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

Here's an interesting quote

[tkrotchko]

"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?

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[gerf]

"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?

More than fascinating... anyone who follows yro.slashdot or any copywright laws could pull some very helpful court decisions from this one statement alone. Heck, it sort of infers that P2P is legal, especially with copywrighted works. Obviously, that wouldn't stand up in another case, but it's very interesting nevertheless.

Re:Here's an interesting quote

[Thorsett]

(I posted this story a week ago and it was rejected.)

I'm surprised that copyrighted laws are news to so many people. I've been frustrated for years that while you can look up almost all of our local munciple code on line, the building code sections are not published, because they incorporate by reference material copyrighted by the standards organizations. Check your own local code websites and I bet you'll find the same thing.

This odd situation isn't new; this has been standard practice for years. But nobody really noticed until we came to expect instant internet access to government information, since all local governments have copies of the copyrighted building codes available for inspection in the office.

There are some interesting implications of this ruling for software; for example, if a government agency requires software to interoperate with a proprietary standard (e.g., Word document format)....

Enact Linux

[sleepingsquirrel]

Someone should slip the source code for Linux in one of those mamoth appropriation bills Congress passes right before the end of session. Since the lawmakers never read the bills they vote on, and law becomes uncopyrightable *presto* no more SCO problems.

Re:Enact Linux

[ender81b]

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.

Re:Enact Linux

[phliar]

... it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.

This statement is completely false.

If 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.

What would the founding fathers think?

[User 956]

When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not create art. So in the US Constitution, it says:

Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

Public Domain vs OpenSource

[TokyoBoy]

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.

This is Socialism at its worst

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the government justify taking away the property rights of the corporations that write our laws?

Without private ownership of our laws, what incentive will there be for corporations to write innovative new laws? Now that there is no way for businesses to make money writing laws, our nation's lawmaking process is going to wither up and die.

"Open source"

[sulli]

WTF? Are laws only in force when compiled to machine code?

The law is public domain. Use the correct term, desire for buzzword compliance notwithstanding.

Easier to read mirror:

[Gunsmithy]

http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html This may be a bit easier to read...

GOOD!!!

[Crashmarik]

Imagine if it hadn't passed.

Ignorance would have to be an acceptable defence.

It would allow lawyers to rambus the legal system.

Seinfeld described lawyers as those annoying people that actually read the back of the box for the odd rules in the game. Imagine if they could now cut out parts of the rules and hide them.

Sympathize but...

[vanyel]

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.

Misuse of "Open Source"

[Dwonis]

s/open source/in the public domain/g

Re:Misuse of "Open Source"

[zulux]

s/open source/in the public domain/g

For you MSCEs out there

Menu Bar -> Edit -> Search & Replace -> Search For: Open Source -> Replace With: in the public domain -> "It looks like your Searching and Replacing" -> Right clicn, Hide Asistant -> Start from Begining on Document -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok -> Ok

Re:Was this a joke?

[nomadic]

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.

Open Source laws are better.

[raehl]

Open Source laws would require that the human-readable source english be freely distributed with the lawyernary files executed by the court.

True Open Law

[The Monster]

But nobody really noticed until we came to expect instant internet access to government information, since all local governments have copies of the copyrighted building codes available for inspection in the office.

Long before I heard of the Internet, I thought this was suspect. I don't know how it is in other states, but in KS the only reason a lot of county newspapers stay in business is because of a state law that requires publication of certain legal documents, including every new local ordinance, in the 'official county newspaper'.

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:

Every proposed law (bill/resolution/etc), when first introduced by a member of the legislative body, must be submitted in a well-defined markup language - I'm thinking XHTML - to show the exact text of the proposal and track any amendments as they are attached using span classes that show every jot and tittle that's altered, when, by what vote... When the law is passed, the document is cryptographically signed by the presiding officer of the legislative body - when the executive has the power to approve or veto with a pen and ink, he also applies an electronic signature to the bill

And the entire base of existing law must be transcribed into such a format within 5 years. Then do the same with administrative regulations promugated by agencies, with hyperlinks back to the law that gave them the power to promulgate. And all the judicial decisions. . .

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.