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

[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.

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.

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.

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