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City Laws Only Available Via $200 License

Posted by kdawson on from the calling-doctor-malamud dept.

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.

14 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. New form of taxes! by ircmaxell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:New form of taxes! by Minozake · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd rather have no justice.

      --
      http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun :)
    2. Re:New form of taxes! by Conzar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The wheels of justice have fallen off. There is no justice especially when the laws are corrupt. It is impossible for everyone to know all of the laws; therefore, the system is broken. Why is it in the USA we have the most people in Prison in the entire world? Instead of passing more laws, our politicians should actively seek real solutions that end poverty, crime, and war; however, this does not make good business. So they ignore these social problems and continue down the path of fascism.

    3. Re:New form of taxes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry, bucko, but that's exactly how the American Justice System is NOT supposed to work. Sure, the innocent still get convicted wrongly, but it's not a necessary function of the system. It's a glitch in the system, one that we strive to eliminate. And before you turn this into a false dilemma, we also want to eliminate the converse glitch: guilty people walking on technicalities. It's a balancing act with no clear proportions, though we (should) tend slightly toward preserving the innocent.

    4. Re:New form of taxes! by digitalunity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most countries have more laws than people can remember. It's a natural progression of law codified in specific legal language, combined with capitalism that lets market forces get in the pockets of politicians and get specific alterations or amendments made for their benefit.

      Your example about the number of people we have in prison isn't related to this topic. A large number of them are in prison for non-violent drug offenses-something they knew was illegal. I don't believe our war on drugs is really about drugs, it's about making minorities criminals.

      I do agree though, we have far too many laws. Those laws that should exist often are far too long. If I wanted a paper copy of all the laws that apply to me, meaning township, county, state and federal law, it would fill my entire house to the top. That is insane.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    5. Re:New form of taxes! by rantingkitten · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The judge may have been an idiot but that is the usual view of judges who deal with traffic court, where normal conventions do not apply. The state skirts around most protections guaranteed to you, the defendant, by classing the charges as "administrative violations" or something similar, rather than "criminal charges". Since the Constitution only guarantees rights of the accused for criminal prosecutions, presto! You suddenly have no right to a trial by jury, or for an attorney. "Innocent until proven guilty," while not precisely codified by the Constitution, is also a concept that has no meaning in traffic court.

      This has been going on for a long, long, long time. Here's Mr Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, to describe it for us:

      We sat on wooden benches in a lock-up partitioned off from the Court Room, for four hours, awaiting judgment -not awaiting trial, because they don't try people there, but only just take a percentage of their cash, and let them go without further ceremony. .... I stayed by and watched them dispense justice a while and observed that in all small offences the policeman's charge on the books was received as entirely sufficient, and sentence passed without a question being asked of either accused or witnesses...

      Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has changed since Clemens' time, well over one hundred years later.

      Here's an example. In 2005 my insurance lapsed for a day because I forgot to pay or something. I don't know, it was years ago. Anyway, in Georgia, apparently the state gets notified when this happens, and suspends your tag. Not your license, mind you -- your tag. I had no idea this happened, they just did it. For the next several years I went about my business, including getting my tag updated annually, and even being pulled over a few times, with nary a word about this from any of the tag office clerks, police, or anyone else.

      Finally, one cop noticed, pulled me over, and arrested me for driving on the suspended tag. I went to jail because of this.

      The judge decided it was my fault and blah blah blah ignorance is no excuse yadda yadda. The truth is, I had been dutifully updating my tag every year as required, which should say something about my intent to fully comply with the law, and I'd think that any rational person would see that no offense was meant and no harm was done, so send me on my way. But no.

      That's how the justice system works. The laws are so numerous, so convoluted, and updated and modified so frequently, that we as a society freely acknowledge that the average person has no way of understanding it, which is why we have specialty occupations like lawyers. But we expect the average person to comply with all these laws he can't understand, too.

      It really doesn't matter that the laws are theoretically available for anyone to read. No mortal human has time for that. Even lawyers tend to specialise in one specific area of law, and when asked about some other area, will give you mostly blank looks.

      To an extent, I think ignorance of the law is a fine excuse. Clearly there are certain things that are known to be illegal across the vast majority of the populace, but there are way too many people being prosecuted and going through immense legal hassle over minor violations of obscure laws nobody knows or cares about except the state when they need some excuse to extort more money from the citizenry.

      --
      mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
    6. Re:New form of taxes! by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ayn Rand - ""There's no way to rule innocent men.
      The only power 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." "

      --
      google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  2. WE THE PEOPLE..... by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ..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
  3. What exactly is nuanced? by liquiddark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. A simple solution by dyfet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 :).

  5. Do people on a jury have to pay $200 as well? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. Summary by MarkvW · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Outrageous by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. ignorance of the law by David+Chappell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.