Slashdot Mirror
City Laws Only Available Via $200 License
MrLint writes "The City of Schenectady has decided that their laws are copyrighted, and that you cannot know them without paying for an 'exclusive license' for $200. This is not a first — Oregon has claimed publishing of laws online is a copyright violation." This case is nuanced. The city has contracted with a private company to convert and encode its laws so they can be made available on the Web for free. While the company works on this project, it considers the electronic versions of the laws its property and offers a CD version, bundled with its software, for $200. The man who requested a copy of the laws plans to appeal.
I wonder how the 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' standpoint would be upheld given that you may not be economically able to know the laws...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
..no longer own our government. Time for that city's citizens to fire all the politicians (hopefully peacefully not by force), and rebuild the government from scratch
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Ignorance of law is not a defense in a court of law, yet people are subject to laws they cannot read in detail. Doesn't seem very nuanced. It seems a very straightforward violation of basic principles of civics.
Think of the lawyers!
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
So "due diligence" in researching whether or not you might violate a law now requires you to pay a fee. How totalitarian.
Basically if the laws aren't available for reading because they're copyrighted, I wonder how they can actually even prosecute anyone for anything?
Has this been tried yet in court?
Also it should be a warning to the electorate, government is supposed to serve the people, not extort money from them.
First off, since these are state and local laws, the objection that "government works are in the public domain" doesn't apply, as that objection is only valid for federal works.
However, there are several cases that deal with the question of whether private codes (e.g. building codes, safety codes, etc.) that a local government pays for can remain copyrighted once they are enacted into law. Veeck v. Southern Bldg Code, Building Officials & Code Administrators Int'l v. Code Technology, Inc. There are others, but in both those, the idea was that once the private code is enacted into law, it would enter the public domain.
This case seems different though... if all this company has done is taken the city's law and made them an electronic version, surely they don't own the copyright to the text of the laws themselves (unless some idiot wrote the software contract).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Ignorance of the law is no excuse... So how's that explanation going to work if you have to buy the laws? I'm in jail because I couldn't afford to buy the $200 rule book.
Sounds like pauper's prison to me.
Any law which does not offer universal access to those claimed to be subject to it should not have universal jurisdiction over said population. A very simple quid pro quo. If you have to pay to know the law, it only can be applied to those who paid :).
Vote ALL city bureaucrats out at the earliest chance. I am willing to be part of this effort. Trust me, once they feel threatened with job losses in this economy, they will "style up."
Does this mean nobody is able to read the laws in any form unless they pay $200, or is it just delivery in electronic format that incurs this extra charge?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Aren't works for hire generally owned by whoever is paying... City pays contractor for work, city owns the work, not the contractor.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
As I was reading TFA there was another thing I saw that outraiged me besides the ludicrous copyrighting of laws.
Why does a city's laws and codes have to be two fat binders? Perhaps I'm making a wrong assumption (or just have my head up my ass; I'm on my first cup of coffee this morning), but a thick binder where I work is about four inches thick.
Why so many codes and regulations? And not only does one have to obey these laws, but there are the state and Federal laws you have to abide by as well.
How the hell is anyone supposed to avoid being a criminal when there are books and books of laws one has to obey?
I'd like to see a new federal law that says all laws, codes, and ordinances expire after a period of ten years, after which time lawmakers can re-enact those laws if they deem necessary. We have WAY too many laws.
And I'd like to see the next copyright revision state plainly and emphatically that no government can copyright anything whatever.
Someone please violate this city's bogus copyright and get the laws on the internet. And publically shame the city and its leaders for their insanity. I know if I lived in Schenectady I'd be voting against the incumbants (of course, I usually do here anyway).
Free Martian Whores!
Sounds like this particular set of laws now only applies to people who have purchased them for $200.
If I publish a book in CD form, I don't create a new, copyrightable work. I might have the copyright on the software reader, but the work itself belongs to the original author (presumably the city council, and normally public domain), not the transcriber. They might require you purchase their $200 reader, and give you the law text for free. They could also charge you a "convenience fee" for delivering the content in a mroe useful form, provided they are licensed to do so (which would be the case for a public domain work). It sounds like they're claiming copyright on the law, which is generally frowned upon as is disallowing citizens to read the law without going though a third party.
Don't law offices generally pay for annual versions of the local law, all neatly printed and bound so that the conference room bookshelves look nice?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Do people on a jury have to pay $200 as well? As it can be real hard to be on a jury and not know the law.
TFA reports that the code is available in multiple public locations. The citizen can make copies of the ordinances from those sources.
That the city code is a twisted mess is no big surprise. A lot of municipalities have that problem.
The assertion of copyright is stupid, just stupid. The morons will soon realize that they have to retreat from that lunatic undemocratic position or they will be sued under New York's FOIA.
you will need to come by my office. I printed this page of comments and put it on a CD for $200. You can also purchase the "audiobook" version, where I hire an old 4-pack/day biker to read the article and comments into a $12 USB microphone, doing voice interpretations where necessary depending on comment score. That downloadable copy is $300, because it comes with a 15-second RIAA warning.
Or should I say is pretty much dead.
Old resident here (I lived in Rotterdam, a town in Schenectady).
Schenectady was a booming place many years ago (~30) due to ALCO (American Locomotive) and GE (General Electric) being major companies that not only paid a lot in taxes but also brought other businesses to the area.
Downtown Schenectady, while small, was always alive with shops, stores, etc. Heck, my favorite as a child was a small two story hardware store that had one of those old school ceiling mounted "trolly" systems for moving orders/payments around the building. It was fun as a child to watch it zoom around.
Not anymore however. Schenectady decided it would be a great idea to raise taxes and grab more cash. GE and I'm assuming ALCO (can't remember when they pulled out) both decided taxes were too high and they pulled most of their operations out of Schenectady. This has pretty much killed the local economy as all the other small businesses that relied on the employee (residents and commuters) patronage have closed up shop. Schenectady shot itself in the foot really bad.
The article seems to state this is a temporary situation as they are paying $20k to get this on the web for everyone (assuming for free). But at first glance it looked like a misguided cash grab. Maybe it is, I'm not sure. Will be interesting to see how quickly they get a free version out there, if the web version does indeed end up being free. If not, *sigh*, Schenectady will be doing something stupid, again, to make a buck.
Poverty now becomes the ultimate trump card! This should change prison demographics a little.
I couldn't think of a better example of the government excluding the poor. People, of all financial backgrounds, deserve to have access to the laws of the land.
In this case the majority of people in the room when this was decided were that kind of people.
Give it a little bit and their asses are gonna be toast in court and they're going to realize that they can't rule over the city folk like dictators. Unfortunately they will never realize the real magnitude of their stupidity.
Liberty.
Welcome to government, where you don't have to be responsible for your own mistakes, because you make the rules.
The judge sounds like an idiot, and probably is. Does he realize what kind of funding the state's DMV would need if every state resident took him seriously, and contacted the DMV four or more times a year to make sure his/her license hasn't been suspended and to check that they don't have any outstanding tickets? And how much economic damage that might cause the state because of lost work?
Here's what the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has said about Schenectady's brain-dead legal position:
"For these reasons, we reject SBCCI's deconstruction of Banks into merely utilitarian and factual issues. Instead, we read Banks, Wheaton, and related cases consistently to enunciate the principle that "the law," whether it has its source in judicial opinions or statutes, ordinances or regulations, is not subject to federal copyright law."
Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress Intern., Inc.
293 F.3d 791
C.A.5 (Tex.),2002
This case is nuanced.
Hey, whoah, slow down there chief. Remember what website you're posting on, we don't want to hear that.
What a way to squeeze money from a few people and make criminals of the rest of us.
As I was reading TFA there was another thing I saw that outraiged me besides the ludicrous copyrighting of laws.
Problem solved!
Even King Hammurabi got it better than this. At least he ensured the laws were open to all.
Why so many codes and regulations?
The short answer is that the society we live in is very complicated. The basic principles are pretty simple but hammering out the details requires a lot of lawmaking. These laws cover the corner cases of how we are to interact with each other. Turns out the best (and probably only) way to do that anyone has come up with is to have a lot of laws. This is better than the alternative which is basically monarchy. Better to have the rules spelled out (even if complicated) than to depend on the capricious whims of rules. (yes, yes, I know it's hard to tell the difference sometimes...)
Bear in mind too that those laws are just the regulations, codes, ordinances etc passed by legislative bodies. There is another set of relevant law found in case law.
How the hell is anyone supposed to avoid being a criminal when there are books and books of laws one has to obey?
You aren't. A government that cannot accuse you of breaking any laws cannot control you.
It came from Schenectady (buyable from Amazon)
(I think it was Longyear who, when asked from where he got all the ideas for his science fiction stories, replied that he would send money to a P.O. box in Schenectady and that the ideas got sent to him by reply mail.)
What I find more troubling than the copyright situation is that the city is paying a company ("General Code") to index and make the records available, but that any disk that ships with this has to have a copy of General Code's software in order to read it! Which means, of course, that GC has a pretty sweet revenue stream in perpetuity - even the city counsellors themselves couldn't access it without the consent and continued existence of GC.
So, if I copyright my tax forms, can I charge the government for each copy they receive?
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The headline states that the laws are only available via a $200 license, but that is not the case. The laws currently exist in two forms, a paper version and an electronic version that is stored in a proprietary format. The paper copy is held in multiple 3-ring binders and would cost $656 to reproduce, and in order to read the proprietary electronic format you would need to license the software required for $200. No one ever said the laws themselves were copyrighted. They are also available to view for free in multiple public locations, "White said copies of the code, with updates early this year, are on file at the Schenectady Public Library, Schenectady County Supreme Court Library, the Schenectady County Community College Library and several other locations."
So you can see that no one is preventing anyone from viewing the laws, the problem is if you want your own personal copy it just isn't financially feasible at this time. Luckily the city realizes this and they're working to get a copy of the code online, which will be accessible for free. It shouldn't be this difficult to view city laws electronically so searching is simpler, and this is a good example of why we shouldn't use proprietary formats. Although your content is owned by you, you're limited to what you can do with it because of the format it's in.
Dear City Council of Schenectady
I would like to recommend to you an interesting article.
The subject is a result of my study "Location, timer settings and defusing codes of explosive devices located in various public buildings of the City of Schenectady".
I'm convinced you would be very interested in the information contained therein. I am willing to sell you a copy of said article, but considering its literary and informational value, I estimate it to be worth $10mln.
Simultaneously I would like to state I have no connection with manufacturers of these devices nor people who planted them. This is merely an scientific work of an informative study that should be of interest to all citizens of the city.
Faithfully, yours, ...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No law to worry about breaking if you don't know about them. Not much different than the po-dunk town I live in; I can't even go down to city hall (which is a tin shack add-on to the town repair shop) and get a written or verbal list of city law just because of the flat-out dis-organization and un-realization from the city counsel themselves. Seems to me people are doing them selves a favor in Schenectady not buying into this $200 joke. Just another botched, baseless and wasted revenue attempt IMHO.
And tell your boss what? "I can't come in because I need to know the law. Please charge the law courts for lost productivity".
They're called Uggs because whenever I see or hear of these stupid things i go... "UGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHAH.. YUCK, you stupid fucking human beings"
Unless it is copyprotected, of course.
I.e. "cannot print" PDFs. Or "cannot screengrab" viewing programs.
The protection cannot be broken either: DMCA.
Windows will be the only OS you can run on because it's a closed source reader and obfuscated format and that OS is the only one that can be "trusted" (computing) to stop you reading the information and extracting it.
So please tell me how you can get your public domain works out of 70,000 pages of text.
Our justice system is built on the premise that it is better to let 10 guilty people go free than to punish one innocent person.
And it should continue to operate that way in a free society.
I truly hope you were kidding.
This is not ignorance of the law.
You are not the person listed on the ticket. You are not the person suspended. That person is fictional and does not exist as listed by the officer.
It's erroneous to have to assume there are judgement pending against you and that it's your responsibility to periodically check with city hall to see if there are.
(Imagine if everyone started to do this, city hall would come to a crawling halt... hey, wait a minute.)
On the other hand, if you didn't pay the ticket because the address was wrong on the ticket, you should have appealed immediately and you are at fault.
IANAL IAAS
I'm sure there would be plenty of people willing to pay you $199 to do this.
The law isn't subject to copyright as it's merely a collection of facts (the laws themselves), not a creative work as understood by copyright law. That's aside and apart from the fact that text of the laws are legally public records. The town is not only obligated to produce them on demand, but can be compelled to provide a reproduction of them by FOIA request (unless they plan to go to court and claim that they can't comply on national security grounds). Granted, they can charge you their cost in reproducing anything beyond the first 50 pages you request, but they can't charge you more.
If it's on CD, that's great. The cost of a CD-R is less than $1 -- that sounds reasonable to me.
I hereby claim that my tax returns and financial information are copyrighted property. For the IRS to use such documents, they will have to pay me for a license to use this copyrighted material (fee to be determined at a later time, say around April)
In my experience the "ignorance of the law is no excuse" standpoint holds up whether or not you have a good excuse for your ignorance. The police once copied down my address incorrectly on a ticket (they ignored my correct address on the copy of the ticket I mailed in) causing a summons to court, a notice of default judgement against me, a notice that my ticket was unpaid and a notice that my license had been suspended to be sent to the wrong address. I was later charged with driving with a suspended license after an accident a few months later. I discovered what had happened after some digging at the bureau of public records. I explained what had happened to the judge and he told me the ignorance of the law is ones own fault period. The fact that the state had tried to contact me was sufficient on their part. It is always your responsibility to become informed of the law regardless of any difficulties you have.
Though it sounds like you were treated unfairly, this is not a true example of the "ignorance of the law" principle in operation. (As a side note, the IRS lost a similar case a few years ago. The court did not buy the argument that they had informed the citizen by sending notices to the wrong address.)
Despite what know-it-alls say, the "ignorance of the law" principle is not absolute. It is a compromise which favors the state against the citizen. In most cases the citizen is assumed to know about any law which has been properly published. Without it, those who wanted to break the law would deliberately avoid learning about it. With it, citizens can be victimized when they are punished for violating laws about which they might not have known. This is considered a necessary trade-off in order to preserve the state's ability to punish the truly guilty.
There is controversy about when ignorance of the law becomes an excluse. The state's case is strongest when the citizen is engaged in an activity which is far outside the scope of what normal people do, such as if he is operating a nuclear power plant. It is expected that he will know that special laws will apply and will perform the necessary research.
Factors which weaken the government's case: the citizen is engaged in an ordinary activity, the law is new, the citizen can show that he made a good faith effort to learn about the law (especially if a government official mis-informed him), access to the text of the law is obstructed.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/13/1310212/City-Laws-Only-Available-Via-200-License?art_pos=1#
If I am operating a nuclear power plant, it is reasonable for me to pay $200 for access to the thousands of pages of laws and regulations involved. If I am planting a shrub in my front yard, it is not reasonable to pay $200 for a copy of the city ordinances on CD. At a time when electronic publication is replacing display in public buildings, it is reasonable to ask whether artificial barriers to access, such as high fees, impair the right of cities to enforce their laws.
The article clearly states that the old-school, paper version was available; just not in a convenient, searchable database (yet).
He could has looked up the data at the city hall, or gone to the library and sud the paper copies (also in the article).
The thing he ISN'T given access to is the proprietary software which is copyrighted by the company who is currently creating a version that will be free for all on the web. Its understandable and reasonable that the company that is taking the time take volumes of data and convert it into a a usable database be allowed some protection to their part of the work for a reasonable period of time while it is being put into that format, perfected as a product (quality assurance), and posted to the web in a format that is easily and freely searchable.
This isn't about keeping people from having access to the law, TFA states clearly that he or anyone can still access all the paper copies of the laws at the library, which is the system that has been in place for ages; now that the city is attempting to make it more easily available.
All the saber-rattling about forced "ignorance of the law" etc. would be nullified if the OP posted a balanced summary, or people actually too the time to read the whole (2 page) article.
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
The City of Schenectady dismissed the entire police department after an internal review board found that not one officer, chief on down, was legitimately conducting police business. They pulled in state police and police from surrounding areas to fill the gaps
I would like to point out, as someone who has seen an FOIA request processed, there is often a fee per page of response. So, for example, we requested ALL of the parking tickets in town for some info as we tried to fight the overnight parking ban in town.
The response came back that it would be a significant cost at several cents per page to print out, and asked if we wanted to refine our request... so we narrowed it down to a few key streets.
So, in terms of getting a copy of the whole set of laws, $200 might not even be that expensive. I usually look stuff like this up online, but if its not available, how would you get it? I would assume you can go down to town hall and make your own copies at cost to you? Or at least read them?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
How can you just consider something your property without any legal basis for ownership? Can I just consider the images on a webpage my property just because they are currently stored on disk or in memory on my computer? Furthermore, can a bank consider their customer's assets their (the bank's) property?
Move sig!
in Veeck v. SBCCI
Although the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the matter they declined to hear an Appeal in 2003.
In June 2003, the Supreme Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal of the Fifth Circuit Court June 7, 2002 decision in Veeck vs. SBCCI (case No. 99-40632)
when a copyrighted standard or code is referenced into law (particularly if it thereby becomes "the law"), the developer cannot enforce its copyright against a free distribution of the standard.
Veeck had put building codes that his local municipality online. These codes were purchased from SBCCI and when he published them they went after Veeck for copyright infringement.
Lower courts held that he had indeed violated copyright until it came to the Fifth Circuit. With the the Supreme Court denying the writ of certiorari, the Fifth Circuit's ruling
stood in this case.
I think the premise here is that if you're expected to abide by a law, which is a fundamental premise of society, you can't put barriers around them such as copyrights. It would
be interesting now to see if the Supreme Court reviewed one of these cases now.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_building_code
In Texas, nothing is sent, you are expected to contact the court to take care of the matter yourself.
Oh, that's worrisome...is not paying a traffic infraction fine a death penalty crime there, too?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
..at least in my country, which is not the USA. The citizens MUST be able to read the law WITHOUT ANY conditions, be it monetary or otherwise. Seriously, if a down-and-out comes into the public library, stating she wants to read the code of social law, she must not be hindered, regardless of the smell. They still send out books of our constitution for free here.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
This is really nothing new. Any municipal/state/county ordinance that incorporates the various building codes (eg. UBC) by reference are essentially doing the same thing. Without paying hundreds of dollars, you have no reasonable access to the laws you need to follow in order to build or modify a building.
The city makes its laws available on paper for a fee, and at the library for free, just like any other city or town in the nation. Next year the free version will be online as well as in the library, and today the for-fee version is also available on CD. Lots of businesses make money by re-packaging government-published works. That doesn't mean that their product must be provided to everyone at no charge.
Justice: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." What you're describing is superstition and paranoia, not justice.
He's copyrighting the WAY he wrote it. After all, the method of writing the glyph is a creative process and sets the exact placement of the facts within the form and THAT can be copyrighted. The arrangement of the facts is the copyrighted element.
So manual copying of the info is OK (but check you're not just making a derived work!) but photocopying requires a license.
I could see the judges point in buttersnout's case if the address on his driver's license and/or registration was out of date.
In my state you are required by law to inform the MVD of any changes of address. Any correspondence with the MVD is done using this address, and if you don't update it then it is your fault if you do not get mail from them, including red-light camera tickets, license suspension notices and the like. They aren't going to change that official address just because you wrote it on some random form, like a ticket payment.
If that was the case, then it was ignorance of the law that caused the problems not ignorance of fact. If his address was up-to-date, however, then I completely agree with you. His county would have to be absolutely retarded to send license suspension notices to an address scrawled down by a cop rather than the address they have on record for his license, but it's certainly possible.
The headline and TFS both state that the code is only available to citizens for a $200 license. This is not true. RTFA.
This is a case of a company trying to weasle a buck and a city government not thinking through the options that might best serve a citizen. There was a fair amount of stupidity involved in the manner of refusing the FOI request, but that's about it.
The law is available for anyone to review - just not to take home their own copy without considerable expense. It will be available online for free in the near future, and where this guy ran into trouble is he specifically asked for a more convenient form of the information than the city is presently in a position to provide without more creativity than they exercise by defualt.
Bottom line - the city officials should get better educated, and it sounds like they're doing just that as they consider options to fill this request; in other words, business as usual, nothing to see here.
before we read about someone charging the state/city $$$ to follow these laws...
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
' But the plans were on display...'
on display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.'
`That's the display department.'
`With a torch.'
`Ah, well the lights had probably gone.'
`So had the stairs.'
`But look you found the notice didn't you?'
`Yes,' said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck
in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door
saying "Beware of The Leopard".'
-- Douglas Adams.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
There is a solution to this: Pirate Party in 2012. That's the damned solution. Shame on any municipality for claiming that laws, which are in the public domain by definition, can be restricted from copy, as a product. The laws to which we assent must be accessible to anyone affected by them upon demand, and furnished conveniently at cost, in order for us to assent to them and in order for justice to function, even limping and lopsided as it has been for the past few decades.
As regards the law, we are entitled citizens, not privileged consumers. If there is no law to that effect, it should be added to the Freedom of Information Act immediately and become a Federal mandate.
Barring that, or uniform state code of some kind, the solution is very simple: If government will not grant us justice nor peace, as is its duty, we will steal it. Copyright infringement will become a service, not a crime. By whatever means necessary.
Your move Schenectady.
--
Toro
Completely agree. I was first frustrated and upset with what I read, because we the people cannot permit government to hide our laws from us. That's exactly what the summary implied. But when I RTFA, I read exactly what the parent said...the laws are available for reading at THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, as they should be.
The guy can just go to the library, research things the old-fashioned way, pay for making photocopies, and wait for this company to finish the project they were contracted to do.
public.resource.org has a GREAT comic about a similar issue. It is a lovingly-captioned discussion between two Lego men. My favorite passage:
public.resource.org is a project to make government information more available. They've been focusing for a while on these sorts of expensive, copyright-encumbered laws. The courts have struck down copyright interest in these laws before, but that doesn't stop the cartels and the states from trying to charge people.
|/usr/games/fortune
I am sorry, but the government is for the people and by the people, therefore the laws are OWNED BY THE PEOPLE, and should be be FREELY MADE AVAILABLE to anyone who asks!
WTF is the city worried about, that another city will use their laws? Who would that harm?
Talk about a waste of public funds!
In Texas, any offense is punishable by the death penalty!
No sig for the moment.
This case is NOT nuanced. Only the lawyers for the company that stands to make a buck want folks to think that. Did the printing company that, in olden days, typeset, print, and bind the laws in paper copies expect to profit from an exclusive license? No, they expected to get paid to do the printing and hand over the copies to the government. Possibly they could print up additional copies and sell them but they didn't expect to have any rights to the content.
Judge: How do to you plee to the charge of violating City Code 19353.b? Defendant: Can I see a copy of your license? Judge: My license for what? Defendant: Your license to publicly display, use, or reference copyrighted materials, in this case the City Code. Judge: Of course not. Why would I need a license? There Public Laws. Defendant: But they are copyright none the less. As a constituant governed by these laws, I co-own these laws and unless you provide me with a copy of you license for public display, I'm going to have to issue you a take DMCA Takedown notice... Judge: You're in contempt of court!!! Defendant: Unfortunately, your honor, the procedures that govern 'contempt of court' are also Copyrighted, I'm afraid I'll have to issue another DMCA notice. Furthermore, your flagrant disregard for copyright law is a clear indication of Judaical incompetence, and grounds for a mistrial....
You've activated my trap card!
Uhh no. Laws I am not allowed to know are laws I am exempt from.
The Oregon situation isn't this eggregious. Oregon does not charge for access to the state laws, in fact, the state has had them online for years, persuant to the Oregon Sunshine Act of 1973
Furries make the internet go.
Why is it "Actually..." is always followed by the factually incorrect ramblings of a moron?
Like yours for example.
It's pretty clear you didn't RTFA.
on an ep of Deep Space 9 when Quark went home to Ferenginar.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Up-front note: IANAL, I have no intention of becoming a traffic lawyer, and the thrust of this post is that you need to talk to one if you're in this kind of situation.
Actually, ignorance of fact is only a defense if a violation or crime has some mental state (mens rea) requirement and your ignorance negates that requirement. (e.g. "Knowingly," "with intent to," etc.) Most traffic violations are strict liability offenses, and your ignorance of the facts would be irrelevant.
Improper notice is a possible argument, but that's going to depend largely on your jurisdiction, and you will need an attorney to navigate these issues. (It's probably way too late for the original poster here, but FYI for everyone else.)
Generally speaking, if the DMV sent it to the address that's on file and didn't get it returned in the mail, the court is going to side with the prosecution. You have a responsibility under law in most states to notify the DMV if you move precisely to prevent this sort of thing from happening. If the DMV doesn't have a current address on file, and a court notice or ticket goes missing in the mail, then that is your fault.
So keep those records up to date, and always call the state bar to do a cheap phone consultation with an attorney to make sure you know the law, even if you can't afford to have the attorney represent you in court. If you're up against a statute that may result in a jail sentence (as is the case with driving with a suspended license in many jurisdictions), you want to know ahead of time, and you don't want to show up in a court room with a head full of misconceptions about the law and wind up in jail.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But 99% of the laws require you to know what you are doing is, in fact, what you doing, and do it on purpose. It's illegal if, and only if, you know you're doing a specific action, whether or not you know if that action's illegal.
Actually, while most criminal laws that carry jail offenses do require you to have purposeful or knowing intent (in MPC jurisdictions, anyway), most vehicle-related offenses are strict liability offenses since they carry minimal stigma.
Ignorance of fact is irrelevant to strict liability offenses. "I didn't know I was going that fast, officer!" or "My speedometer is broken!" are both no excuse in a speeding ticket. All that matters is that you committed the act and met all the attendant circumstances. Traffic courts don't generally have to worry much about litigating a person's intent.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What exactly is nuanced about this? A corrupt public servant and a private company collude to charge taxpayers $200 to view something that very clearly should be freely available. This is corrupt in a very un-nuanced way.
It seems to me that one can easily argue that laws are facts,and as since facts can not be copyrighted...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Anyone know the rule on building codes for this? My town has adopted a version of the International Building Codes. I've found places to buy it online, but no free version. It seems ludicrous to me that I have to pay money to find out how to follow the codes.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Generally speaking, if the DMV sent it to the address that's on file and didn't get it returned in the mail, the court is going to side with the prosecution. You have a responsibility under law in most states to notify the DMV if you move precisely to prevent this sort of thing from happening. If the DMV doesn't have a current address on file, and a court notice or ticket goes missing in the mail, then that is your fault.
It didn't sound like the case described was a result of an actual change in address. It sounds like the DMV was not sending it to the address on file. In that case, whether or not they receive it back, it should be their fault entirely. Mailing a notice to the correct address on file should be the only act that constitutes a fulfillment of their responsibility to notify the offender (and, really, they should need to use a delivery method with proof of delivery, but that's a whole 'nother story...).
Of course, I'm presuming that there wasn't a duty on his part to follow up as was described above, etc...
Perhaps I'm getting confused here, but what's the big deal? The vast majority of comments here seem to be along the lines of "You can't copyright laws, that's just evil" without realising that nobody's actual copyrighted the laws themselves. What they've done is copyrighted the particular electronic format of the reports. The laws are still accessable at most local libraries, so you can make yourself aware of them. Yes, they should be online, and Schenectady should make them available online to improve access to justice. Since they are doing so, the real thing left to argue about is whether or not Schenectady is doing it quickly enough - most of the comments haven't focussed on that, but have instead been discussing how it's unfair that an electronic copy of the laws can be the subject of copyright.
The problem with that sort of attitude is it doesn't work when you apply it to other areas of the law. Case law is still the law, therefore the majority opinion of Slashdot would be that it should be free to read online. I agree with that, but that doesn't mean that a privately owned company publishing that same case law shouldn't be able to have copyright in their law reports. I'm an Australian law student, so it's easiest for me to illustrate this with an Australian example. The High Court (our equiv of the Supreme Court) often makes binding case law. That case law is available online, through austlii.edu.au and numerous other places. However, the Commonwealth Law Reports, which are published by the Lawbook Co. are copyrighted. So, if I link someone to, say, the text of Wik v Queensland on austlii.edu.au, that's fine. If I make an unauthorised copying of the case from the CLR, that's not fine.
I hope this helps clarify the position here - the materials are currently subject to copyright, in the format that they are currently in. They will eventually be made available online. When that happens, you'll be able to use them fine. Until then, you can still check them from your library. It's important to stress that the company that's producing the electronic copy of the laws is allowed to copyright them - even though those laws are the exact same ones the City is currently using.
Make sense?
... This exact situation is specified in the copyright law itself.
The conversion of the art into an new medium is NOT a new art.
Their software is theirs.... If they actually made it.
So when do these bastards start paying us RENT for their use of OUR offices and reimbursement for utilities?
"You are under arrest." citizen: "What law did I break. Please show me the law." "I'm sorry sir, I cannot show you the law that you broke, it is copyrighted."
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Mailing a notice to the correct address on file should be the only act that constitutes a fulfillment of their responsibility to notify the offender (and, really, they should need to use a delivery method with proof of delivery, but that's a whole 'nother story...).
Well, one of the problems here is that the burdens of proof may not be as strongly in favor of the defendant as, say, proving that someone shot someone else.
In many jurisdictions, traffic and license offenses are "violations." Violations are not crimes but carry civil penalties (i.e. fines) and only require a civil burden of proof (i.e. "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"). However, driving on a suspended license often carries a maximum penalty that includes jail time, so that's not likely to be relevant here.
What is more directly relevant to the case is that all the prosecution needs to do to convict someone of a crime is to prove all the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. (i.e. Were you driving? Was your license suspended? End of case.) Any believable defense that casts doubt on one of those elements lets you go free. (This is sometimes known as a "negativing defense.")
But if you want to mount a defense that doesn't attack those elements (e.g. necessity, extenuating circumstances, etc.), then the burden of proof for those defenses is often (but not always) on the defendant, and that burden may be anywhere from "preponderance of the evidence" to "clear and convincing evidence." (This is sometimes known as a "collateral defense.")
So, if you want to claim, "I never had any way of knowing that my license was suspended!" then the burden of proof is on you, and you're probably going to need something more than just the assertion that you never got the mail. After all, the jury (or judge in a typical traffic court bench trial) is free to consider your testimony alone as self-serving and/or unreliable.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
FOIL allows reasonable copying costs, and the city is (and was) in the process of making the laws available online. The company doing the conversion will also sell a copy of the laws, annotated and indexed, with their software. That copy is copyright automatically at the instant of creation, as is anything else they or you create. I see no credible report that reasonable access was denied, and the laws in open format will be online when the conversion is complete.
The local paper, which spent many $100k on naming rights to the local arena, thought that $200 for a copyright copy of laws, with software, was worth a story. And since "City putting laws online for better public access" doesn't have much buzz, the story was spun to imply that people couldn't see the laws without spending hundreds. I really thought they were a better paper than that.
Full disclosure, I live three blocks from city hall, the laws are there during business hours, are at the libraries noted about 80 hours/week, and are as readily available as is typical for a small town. Having the laws online is an indication of more open government, not less.