaldehyde can you have in crazy glue? Answer: who cares? If for some reason it matters to you, you can go and seek *that particular fact* out. Or hire a professional to find it out for you. But the average reader sitting in his chair reading Slashdot is not going to go to jail over his ignorance of these matters.
The laws that *matter* on a day to day basis are the ordinary criminal laws - and you already know those. Don't run anybody over. Don't shoplift. Don't steal money that somebody asked you to look after.
The law isn't secret. It's just complicated. It's complicated because the scope of human interactions is complicated. Some people buy houses from each other. Some people sail ships in waters that don't belong to any country. Some people steal things in complicated ways. Some people die and ask for unusual things to be done with their property afterwards.
The legislature's job is to make laws as clearly as possible to help keep all this running smoothly. The lobbyist's job is to suggest legislation, or keep an eye on others peoples' suggestions, in hopes that laws favorable to them will be created. (And legislators listen to them because it's hard to be an expert in both, say, environmental water quality regulation and securities oversight. Lobbyists have sway not merely because they have money, but because they have expertise which they can share with legislators. Wise legislators, of course, listen to both sides.) The judge's job is to interpret the legislature's laws, as well as the traditions passed down from earlier judges. The appellate judge's job is to create law in the cracks where the legislature hasn't, like putty joining everything together. The lawyer's job is to make sense of all this and act as an interface between the system and an individual person.
None of this is mysterious. And none of it is a conspiracy against you. Nobody likes having complicated laws. It's a pain in the ass for judges, and for lawyers, and for ordinary citizens. Want to know why so many corporations are based in Delaware? It's because they have really good corporate laws that are straightforward and easy to understand. Makes it a good place to set up shop.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Laws are enacted for the benefit of the public. One of the bedrocks of jurisprudence is that the law must be publicly known for it to have any benefit at all, otherwise ignorance would be used as a defence. Righly so, to ask the public to remit a fee to obtain a copy of the laws that we are to keep completely undermines this principle.
Yes, there is a cost in establishing certain standards. If you wish these standards to become law, you either must be willing to bear the cost or work with the government to fund the cost.
It completely baffles me that anyone would submit an idea to government for inclusion as a law and expect to retain ownership of that idea. Ubsurd.
When dealing with such a complex subject as building codes, having the county/city buy a few copies for the courthouse/city hall and a few more for each library, and 'incorporating by reference' made some kind of sense. But now we have the technology to communicate law for virtually zero transaction cost, so I propose this simple idea for governments to consider enacting if they want to open up the whole business of law to make it accessible to the citizenry:
Making the law open to the people electronically will be far cheaper and effective than doing it by just printing fat books that sit in law libraries.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
That hasn't been true since the Berne convention was adopted. Works are now copyrighted from the moment they're fixed in a tangible form (though registration is necessary once you want to sue for recent infringement). An effective notice eliminates innocent infringement as a defense, but has no other effect.
What's the motivation for a third party to write a model building code and get it enacted as a law?
Is it an altruistic urge to ensure the safety of the general public?
I submit that, if such an urge were the chief reason for writing a model building code, groups like SBCCI wouldn't care if people copied the code. After all, if you keep people from easily getting the code -- which is supposed to keep people safe -- you're encouraging people to be less safe. No code, no idea if you're doing it right.
What other motivation could there be?
By trying to assert copyright on the enacted model laws, groups like SBCCI show that money is a major motivation. As long as the drafting group holds a legally-recognized copyright, they can soak the populace for any amount they wish. People need access to these codes, whether it's a contractor building a skyscraper or a homeowner building a deck. If the only source for the text of the code is the drafting group, it's a huge opportunity for profit.
If you agree with my opinion that money, not safety, seems to be the biggest motivation for the drafters of model codes, consider this: The codes are frequently updated. When the code is updated, those who needed it must have purchased it again. I think that perhaps this might have lead to code revisions that weren't strictly necessary for safety, but rather, revisions that ensured everyone would need to buy a new copy of the code.
Kind of like how a lot of software upgrades work. Remember the days when word processors changed file formats with every major revision?
I hope this court decision will ensure that building codes are about safety, and not profit. Those who draft the code need to be concerned about safety first and foremost, not about the money to be made in publication.