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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.
Part of the problem is that lobbyists for various trade groups have gotten California to adopt existing books of industry standards as state code. The law basically incorporates whatever is the latest industry standard book... which requires money to get. Same deal with things like medical terminology. There's a "standards group" which makes money off of licensing the billing codes and selling books of what the current billing codes are.
Until quite recently many states (Pennsylvania being the last) did not post their laws online at all or make them available to the public for free. In many cases the only way to get access to the actual laws was to purchase a copy from the state's legal publisher or look them up in a legal library, (which exists on ever street corner). This is as true for statutes of the type that Malamud is focusing on as caselaw which is an essential facet of law in the U.S. and other Common Law countries.
Efforts to change this have routinely been fought by legal publishers who hold lucrative monopolies on the publication of laws and their dissemination. There also exists a generational gap in many cases with a generation accustomed to having the law on paper not really understanding why one would look online.
So ironically what Malamud is doing is not "fighting for the norm" of freely accessible laws but fighting for something new. While many people are fond of the cant "ignorance of the law is no excuse", for most of recent U.S. history laws have been hidden.
Good luck to him.
This happens all the time. The judiciary doesn't want to deal with people - they want to deal with lawyers.... who get paid by the people.
I once had to fight a ticket in a small town traffic court. I requested a deposition via registered mail, and in my state, if the deposition isn't sent within 30 days the ticket becomes defective. It had been almost 2 months, and I still didn't have it.
As my court date approached, I took the issue up with the town clerk (who only worked a few hours, four days a week). She had never heard that they needed to send out the depositions before the court date (kind of hard to defend oneself without knowing the officer's account), but said she would take it up with the judge. In the meantime, I sent the court, again by registered mail, a notarized motion to dismiss on the grounds that the ticket was defective.
After another week of trying, the secretary finally caved and gave me the judge's work number (he owned the gas station in the town). He was unclear on the particulars of depositions, so he pushed my court date back and then he added:
"You know, you're not really following the proper procedures."
"OK. What are the proper procedures?"
"I can't tell you."
So, it comes as no surprise that government wants to hide laws from the people.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Stop giving them ideas!
I'm only half joking too. It wouldn't surprise me if a state sooner or later started demanding a special and mandatory tax for giving its citizens access to its laws, or demanded a fee from lawyers who shared information about laws with their clients.
...that counties will de-certify or simply not approve equipment ....
An entrepreneur could ask for PERFORMANCE specifications, rather than a specific manufacturer or model.
Some years ago, we had an enterprising man build some tree-houses and then rent them to tourists. The county wanted to make him tear them down, because they were not built according to the normal building codes that ordinary houses are built. The county took him to court hoping to get their way. His contention was that they were just as safe if not safer than a normal house. To make a long story short, the judge said that because there were no codes for tree-houses, does not automatically allow the county to forbid them. He further ordered the county to work with a man and his engineers to develop proper codes especially for tree houses.
Since trees are natural and varied, with all sorts of shapes and sizes, it was not possible to easily come up with fixed rules of materials and how they are used. Trees also tend to sway in the wind, and the rules have to allow for that fact. Therefore, the codes they came up with do not specify materials or construction techniques, but performance specifications such as load, flexibility and other pertinent factors.
The same sort of principles should be applied in most areas. Instead of specifying a specific manufacturer for fire suppression equipment, specification serve water flow and coverage and other factors germane to extinguishing possible fires should be done. Someone with sufficient money and tenacity can force in court, the authorities to formulate rules in that way. This allows for new, innovative ways of meeting the goals of the safe and functional construction and business.
All theory is gray