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Don't Share That Law! It's Copyrighted
Nathan Halverson writes "California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to share them. And that's not sitting right with Internet gadfly, and open-access hero, Carl Malamud. He has spent the last couple months scanning tens of thousands of pages containing city, county and state laws — think building codes, banking laws, etc.
Malamud wants California to sue him, which is almost a given if the state wants to continue claiming copyright. He thinks a federal court will rule in his favor: It is illegal to copyright the law since people are required to know it.
Malamud helped force the SEC to put corporate filings online in 1994, and did the same with the patent office. He got the Smithsonian to loosen its claim of copyright, CSPAN to stop forbidding people from sharing its videos, and most recently Oregon to quit claiming copyright on state laws." Malamud's talk at Google ("All the Government's Information") is also well worth watching.
I wouldn't keep prodding Arnold like that.
Maybe if we all pirate these laws it will reduce the financial incentive of these "artists" to create new works.
Webster copyrighted "ridiculous" and you didn't have the money to pay for a license, so you created your own word.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage creativity. See, it works!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Carl Malamud is aiding the terrists! If the laws are freely available to be known by the public, the terrists will find out and obey them to avoid being caught!
We should copyright the copyright laws with billion dollar royalties for usage.
You could violate any copyrights you want, and when they try to cite the copyright laws, BAM!
Copyrights on laws may be unenforceable but they are not illegal.
I sure am glad you popped up to split that hair. Without comments like this, where would we be?
Your post made me think two things.
1) Don't corporations own most of our laws?
2) How awesome would it be if all laws were required to be in the form of a limerick?
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
"It is illegal to be poor. Off to the spice mines with you!"
*shudder*
The Wizard utters the word 'frobnoid!' and cackles gleefully
I see. Is there any reason, then, when you copy/paste your comments into your browser (after the story goes live) that you can't look to see if anything's been marked as misspelled? For that matter, what ever happened to poorfraeding your posts yourself and correcting any speeling misteaks?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It could be cool:
The act of ending a life
When aggrevated by previous strife
Or in the course of a crime
Shall result in a time
Spent as a large convict's wife.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The people must have access to laws in order to obey them.
Communist! Laws should be kept secret so that terrorists can't abuse them. Whenever someone is arrested they should have to prove that what they did is not illegal; if they can't afford to buy official Law Books they are obviously parasites expecting to get something for free.
Ignorance is Freedom!
The Long Now Foundation
That's because Chrome is built on top of vi.
In vi :% makes you select the entire range of text, so this obviously means that you are trying to select TEH ENTIRE INTARWEB!!!111
So Chrome runs out of memory and crashes.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
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