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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.
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 :).
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
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.
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.
I don't know where people get the idea that "the government" equals only the Federal government. Your state and city have governments, too.
I hear it all the time in the bar I go to when people bitch about "the government", blaming Obama and Durbin etc for stupid state laws and city ordinances that the feds don't have anything to do with. The smoking ban comes to mind, boy that one pissed off the bar owners here!
You have more than one government. Where I live I have a Federal governmant, a state govenment, a county government, and a city government. Luckily here the county laws usually don't apply in the city. And there's more than one city in the city and there are no markers showing where Springfield ends and Grandview or Jerome begins.
Free Martian Whores!
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against-then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- one of the bad guys from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
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?
I don't doubt that there are a fair few superfluous laws on the books(in that city, and generally), and that unnecessary complexity is a major vice; but I suspect that most of the actual thickness is contributed by things like building codes.
Even in a hypothetical libertarian utopia where the state handles nothing but defense and the bare outlines of criminal law, you are going to end up with some very lengthy laws, either directly or by reference. For instance, "due process" is pithy; but what it actually means, once you get to the level of court procedure, access to lawyers, details of how one can/cannot be detained and under what circumstances, etc, etc. would be hard to encapsulate in under book length. You could keep the law code itself short by simply refusing to go into detail and handwaving, or by referring to outside codes of practice; but that doesn't really help. If you do the first, you don't really have a rule of law at all. If you do the second, you simply have a very long code of laws that is split up among numerous documents, with your actual "law code" serving as little more than an index.
Once you get into the realm of things like building codes, which are necessarily pretty technical, this problem just becomes greater.
This is not to say that complexity is good(it isn't, one should always strive for Einstein's "simple as possible; but no simpler"); but it does mean that you have to be careful to distinguish between unnecessary and invidious complexity, and necessary complexity. It's like the use of technical jargon. People complain, often rightly, that it is used to confuse and intimidate laymen and keep them from questioning experts; but there are plenty of things that are simply complex and cannot be usefully simplified without distortion.
As I was reading TFA there was another thing I saw that outraiged me besides the ludicrous copyrighting of laws.
Problem solved!
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.
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.
"There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now."
Guess we should have regularly checked with city hall...
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.
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.