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

West and Lexis/Nexis are going to love this.

[jcohen]

For eons, West and Lexis have been making staggering sums reselling primary legal material to all and sundry. Best of luck to this project in prying that material out of their hands, and in surviving the massive lobbying and astroturfing that will ensue before the project achieves that goal.

Re:bad phrasing

[bill_mcgonigle]

You do realize that capitalism is entirely voluntary, right? If it wasn't 100% voluntary, it wouldn't be capitalism.

The only pure capitalism I see is at local self-organized farmers' markets. Ironically, largely patronized by people who vehemently criticize capitalism.

Just about everything else is taxed and regulated, which perturbs real market function.