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.

Comments

Public Domain != Open Source

[John Harrison]

If it were, RMS could insist that we call the Constitution the GNU/Constitution instead.

It seems odd that /.ers get so mad about intellectual property law and then abuse terms relating to it so badly. At least rant intelligently!

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[ddimas]

It was rewarded. It's codes were enacted, any further reward is unethical and should be violently illeagal. If the law becomes private property, then it is time for armed rebellion, because that my dear friend is tyranny.