Open Source Effort To Codify America's "Operating System" Online

Rubinstien writes "O'Reilly Radar is reporting on an effort to produce Law.gov, 'America's Operating System, Open Source.' The group Public.Resource.Org seeks to 'create a solid business plan, technical specs, and enabling legislation for the federal government to create Law.gov. [They] envision Law.gov as a distributed, open source, authenticated registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States.' According to its new website, 'Law.gov would be similar to Data.gov, providing bulk data and feeds to commercial, non-commercial, and governmental organizations wishing to build web sites, operate legal information services, or otherwise use the raw materials of our democracy.'"

Comments

opensecrets.org, well almost

[tepples]

Anyone got an RSS feed for bribes accepted per politician?

I don't know of one, but I can see an Atom feed of headlines from a site that also has lists of the top contributors to reelection campaigns of representatives like Rep. Boner.

Welcome to the 21st century

[Anonymous Coward]

See e.g.: Canlii, Austlii, Bailii, ...

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Things are getting fixed. If you're a fucking deadbeat. The working man is getting fucked just as hard by this administration as the last.

Code by Lawrence Lessig

[tepples]

What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems or open source?

There's a reason why they call it a "legal code", and not just because of Dr. Lessig's book.

Sounds like an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave, and it seems to be succeeding so far.

"Law like a free software project" would at least require a patch to the patent code to make it more efficient at rejecting obvious inventions.

Just what we need

[igny]

AOS discs in mail.

mod parent troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least take away the 'informative'... I was curious so I looked it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Access_to_Law_Movement
>The Free Access to Law Movement is the umbrella name for the collective of legal projects across several common law countries to provide free online access to legal information such as case law and legislation... The name Legal Information Institute has been widely adopted by other projects. It is usually prefixed by a country or region identifier.

>LII (Cornell) The Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School provides free legal information for the United States. It was the original LII project, founded in 1992.
>CanLII The Canadian Legal Information Institute is the project providing legal information on Canada.
>AustLII The Australasian Legal Information Institute is the project providing Australian and New Zealand legal information.
>BAILII The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (pronounced 'Bailey') is the project providing legal information on England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, United Kingdom, and the European Union.

Lexis and Westlaw?

[jellybear]

Won't this destroy Lexis and Westlaw's business model?

Re:Lexis and Westlaw?

[mhatle]

I agree.. Westlaw/Lexis information includes history context, legal analysis, links to secondary (court cases) sources that interpret the law, and as well as if the law is in the process of being appealed as unconstitutional or whatever.

This is what Westlaw and Lexis sell to lawyers, the actual content of the law itself is something required in order for the money making part to exist.

Re:Lexis and Westlaw?

[jellybear]

I assumed without RTFA that the site would include case law. You're right, it doesn't.

"By primary legal materials, we mean all materials that have the force of law and are part of the law-making process, including: briefs and opinions from the judiciary; reports, hearings, and laws from the legislative branch; and regulations, audits, grants, and other materials from the executive branch. Creating the system from open source software building blocks will allow states and municipalities to make their materials available as well"

Re:West and Lexis/Nexis are going to love this.

[mftb]

You don't have to allow everyone to edit articles/commit code to be open.

References in low to propietary standards

[MountainLogic]

In many technical areas, such as building codes, the law will say something like, "The city of Nowhere adopts in whole the International Building Code of 2007." The problem is that the International Building Code and most other codes are written and copyrighted by private organization that charge lots of money for a copy.

Re:West and Lexis/Nexis are going to love this.

[rhsanborn]

I don't believe it will necessarily follow the open source model of allowing free, unfettered, public updates. Rather the idea of Open Source law should be based on the premise that the law of the country should be available with the lowest barriers possible to all citizens. It is basic to the running of the country, the country that we, the people, ultimately own, and we should all have access to it. To that end, it should be a government initiative to make that as easy as possible. I think that is what this project is about.

Re:Is this where we can read the health care bill?

[Palshife]

http://thomas.loc.gov/ Read anything you want. You don't need the president's permission to read bills before they become law. Though, unlike your representatives, you're not bound by due diligence to do so.