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Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law
TechDirt reports that the state of Georgia is unhappy enough with Carl Malamud for publishing the state's own laws that it's sued Malamud for doing so. From the article:
The specific issue here is that while the basic Georgia legal code is available to the public, the state charges a lot of money for the "Official Code of Georgia Annotated." The distinction here is fairly important -- but it's worth noting that the courts will regularly rely on the annotations in the official code, which more or less makes them a part of the law itself.
The article uses the word "ridiculous" only 10 times; they're taking it easy on the poor legislators.
Come on. What is this crap? The article should use "ridiculous" exactly 0 times. "Ridiculous" is an extremely subjective word. Thus it shouldn't be used by any sort of a journalist or article writer, except when quoting what somebody else said or wrote.
When the submitter and editor saw that the word "ridiculous" was used so many times, that should have been a clue that maybe, just maybe, the article has an agenda to push and that should disqualify it from being linked to from the Slashdot front page!
I don't expect much from Slashdot these days, but this is just fucking pathetic, even by Slashdot's exceedingly low standards.
In my opinion, if you can not freely access a law, then it should not apply to you. Apparently ignorance of the law is no defence either.
The law and the state exist entirely to serve the people and make civilisation function. Law makers repeatedly forget that it does not exist to benefit them.
Oh well, tax me silly and bully my peers, we all die some day. Long live neo-feudalism!
But has the idea of copyrighting a legal code ever been tested by the SCOTUS? And if the decision was unfavorable, do we have to buy the text from iTunes now?
SO SAY WE ALL
okay now the following should be illegal at the federal level
1 designing a contract that is setup to hide some of the clauses of that contract so you would need to
A move the 9 pages of defining names and such to the END (Prevents MEGO while still sorting out who is who)
B no changing stuff in earlier parts unless there is a good reason (domestic V international use)
C include the standard gov stuff by reference
D no bundling contract levels up to increase the length and confusion (demo is separate from standard or Pro)
E using nonstandard definitions for words without reason or warning
2 charging above the actual cost for access to laws (hint put a set of PDFS online and be done with it)
3 any law ( as written or enforced) that is physically impossible (red light cameras with yellows that can not be crossed at the speed limit)
also judges should be tasked with Did the Law Get Broken not Can We Jail/Fine for this??
The Court ruled in Banks v Manchester that case law cannot be copyrighted. The ruling was that writings by a government official, acting in their official capacity, are owned by the public and cannot have copyright protection. That case also brought up a question relevant to this case. Under federal law citizens and residents may hold copyright. Georgia is probably neither, and therefore arguably cannot hold copyright.
In the Banks case, the state had contracted with someone else to produce indexes, etc. The deal was that if the company wrote these extra pieces, they would have copyright protectionfor a couple of years - they didn't get paid to write them, but were allowed exclusive right to sell their version with indexes, etc. The indexes and such were the original work of that citizen. That original work, but not the law itself, could be copyright the author.The finding in this Georgia case may hinge on who wrote the annotations. If government officials wrote them, it's public domain. If a private company wrote the annotations in order to sell them, they may be allowed to do so. HOWEVER, the fact that the STATE is suing indicates the state claims copyright for themselves, and the state will probably lose.
Also, the Court will probably want the law to be accessible, so they'll likely find some logic to rule against the state. Consider the Obamacare care case. The court ruled that the IRS "penalty" for not having insurance is a tax, and therefore within the powers granted to the feds, while also ruling is NOT a tax, and therefore didn't have to originate in the house of representatives. So in the very same ruling they said "it's a tax ... it's not a tax". Translation: we don't want to go head to head with the Obama administration on this one. They sometimes FIND a way to rule whichever way they want to rule, whether of makes any sense or not.
Note to editors: the article has been updated to strike out part of the that you have quoted in TFS. You should probably update that as well.
So, the annotations are not part of the law. They are comments about the manner in which the law was applied in certain cases, no?
Devil's Advocate...while yes, you can't copyright the law, are you saying you can't copyright things written about the law? How about textbooks used by law schools?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Lets start by clearing something up. The GA legislature creates and passes the statutes - the actual law. The text of the statute is not subject to copyright. The lawsuit does not address the text of the statute. Courts issue decisions interpreting and applying the law. Neither statutes nor court decisions are subject to copyright.
What the lawsuit focuses on are the ANNOTATIONS. The annotations are short topical summaries that briefly explain what a court said about the statute. An annotation is written by someone who works for a publisher, after reading a court case. Lawyers use the annotations as clues to which cases to go read to beter undertand the tricky bits of a statute. Annotations are not written by the couts and not written by the legislature. Annotations are not the law, are not controlling and are not persuasive.
Courts do not cite to the annotations. Lawyers do not quote the annotations in their briefs and motions to the courts. Simply does not happen, since the annotation is not important except as a finding tool, as a way to figure which court decisions are relevant to the legal issue you are researching.
If you read the lawsuit - the state did not create the annotations, a legal publisher did. LexisNexis is one of the two major legal publishers. Apparently, at least part of the annotations are created by LexisNexis as works for hire, under contract from the state. I'd guess that there are annotations not covered by the contract as well, and that LexisNexis could easily bring its own suit.
To claim that copyright on the annotations is preventing people from seeing / knowing what the law is simply silly. The annotations are NOT the law, but a mere finding aid, and the annotated code is available at no charge. One of the links in the original story takes you directly to the LexisNexis website where you can read, without charge, the annotated statute. Far from impeding public access, GA has taken the enlightened step of making the annotated code available oline in a very useable form at no cost to anyone who wants to go look. In most states the statute itself is available, but to get to an annotated version you have to use a lawyers database service, which charges a subscription fee.
As a resident of Georgia this would be ONE case I would not mind being on the jury for. As with so many things that this State's legislature does this is beyond absurd. If this is being published by the State of Georgia as an official document then it should fall under the Open Records Act. Yes, a "reasonable" charge for producing a document is included in that Act and, even though IANAL, I worked for this state for over 30 years and was involved in a number of open records cases and the "reasonable" requirement was pretty strict. Also, the documents are PUBLIC RECORDS and therefore not copyrightable. I would presume that this would include any annotations if published by the State. If Mr. Malamud bought ONE copy of OCGA from the state for whatever their normal charge is then he should be free to reproduce it in any way and in any form that he desires. Newspapers and other news organizations do that here all the time.
Obamacare did originate in the House as HR 3590. (HR meaning House of Representatives.) It was a "shell bill" that was gutted and stuffed with Obamacare to get around the rule. It's not a novel approach either, and the courts took no issue with it.
HR 3590 passed the House first as required, went to the Senate which altered it into Obamacare and then congress "resolved the differences" between the House and Senate versions passed before sending it to the president.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
The rational behind starting tax bills in the HR is that it's "closer to the electorate" - or was before Senators were elected by popular vote. Now, the differences between the two as far as being held to the will of the people is lessened.
Copyright law is not ridiculous. It exists so that creative folks can make money off their works. Without copyright, it is unlikely you, or any other consumer, will pay one red cent for copyrighted material.
While Georgia state laws are open source, the extra explanations for the laws, or "annotations," are not. An analogy to this case is, while the laws of physics are available to all for free, physics textbooks cost money. It's also a lot like Unix systems. The man pages give terse, difficult to understand information about all the command-line programs (like Georgia law), but you have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy decent Unix books if you want a good grasp on how to use those commands (like annotations to Georgia law).
This could all change is these annotations were part of the law. That is, laws should not be published without official, free annotations. Then they would be free. Until then, you have to pay the annotation copyright holder.
Unless I misread the summary, or it is wrong, Carl Malamud is not being sued for publishing Georgia laws, as it states you can do that freely. He's being sued for publishing annotations on Georgia laws that he copied from elsewhere.
That is the case with Federal government works, but are you sure it's also true about Georgia?
It absolutely *should* be, but what's does the law actualy say?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Are lawmakers suing Malamud for breaking a public law or a pay-per-view law?
In Georgia, in order to find out, you need to either buy the law book or get brought up on charges for that law, in which case they will actually tell you the law for free in a court of law. Then they will charge you for breaking the law.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Copyright law itself is not ridiculous. It serves a purpose and is generally a good idea. In its current form, it is. As useful as it could be, the way it is implemented is horribly broken, maybe beyond repair, and needs to be changed to be usable again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What the lawsuit focuses on are the ANNOTATIONS. The annotations are short topical summaries that briefly explain what a court said about the statute. An annotation is written by someone who works for a publisher, after reading a court case.
This case may very well hinge upon "who wrote them?". If as you say, written by someone who works for a publisher, that publisher would hold copyright (on those annotations alone!) and would be the party going to court.
But it seems it's the state going to court here. Which means it's the state believing it holds copyright here. Read: state employee(s) writing those annotations. In which case this lawsuit would be a non-starter, regardless of whether those annotations are deemed essential for understanding the law.
Or a (private) 3rd party wrote them for the state, read: "tax dollars at work to produce those annotations". Which imho is effectively the same as a state employee doing the writing.
If a private company wrote the annotations in order to sell them, they may be allowed to do so. HOWEVER, the fact that the STATE is suing indicates the state claims copyright for themselves, and the state will probably lose.
The filing itself (as linked to in the techdirt article) says:
The copyrighted annotations include analysis and guidance that are added to the O.C.G.A. by a third party publisher of the O.C.G.A. as a work for hire.
So, yes, Georgia is claiming ownership of the copyright by the state, not the 3rd party author.
We used to ridicule other countries for that sort of behavior.
Not if the annotations are the work of an entity required to give up all its copyright protections or otherwise prohibited from such enforcement of their copyrights
Which may be the case here, as it is the work of the state of Georgia.
Also, the Court will probably want the law to be accessible, so they'll likely find some logic to rule against the state.
Pretty much every state in the country has annotated laws that are owned by a private company under some kind of agreement with the state. The private company puts some money into indexing them, may have an el cheapo version available online, and charges very mysterious pricing for commercial use that varies by who your sales rep is and how big you are and the like. Physical copies may also be available.
In New York, for example, McKinney's costs about $10,500 for a physical copy: http://legalsolutions.thomsonr...
You can go to a library that has it, of course, but it's pretty ridiculous in today's day and age that you need to go to a library to get access to a law.
It's kind of like the building code--basically a group of experts is involved so the state lets them copyright the laws and sell them rather than having the state *pay* them for their work and make the result free.
My take-away from this is that the indexes and annotations may be subject to copyright by the private party that wrote them-- but from my experience working as a VA employer on policy and procedure manuals, with some indirect experience in handling material that was produced by contract workers, this would depend on the wording of the contract between the government and the private party. In most of those contracts the author is hired as an agent of the government and his relationship to his product is the same as that of any government worker to their assigned tasks, which means he cannot claim copyright and the work is in the public domain. There are major benefits to being an agent of the government and that is usually how this kind of thing is done.
That said, I don't see how Georgia could win this lawsuit, since if the material is copyrightable, the author, and not Georgia, would hold copyright and Georgia would have no standing in the matter. If the author was working as an agent of Georgia, then the work produced is in the public domain, and there is no valid copyright.
In either case the suit seems like a frivolous one, since if there is any copyright involved, Georgia cannot be the party that owns it.
Of course the defending party would be facing legal expenses to just get the case dismissed, and Georgia might be using that as a club to get an early out-of-court settlement. There is a term for legal battery but I don't recall it (coming up on my 10th year of retirement), and that is what Georgia might be attempting with this. Filing suit, even when you know that you cannot win in court but you think you could get an early out of court settlement, should be considered a breach of a lawyer's duty as an officer of the court. Lawyers who do this should be penalized, and in some cases disbarred. But that doesn't happen. That part of the legal system is totally broken.
Will
The problem with that logic is that, if it is Constitutionally valid, the Constitutional provision requiring tax laws to originate in the House is meaningless. If that provisions is meaningless, why did the Framers include it?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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Largely, I expect, because that was the principle in effect in the British Parliament. It's a common feature of most, if not all, bicameral legislative assemblies, and it dates back to that division of powers between the House of Commons and the House of Lords in Britain. The problem comes from the fact that the US Senate is elected, and thus it gains the democratic legitimacy to significantly tamper with bills. It's a debate being had in Canada right now, where we're trying to decide whether to reform or abolish our Senate. The fear up here is that an elected Senate (Canada's Senators are appointed by the Governor General in the name of the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister) would become like the US Senate, a competitor to the lower house, and that the supervisory role would be abandoned. Even in the UK the Lords' tendency to try to overrule the House of Commons reached the point where the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 were pushed through and give the Government an override power at second reading so the Lords cannot block a bill.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If this was 20 years ago, I wouldn't bat an eye at the idea that the Government would need to charge for their 'annotated' copy of the laws -- because it would have to be physically printed in paper books. But this isn't 20 years ago, this is 2015, and we have these convenient, near-magical devices called computers, and more to the point, .pdf files, which make the cost of 'publishing' such a reference work near zero, and the cost of updating it also, relatively speaking, near zero. To claim anything else in this day and age is just bald-faced profiteering. Get correct, Government.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The rational behind starting tax bills in the HR is that it's "closer to the electorate" - or was before Senators were elected by popular vote. Now, the differences between the two as far as being held to the will of the people is lessened.
This is just my worthless opinion but I feel the 17th Amendment should be repealed because ever since the 17th Amendment was ratified the state legislatures no longer have any voice in the federal government and now the whole system is grossly out of balance and state's rights are being slowly eroded into a unitary state. The people are already represented in the House of Representatives which makes a senate elected via the populace just redundant.
In a free republic which we are suppose to have; the law should be in the public domain, and freely available. If it is not one must ask; what kind of Facist / communist state does Georgia think it is.. We are talking about the Georgia that is a US State, right?
There are these things called libraries. They might have a copy.
Oh, that is so cute!
Gnu pun, you are wrong. Georgia law is not open source. Show me a link where I can download the entire law. You can't, because the only "free" access to the law is deliberately hobbled so you can only view a tiny fragment at any one time.
He is publishing the "Official Code of Georgia", published under the "Authority of the State of Georgia". Either the annotations are an essential and/or official part of Georgia law, in which case they should not be copyrighted, or they are a convenient additional aid for lawyers, in which case they shouldn't be part of the "Official Code of Georgia" "Published Under Authority of the State of Georgia" and published separately and given no special preference to any other private publication.
Under your logic, the State of Georgia could publish its laws in a made up language and then have a copyright on the information necessary to decode the language. That clearly isn't the intent of our laws.
Yes, and that is a good solution. For a state to partner with a private firm and publish a mix of free and commercial stuff as an official publication is wrong. What's even more wrong is that the state attempts to enforce the private copyright.
State legislatures use gerrymandering and voter restrictions to influence House seats and state government elections. Statewide senate elections are practically the only place an individual can express his vote without the state government diluting it to suit their purposes.
The problem comes from the fact that the US Senate is elected,
No, the problem comes from the fact that the U.S. government no longer considers itself bound to follow the Constitution. The rest of your post indicates what causes this problem. The legitimacy of the various parts of the U.S. government to do ANYTHING is supposed to come from the U.S. Constitution, not from "democratic legitimacy". The various states yielded their sovereignty to the federal government under the understanding that the federal government would be constrained by the Constitution, not free to do anything which was not opposed by the democratically expressed will of the people..
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I never said they were subjective. While you are free to apply the laws of physics at no cost, learning and understanding those laws usually requires buying good physics books, which are not free.
Similarly, these annotations are probably more human-friendly readable version of the state laws. And like the physics textbooks, you have to pay to get access to them. Blame your lawmakers for not writing laws and explanations/examples/annotations in a human friendly manner.
Are the annotations creative works of a third party? If so, why are they being used to decide cases?
If they are "indexes" they are not eligible for copyright.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Here's the link, where you can view current and past Georgia state laws. I'm not sure if the laws are shown in full detail.
Don't these annotations provide short, usable summaries to previous court cases? They most certainly are not just indexes. It's like a slashdot summary -- a few condensed paragraphs for an article containing dozens of paragraphs. A slashdot summary is also not an index, and is eligible for copyright.
Actually, that's not true for the same reason the Electoral College being composed of a number of representatives based upon populace and a fixed additional 2 per State. Inherently this was struck as a compromise to the fundamental problem that many States are much more populace than the others. So as much as Florida, Ohio, etc are swing states today--as they're both populace enough and mixed enough in party affiliation--, a system of pure democracy would leave basically the East and West coasts in control of the whole US.
Having said that, I do tend to agree that direct election of the Senate does tend to create issues of State [Legislature] control of the US, but then I have to take a step back and ask the obvious question: why would it be that a State Legislature which are elected would have even marginal election differences than the people who vote for them? To me, it's clear the reason why: concerns of State Legislature corruption becoming from an endemic State-level problem to an entrenched Federal-level problem. There was also the issue of racially motivated suppression of democracy. In either case, the reason repeatedly we've had the Federal government either in Congress or the SCOTUS create or interpret law to expand rights has been precisely because State rights have often been "the right to oppress".
So, yes, we've seen a substantial erosion of State rights to the point that even an advocate of State rights doesn't capitalize State but does capitalize House of Representatives. Honestly, as much as I believe there needs to be a substantial reform of the Congress, I think the solution isn't to suddenly shift the power of the people back to States. As I see it, the fundamental issue is that those with the desire to exploit or abuse others will seek the position, State or Federal, to achieve those ends. So long as States were the bastions of power, that's where the money flowed and it was possible for those who were against such abuse to use the Federal government where corruption was (less widespread* merely because it was less economical use of money) to curtail those abuses, even though it's taken over a century to move anywhere near the ideals of the Progressive movements of equality.
Now, the Federal government is the seat of power, so money fundamental flows there. To simply shift power back to the States would undoubtedly give States the ability to end various Federally created oppression as well, but States have a pretty horrible track record of being the SOURCE of oppression--the very nature of the system basically means the Federal government's own abuses for a long time were State-backed and not self-enacted under direct populace demand. The sheer fact that the country as a whole is widely diverse increases the probability and reality that State-level oppression won't be indefinitely tolerated precisely because "bleeding-heart liberals" (aka pacifist Quakers) won't stand for abuse that doesn't happen in their State but does happen in their Country.
Put another way, I think a shift in power will at best curtail corruption for a while and perhaps in 100 years (personally, I imagine a lot less time) we'll be right back where we started with people demanding Federal power to overcome State abuses. The overall problem then is the corruption and abuse, where ever it originates. Figuring out how to deal with that seems a much more important issue than trying to figure out who is doing the corruption. Which is why so many people are disillusioned with Republicans and Democrats and why Congress is such an issue**.
*This is, btw, no rosy picture of the past. The Federal Government was and nearly has been corrupt from day one, but that's a problem of all Governments.
**Obviously, this is the point where I should state I
If they are summaries of cases, they probably could be considered creative works and eligible for copyright. However, if they are being used by the courts to decide cases, we would have the odd situation where a private party was writing law... and if they were then considered "law" then probably not eligible for copyright.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I'm not sure if the laws are shown in full detail.
Gnupun,
They are not shown in full detail. That's my point. You can only view a tiny fragment of the Georgia code at a time. Just reading the law in sequence becomes a hugely tedious exercise, and this crippling is deliberately intended and sanctioned by the State of Georgia to force meaningful access through the lexis paid service.
You misread. OP specifically writes the current copyright laws. And yes, they are ridiculous: overbroad, ridiculously complicated, in part based on undemocratic "trade agreements", and with a copyright term that is utterly absurd, clearly meant not to protect the work itself, but to prevent competition from historical works with contemporary works. Just imagine each and every audio/visual recording from the 1970s and before becoming public domain, what an enormous wealth of culture would become available, for free or a minimal access fee, to everyone. Even if you assume that for a "Creative Industries Improvement Fee" of say $250,000.00 per work a copyright could be extended for another 20 years (e.g. a "Star Wars", "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", or the "White Album" by the Beatles, etc.).
And I currently pay hundreds of dollars per month to access and/or own licensed copies of copyrighted material, many of which I could just as easily access for free, thank you very much.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
This. A thousands times this. Should be modded to positive infinity.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's no good way to come up with a hard line against this kind of practice. If we're going to allow bills to evolve as they pass between both houses, then how would one quantify sufficient "gutting and stuffing" to cross a threshold of "is not allowed"?
I realise it's tempting to say things like "The government isn't bound to follow the Constitution", and some political persuasions love to do that without either understanding the Constitution or how law works. We need reasonably bright (even if not necessarily precise) lines within which reasonable practices are workable.
Either way, the Constitution doesn't stand alone - like other Common Law nations, we have a body of legal practice that has evolved and will continue to evolve as our needs change and as good legal ideas come into vogue. This happened in the Founders' times, it happened well before them, and it will continue for as long as our nation does law this way.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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That serves the needs of the consumers, not the creators and we don't want a system where creators are slave servants to the consumers. Go to a public library if you want copyrighted stuff for free. Yes, there's a long waiting list for movies and music CDs. By comparison, non-popular books sit there collecting dust. But at least they provide valuable income to authors.
You can already listen to almost all music for a whopping $10/month. I imagine the same thing will happen to movies soon as bandwidth becomes cheaper. In the meantime, you have netflix and hulu for those needs. I don't get the constant fuss over copyright laws If you can't afford spend less than $100/month for content.
My personal view is that copyrighted content should be like real estate -- you should be able to make money off it as long as you want. No one has presented a convincing argument why real estate owners make money infinitely, but copyright owners can't do the same. My guess is limited copyright times were done to screw the authors (copyright owners at the time of formation of copyright laws). Imagine how many millions of dollars publishers have made from reprinting out-of-copyright Mark Twain and Charles Dickens novels and giving the authors and their descendants $0. Now that companies like Disney own copyright to works, they have lobbied to extend copyright duration times.
LOL, if consumers like you didn't pay that amount, that content would cease to exist. Content gets created because content creators and businesses want your money.
Also, the link you provided is not to current Georgia law, only past. 2015 is not included. The site disclaimer notes this. The only place to get free access to the current code is the lexis hobbled search.
These annotations are not being directly used to decide cases. Instead they are being used to quickly refer to previous cases and provide a quick summary. The private party writing the annotation is deciding nothing and your accusation is extremely ridiculous. The annotations can be covered by copyright because they are not necessary. You can decide cases by reading the laws and the previous court rulings. The annotations only speed up that process.
So I remember watching T.V. in Turkey in the early 90s and the interview was about a Turkish lawyer talking about the finer interpretations of a specific law. He said something I'll never forget when he was asked, "The language of the law is nearly Ottoman, how are the average citizens supposed to intelligably read and obey this law?" To which he responded, "It's not the job of every citizen to read and understand our laws, that's the job of lawyers, we need to know." Much like how some important points of law in the US is still in Latin. It makes 0 sense to expect a population to obey laws that aren't readily available and easily consumable.
Now to be fair, the spirit of the law must also be preserved. But I think that's what the Constitution is for.
Actually, there is a good way. The bill that originates in the House has to actually contain provisions for raising revenue AND there has to be some resemblance between what the bill passed by the Senate says and the one originally passed by the House.
Of course, it would be even easier if the people in Congress actually took their oath of office seriously to support and defend the Constitution.
Personally, I would like to see every bill contain a reference to where in the Constitution Congress is given the authority to enact the legislation in question.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
States are NOT restricted from holding copyright in general (only the federal government is). There are some exceptions to this, but they probably don't apply here.
On the face of it this seems like a perfectly legitimate complaint on the part of the state. The state is expected to assume the cost of producing the laws themselves (that's why we pay legislative salaries), and making those things freely available in order to enforce them, but the indexing, research, and reference work involved in creating an annotated version costs money and isn't guaranteed to be done by statute, meaning that it could be covered by copyright and the state is reasonably justified in attempting to recover those costs. There are of course many complexities here (although almost all of them will be found in Georgia law itself, and have nothing to do with the federal constitution), but the suit is far less unreasonable than the poorly researched editorial "reporting" it.
Oh please quit with that "artists" bullshit, it has been shown time and time again to be right up there with "job creators" on the horseshit meter!
Why not tell that to meatloaf who had to file bankruptcy in the 80s because the record company had the 50 foot brass balls to say Bat Out Of Hell I, an album that to this day holds the record for longest time on the top 200, didn't make a dime and so owed him NOTHING. Tell that to Cheap Trick who is STILL suing last I checked because the record company said "Hey downloads didn't exist when you recorded your albums...sucks to be you bitches!" and thus for every iTunes sale they get NOTHING. The exact same is true for movies and TV, which is where the phrase Hollywood Accounting comes from. Tell that to Don Dokken, whose first Dokken album (which he recorded on his own dime) sold nearly a quarter million only to get told by the record company "that's great now you only owe us half a million dollars for 'promotional expenses', tough break" and thus gave the band NOTHING.
The current copyright system HARMS the artist, as it allows rich old white fucks to become the eternal gatekeepers by making endless bank on back catalogs which the artists don't see a fucking cent of in a good 90% of the cases. Oh and you might want to ask the Stones how much they get on all their classic albums, which with current copyright laws won't go into public domain until after your grandkids are dead...did you say "not a single cent"? Then you are correct because according to Keith Richards they haven't gotten a penny from their 60s albums since the mid 70s...wanna guess where all those profits from all those classic albums went? If you said "the pockets of rich old white fucks that didn't have shit to do with actually creating it" then you are actually learning, congrats.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
the cost should only be related to procuring and making paper copies (like foia)
therefore post it online, and everyone wins (except the extortionists)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How do you quantify resemblance?
There's nothing unconstitutional about what happened. Maybe you'd like to amend the Constitution to make some parts of it unconstitutional - maybe even some of those amendments would be ok if they were practical and enforcable, but your attempt to portray yourself a defending the Constitution here against assailants is ridiculous - you just don't like the way our system works. Which is fine, it's just the posing that's off.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Most libraries that I have seen do not have a current copy of the state law. Granted, in my state that would fill several shelves from floor to ceiling. I've seen one copy of an abridged printing of the corporate law (not current at the time). It filled 4 bookshelves floor to ceiling.
What is being discussed here is not just the state law, but an annotated version, which is pretty much guaranteed to be considerably longer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So, what you are saying is that the Framers of the Constitution placed a provision in it which they knew meant nothing?
In the case of the ACA, the bill passed out of the Senate contained NONE of the language which was in the bill passed out of the House which it supposedly amended...not only that but it did not even contain any language relating to what the House bill was about.
You are correct that I do not like how our system works...and neither would the men who wrote the Constitution, nor would the men who ratified the Constitution in the 13 states. If they imagined that it would be interpreted as it currently is, they would not have ratified it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I went to grocery store today, and actually stopped in my library about this.
I live in southern Georgia about an hour south of Macon.
The library only had an Abridged Georgia law books, and only 4 volumes.
Librarian told me jokingly only lawyers get access to the annotated full law books, that's why people need lawyers, if folks had full access to the full laws they could represent themselves and learn the whole lawyer system is a scam.
Of course this is a very tiny town, very libertarian, and we used to have a mayor but the city voted to fire him. We now have no mayor and the town is ran by the city commission made up of 10 people.
very strange to some.
But even if she was wrong, she had me thinking...
I'm saying the founders gave a rough sketch, and in this case that sketch was too vague to work right. We'd either need to fix it, or accept that it won't work. It's quite likely the founders would've accepted it, maybe not even included this restriction if they knew it wouldn't work, or done a better job drafting it. Still, their system as a whole worked well enough, and provided means for its broken bits to be improved. If some part is important now, we can still fix it. If not, why worry about it? Build momentum, propose an alternative, and maybe it'll be fixed. Our government isn't a shrine to long-dead people -it belongs to the people alive today.
It's also important not to treat the founders as if they significantly agreed with each other. They didn't. They had huge differences, long debates, and like any representative government, they had an enormously difficult time reaching agreement. Our first government failed. We're in a heavily evolved descendant of the second try.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Voter restrictions such as?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You have free access to the law library. Contact your local district court for directions and access times. It is either in your county, city, or capital.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Or go to the free public law library in your county seat, city, or state capital. They have one. It is free. It will not include 2015 because 2015 is not over yet. I guarantee you have access to a free law library in every single state. There are no exceptions.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
KGill,
You are incorrect. On January 1st of every year in Georgia, including 2015, hundreds of new laws take effect. These make up the current year's code,mel@becknet.com which is then update again on July 1 with additional new laws. The library's have outdated codes, and a quick survey of several municipal libraries found none with code books newer than 2011, so libraries are not even updated annually. Ironically, the libraries I spoke with said only the lexis site has the current code. At least they knew their business. Unlike many commenters in this thread.
I'll say it again: Georgia's state government has conspired with Lexis to keep practical access to Georgia law out of the hands of the public. Their motive is clearly to force people to purchase the Lexis product. Practical access includes full electronic text in a single corpus, to permit anyone to search and index with their own tools, plus the annotations, which encompass essential indexes and case references in addition to abstracts. The government could easily publish the law directly as PDFs, complete with indexes and case references, excluding the useless analysis. But that would not serve political cronyism. The so-called creative copyrightable abstracts are a red herring the devious device to force copyright between the public access to the law.
The sad thing is, Georgia is lawmakers have sold the legal legacy that belongs to the people for a song to a single commercial entity. It's truly a travesty, and one that many other states have avoided. So why doesn't Georgia?
I probably should have worded it better though I will defer to you if I am still mistaken. The information garnered in 2015 will not be published until 2016 though I seem to recall seeing quarterly updates in the law libraries I have been in.
I certainly agree that the laws should be made easier to access. I would go so far as to suggest that the State fund such services and provide public access. The law libraries I have been in (private and public) all were *fairly well* funded and up to date considering the massive changes made to the laws on a constant basis. a back-end search appliance, with a front end for web access, would be a trivial expense, make updating easier, and make the law more accessible to the common man. I dare say that lawyers should get access for free as well - I understand maintaining their own libraries is quite expensive an Lexis access is quite expensive.
I am not understanding how, or why, Georgia is an exception to this. I have actually visited a law library for research in Georgia (did some consulting work in Atlanta) as I wanted to ease the legal expenses. This was, however, years ago. They were acceptable for my needs. I wonder what has changed - unless it is a partnership with the above named company.
I would surmise that you know far more about this than I though, in my defense, one can still go to the law library and access the content there though it is troubling if it is not up to date as you suggest. Does Georgia not have locked down Lexis access on the computers in their law libraries? I find that disturbing and, honestly, I hope you are either mistaken or not being given accurate information. My podunk state (Maine) maintains a subscription to the service, has scads of print material, and even has folks who know how to work the system there to help you out (but not provide anything remotely close to legal advice). The get small (comparatively speaking) updates quarterly - maybe even monthly. I do not recall the name or the publisher.
Hell, even alleged criminals, who are incarcerated, get access to the law library though it is supposedly underfunded, out of date, and the databases on the computers (locked down critters on wheels from the news article I saw) dates back a few years. They can request more current material specifically and the State's library in Augusta (Maine, not the one in Georgia) sends it to the jail.
Are they not doing this in Georgia? I must confess that I have never been in any legal trouble in Georgia so I would have no idea. I do know that they are supposed to have up-to-date material in their public law library though - if they are failing this then that is pathetic.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Wow, that's quite a leap of judgement. With or without copyright, the publishers/distributors would still screw over the artists because they have a monopoly or at least they used to and artists have little common sense. Copyright law makes it a lot harder to screw artists, not harm them. And the days of eating 80-90% revenue by labels for content sales are over.
Internet distributors like Apple, Amazon and Spotify typically take only a 30% cut from sales. Heck, if they did their own advertising and branding, they could get 100%, screw the middlemen, just like Tesla is trying to get rid of dealers for its cars to maximize its profits.
There are many unconstitutional things that happened. The ACA itself is unconstitutional in a multitude of ways, the SCOTUS decisions notwithstanding. The House-Senate compromise bill was not actually legally passed in the Senate, jiggery-pokery by Harry Reid prevented the vote from occurring legally.
Further, critical votes in the Senate were made by persons there illegally, most notably Al Franken.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
No. Both the letter of the law and its obvious intent have been perverted and violated.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
FWIW, it was Madison's argument that indirect election of U.S. Senators would result in good people (those in State legislatures) choosing the very best to become U.S. Senators, a kind of compounding of virtue. He either didn't see the potential problem or thought it insignificant compared to the available alternatives (and I agree with the latter possibility.)
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
LGill,
New laws in Georgia become effective on January 1st and July 1st. Occasionally an emergency statue goes into effect immediately upon passage. The 2015 laws thus began on January 1st 2015 and continued to be updated through the current year's regular legislative session, which ended on April 2. The 48-volume print edition typically is published after April and includes laws scheduled to become active on July 1st.
All law library online access to the Official Georgia Code is exclusively via the broken-backed Lexis system. Georgia is one of the worst offenders in the US where citizen access to the law is concerned. And Georgia legislators aim to keep it that way, which is why they are suing Carl Malamud. The State of Georgia claims copyright in the annotated Code, and that Carl Malamud, and Public.Resource.Org have violated that copyright. That is why they are suing him.
The government's specious argument is that parts of the annotations -- case summaries -- are the creative authorship of a third party, and thus the copyright to those summaries belong to those third parties. But the federal courts have already held that indexes, captions, section headings, change histories, cross-references and case citations are not copyrightable. The case summaries are really of little value, but the citations and indexes are critical to practical use of the Code. But Georgia, by official statute, bundles them all together as the Official Georgia Code Annotated and gives the public only paywall access.
So let The State of Georgia publish the full law as a completely downloadable file, with all section headings, captions, indexes, change histories, cross references and case law citations. If the public demands that they do it, they will be forced to. You're absolutely right that Georgia should not be an exception.
That's what shell scripts are for.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hott...
Now I more fully understand your objections - thank you. I suppose my point remains that citizens do have access, it is just incomplete. That is unacceptable and sounds like it should be something the Supremes get to hear about and decide on.
I do not believe that access to the free law libraries is actually encoded in the laws as a right, at least not at the federal level. I certainly believe it is encoded in the spirit of the law and I strongly suspect that case law would back that up but I lack the time and resources to look into it. I will have to defer to you or to my general layman's understanding and assume the law provides for such in spirit if not in letter as I have yet to meet a State that did not provision such.
I guess the next logical question is what can I do to help? I do not have much in the way of expertise but I have a familiarity with the law and try to spend a few days each month observing the courts in person. (It is my way of upholding my end of the social contract. I dare say that it is my duty and the duty of my fellow citizens but I will avoid the digression.) I have money. I have more than I will ever need and I enjoy using it to assist others. I doubt I have enough to make an impact on my own, at least not any long-term impact.
So, yeah, what can I do to help? I do not see any agencies listed that will act on the plaintiff''s behalf. I recently got rid of a bunch of bitcoins that I'd mined when the program first came out - those went to EFF as I wanted not to be associated with or taxed on them as I am considering running for office at the state level. No, I am certainly running for office. That is more accurate. That does nothing, at all, to change the situation in Georgia though and Maine is, honestly, fairly good in these regards so there is little I would want to change there except maybe improving access for inmates who are appealing or fighting their cases.
This is one of those situations where I would like to help but do not see a viable way of doing so. Do you have any suggestions?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Restrictions that are effectively poll taxes. Costly IDs, and restricted poll times make for good barriers.
Learn to love Alaska
Blame the confederacy. They fought a war to remove states rights, and though they lost the war, they won that issue.
Learn to love Alaska
Copyright law is not ridiculous.
Stating it will not make it true. The law is ridiculous.
Learn to love Alaska
An excellent way to help is to contribute to public.resource.org, the non-profit being sued by The State of Georgia: https://public.resource.org./ Click on the "$$ SUPPORT THE PUBLIC DOMAIN" link at the bottom of the page.
Public.Resource.Org is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit and your contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.
There is an excellent video entitled "Show me the Manual!" that introduces the issue.
Voter IDs are supposed to be free unless you mean the state's that require a state ID to vote? Those are usually just a few dollars and required for many other tasks which minimizes the expense. I agree with you in theory but in practicality?
Restricted poll times? The booths are open late and one can vote absentee if they want to or if they are worried about the time constraints. I can not speak to other states but I have been able to get my ballot online in my state for a number of years now. Such was not really an option when I retired and moved here. Things like state functions where just starting to go online eight years ago. Prior to that one had to call or write to request an application. It has never really been anything I have seen as prohibitive. There has to be a finite limit to the times the booths are open. Such needs to fit in with social expectations. Remediation is possible with absentee voting if such is a problem due to scheduling or physical limitations.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I do not believe that access to the free law libraries is actually encoded in the laws as a right, at least not at the federal level. I certainly believe it is encoded in the spirit of the law ...
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said, "if a law isn't public, it isn't a law."
I passed my yearly allotment for donations already. Anything more that I donate will not result in a tax reduction. That is okay. That is not why I donate anyways. I figure I have an obligation to pay, my taxes are actually lower (percentage wise) than they were before I sold my business even though I have and spend much more money. I make up for the difference by donating and, honestly, it feels better. I am still contributing (more than I am obligated even) but I am able to contribute to things that do not involve bombing the hell out of little brown men.
As always, i will research the non-profit and then likely make a donation. I usually do so in the name of anonymous or the site which lead me to it - "/." has made a number of donations in the past. ;-) The only reasons I review non-profits before donating is because I want to see the overhead and wages as well as the percentage of donated dollars that go towards their stated cause. (I'm looking at you Red Cross.) I have found a number of disturbing trends with some of the non-profits. The online resources, such as Charity Watch are a good start.
So, thank you. I will take a deeper look and do what I can. I may contact them to see what else I can do, something more tangible, to help. Legal education is a pet peeve of mine as I feel it is our obligation to know, monitor, and react to the justice system. Knowing the law is as important as knowing the procedure - though I sometimes think knowing the procedure is more important than knowing the specifics of the law but I digress.
My old business still has an office in the panhandle of Florida. Maybe there is something they can do to help as well. A lot of the non-profits are helped with more than just cash, even something as simple as getting them a discount or free printing helps. More than once the business has hosted content on behalf of a non-profit including the website for Heifer International at one point. (I have always been a fan of helping non-profits.) I am not certain, they may still host the site for all I know. We had space and bandwidth aplenty.
Again, thanks for the link. I will look into it and likely send them some funds. You also helped me understand the problem a bit better. I was wondering why people were saying that they did not have access to the law when I know damned well that they do have access. It is that they do not have *complete* access that is the problem. I think it may be high time to advocate a change in ease of access as well. There is no reason to make access require a special location or dead-tree formats. I suspect improving those areas would be an improvement to the system in general as it could add efficiency and accuracy as well. It may even lower tax rates in the long run but I do not dare speculate that far ahead.
My email is real should you have an urge to see how things went regarding my looking into the organization and what I chose to do. I will spend a couple of hours looking into them tomorrow afternoon and make a call or two on Monday if needed. Maybe they can organize some sort of matching donation fund drive or something along those lines. If they are amicable and able then I would not mind matching funds up to a certain limit. The tax payers paid for our consulting in Georgia, a number of times, and giving something back is a nice gesture.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Voter IDs are supposed to be free unless you mean the state's that require a state ID to vote? Those are usually just a few dollars and required for many other tasks which minimizes the expense. I agree with you in theory but in practicality?
Many also require a home address and additional government paperwork. For someone who doesn't have a birth certificate on them, the cost for a "free" ID can be quite expensive. For someone who doesn't have a home address, you have to commit perjury and find a co-conspirator to your crime (now a felony) to be able to get the ID. So a homeless person must commit a felony to get an ID. Plus the cost.
Plus, it doesn't solve any known problem. Fraud didn't go down in the places that required IDs. There were just fewer Blacks voting.
Learn to love Alaska
I think we can extrapolate that to mean that ease of access is also implied. Public implies more than available on Tuesdays from 1:00 to 1:30 and the resources are limited - and in Chinese.
I have your other link open as well. I am currently getting a 400 error (bad request) but i will keep trying. I am kind of surprised that the ACLU is not involved in this. While they do not get involved in all sorts of things (and lack resources to tackle everything) this seems like something that would be right up their alley. Then again, they have turned into a group that seems to do things for publicity more often than not lately. I still support them.
Maybe I will send a smaller donation to their Georgia chapter and an email suggesting that they consider lending aid to this group's struggle. They are probably better funded and resourced than the group currently involved.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What makes you think you're more qualified to judge constitutionality or legality than our Supreme Court? Courts judge these things. Your opinion doesn't matter - these things remain legal and constitutional until and unless successfully challenged - that's how our system works. It is challenge-based. If you don't get that, you're just clueless about our Constitution, how it's judged, and the broader legal system in which it resides.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Plus, it doesn't solve any known problem. Fraud didn't go down in the places that required IDs. There were just fewer Blacks voting.
Well, for the one state that I happen to have read anything about this matter (Georgia), black voting participation increased after the voter ID law passed (source: Atlanta Constitution). So, you're wrong.
So the few outliers (you can use a shelter as an address) are influencing elections as you claimed? That seems quite a stretch. Few elections are lost or won by the margin you are suggesting. It is not that I agree with the practice but your hyperbole is trite and not entirely correct - or even really correct when taken in regards to your statement.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Nope. You're just documenting your own failure to understand how our kind of legal system works.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I can't speak as to Georgia, but I can tell you here in Oklahoma, the courthouses have law libraries, open to the public.
I suspect it's much the same out there.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Where did it "rule" that? I'm not looking for an interpretation - if they ruled it, they must have actually said it. Where?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
As it happens, the script itself was very easy to write. It's about 30 lines of bash script, making use of wget for HTTP and xmllint to extract the link to the next page. Inputs consist of the URL of the first page and the contents of the Cookie: header as set by Chrome and captured through Wireshark. It took all night to run, though; there are over 30,000 separate pages.
Anyway, in case anyone's interested, here are the main contents of each of those pages spliced together into a single HTML file: gacode.zip. The uncompressed HTML is 78 MiB; even compressed it comes to over 13 MiB. (The original 30,000 pages totaled to nearly 1 GiB.) There is some room for improvement, as I didn't strip out the redundant section headers.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Good work! I'll download it and check formatting, and host the file as well for public access.
Clearly, though, this is of far less utility than having the government host the file itself. Further, I just read that only the Annotated code is considered official for quotation in actual court cases. I'm trying to find out exactly what that means.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Requiring a license before allowing citizens to read or speak the law would be a violation of deeply-held principles in our system that the laws apply equally to all.This principle was strongly set out by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall when they stated “the Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right.” Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834). The Supreme Court specifically extended that principle to state law, such as the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, in Banks v. Manchester (128 U.S. 244, 1888) , where it stated that “the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all, whether it is a declaration of unwritten law, or an interpretation of a constitution or a statute."
Quite possibly. The comment I was replying to implied that the local library might reasonably be expected to have a copy. I've heard this incorrect implication made often, and *that* was what I wished to disagree with. I also expect that I could find a copy in the local University law school (which might be easier to access). But it's still a significant barrier.
You don't need to make something impossible to access to effectively deny access. Just make it difficult enough. Then you can always claim that there really *is* access. (And have you actually read any of those laws. They have more subroutine calls [or, if you prefer, indirect jumps...that might be better as there is no return statement] than most programs.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you note, it also indicated that nationwide Black vote was up sharply in 2008 for Obama's first election. From what I could tell from the AJC story, Black vote in Georgia was under-represented in GA, compared to the national increase in turnout that year. And it fell in 2010. About 1600 votes were discarded due to the inability of the voter to provide acceptable ID. So much for one man one vote.
Learn to love Alaska
What was the minimum number of votes to swing the 2000 election? It was about 270 votes (depending on how you count them).
Learn to love Alaska
For someone who doesn't have a home address, you have to commit perjury and find a co-conspirator to your crime (now a felony) to be able to get the ID. So a homeless person must commit a felony to get an ID. Plus the cost.
Where you vote - and which issues you can vote on - are determined by where you live. If you don't have a reasonably fixed address, then no - you can't vote.
If you don't have a reasonably fixed address, then no - you can't vote.
That only applies to the poor. Trump has (or used to have, no idea what he uses now) a hotel room as his "permanent" address. Many other politicians have had the same. And they were allowed to vote for themselves. It's only the poor and minorities that the system targets.
Learn to love Alaska
I downloaded your HTML extract and found one problem: it did not follow many of the links to subsidiary pages such as "Title Note" and "Article Note". For an example, see 15-10-26. which has the following Title Note:
CROSS REFERENCES. --Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, 35-6A-1 et seq. Establishment of county law libraries, 36-15-1 et seq. Court-martial jurisdiction, 38-2-370 et seq. Designation of courts which possess jurisdiction over traffic offenses, and procedure in such courts, 40-13-1 et seq. Indictment and punishment of judge of probate court for malpractice, partiality, conduct unbecoming office, and other offenses, 45-11-4.
LAW REVIEWS. --For article, "The Majority That Wasn't: Stare Decisis, Majority Rule, and the Mischief of Quorum Requirements," see 58 Emory L. J. 831 (2009).
RESEARCH REFERENCES
Am. Jur. Trials. --Judicial Technology in the Courts, 44 Am. Jur. Trials 1.
According to the US Supreme Court, these notes are part of the official code and thus not protected by copyright. Citizens are held accountable to the interpretations given in these notes, and Georgia has made them part of the "official" code, and thus they must be available to all citizens.
Can you update your code to extract these notes as well? Thanks!
yes it is, and it's an offence at common law.
Some jurisdictions have fairly recently introduced SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statutes that impose summary penalties on offenders - where a single judge and no jury can make a finding and impose the maximum penalty.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
wget -r http://www.lexisnexis.com/hott...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
... "we have these convenient, near-magical devices called computers, and more to the point, .pdf files, which make the cost of 'publishing' such a reference work near zero, and the cost of updating it also, relatively speaking, near zero. "
I get your point. However, PDF files are difficult as hell to update. Now I don't know what proprietary/open source/web-based desktop publishing and/or word processing software the state of Georgia uses, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't chew PDF files for breakfast.
they're being sued by the State and not Lexis?
I don't think, considering the material, the State even has standing to litigate. Lexis might, assuming they can prove authorship of the annotations. But the STATE?? I hope this gets taken all the way to SCOTUS.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I've done some deep searching and cannot locate an unannotated version of the Georgia code. Apparently the Lexis edition 2 is the "official" and definitive version.
Fuck me.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
or Janis Ian who was sued by her record company (sounds familiar, coughcoughGeorgeMichaelcoughcough) for refusing to record another album until her cut of the physical album proceeds was renegotiated along with her contract, both in her favour as opposed to the label taking the meat and her having to pay the entire production cost for the fucking discs out of her five percent.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
...come on, guys, fire up wget and let's hammer the shit out of that site before they take the code offline.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You apparently don't understand the American legislative system. If SCOTUS rules a law to be Constitutional, it is Constitutional. That is the particular power granted to SCOTUS -- to declare a law Constitutional or Unconstitutional. In fact, that is their only power.
Any copyright law which grants copyright to people who have already died is way beyond ridiculous. In fact, I consider it a moral imperative to violate copyright law.
Doesn't work. Try it.
You're missing a lot of the detail in this case. You should read the previous slashdot discussions before commenting further.
External references were omitted deliberately; the HTML file consists only of the pages included in the T.O.C. at the URL you provided. The notes are considered a separate document. Downloading additional documents and fixing up the URLs would be a bit out of scope for this proof-of-concept, which has taken enough time already. If you merely want to make the links work, without downloading them, just add this tag in the <head> section:
<base href="http://web.lexisnexis.com/">
I could send you my script, if you wish, but the only part you could really use for this directly is the part to set the Cookie: header (wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: ...").
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Jesse,
Alas, that quick fix doesn't work. Part of the problem is that the HTML links all have file:// URL prefixes, and they need to be http://. But another problem is that even with http://web.lixisnexis.com hardcoded into the link, you get redirected to a sign-in page. There must be some state the server is expecting to be set first.
However, you've built an excellent proof of concept. I'm happy to do the next round of revisions. In the interest of openness, would you be willing to post the bash script in this slashdot thread?
It's great, of course, that citizens can get around the government's attempts to lock down the law. But the real fix is to delete the bureaucracy that is blocking citizen access in the first place! So I am supporting public.research.org's fight against Georgia's lawsuit.
I started a thread several hours ago, it's still running.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You at least need a prefix step to click the "I agree" copyright notice blocking page or you will get megabytes of just that notice.
Another poster (Jesse) has a working bash+wget script that requires extending to follow annotation links. He may be posting it to this slashdot story.
That's not the only power of SCOTUS. Many of its decisions are to harmonize Federal law across circuits. Different circuit courts can interpret Federal law differently, which brings obvious problems.
SCOTUS is a full court, which has original jurisdiction in very limited areas. Besides, it wasn't granted the right to rule laws unconstitutional explicitly, but very early on they ruled that they had that power, and of course there was no superior court to appeal to if anybody disagreed.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It applies to all. Trump can use his hotel room; an indigent can use a homeless shelter.
damn.
At least I can claim that 1GB of hard drive space back...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
That's why I said your simple wget wouldn't work. :)
The Founding Fathers explicitly made the Senate a "house of the States", where Senators, essentially acting as agents of the state legislatures, had the power to amend or veto bills produced in the House of Representatives. However, being unelected, Senators while enjoying greater prestige than Representatives, were also in a position where their powers were not democratically derived. The "check" as it were on the Senate was that any significant interference in bills would inevitably be viewed somewhat more dimly, which is how it has worked out in most Westminster parliaments.
With the 17th Amendment, the Senate gained the democratic legitimacy which in facts leads to the greater possibility of this seeming end-run around the requirement that money bills originate in the House. You don't really find this happening overly much in Canada, where the lack of democratic legitimacy means that Senators usually do not feel they have the right to alter taxation or spending bills. In the UK, of course, explicit measures were put in place in the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts that heavily restrict the House of Lords' ability to tamper with such bills.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All the embedded links are relative, actually. The browser shows them as file:// URLs because they're in a local file. They do appear to be session-specific, and don't work for me, either, now that my session has timed out. I'd probably have to download the pages all over again to get updated links.
Here is the script:
#! /bin/bash ..." :; do
BASE="http://web.lexisnexis.com"
URL="... first page
N=1
while
___FNAME="$(printf "gacode%03d.html" $N)"
___wget -T5 -t3 --no-cookies --header "`<cookie-header.txt`" -O "$FNAME" "$URL" || break;
___NEXT="$(xmllint --html --xpath 'string(//a[img/@title="Next"]/@href)' "$FNAME" 2>/dev/null)"
___[ -z "$NEXT" ] && { echo "No next URL." 1>&2; break; }
___N=$[N+1]
___URL="$BASE$NEXT"
done
(Leading spaces were replaced with underscores to preserve layout.) The file "cookie-header.txt" needs to contain the contents of the header, including the "Cookie:" prefix, as transmitted by your browser. You can get this by using Wireshark and the "Follow TCP Stream" function, among other methods.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Jesse,
This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to build the code. I'll add a module that retrieves links online and writes them to local files in the same directory.
The Constitution was written to limit what the federal government was allowed to do. Those limits were supposed to apply even if the majority of the people wished otherwise. There is a provision in the Constitution for changing those limits if a sufficiently large percentage of the population so desires, but barring that being done those limits were intended to continue.
So, the federal government does not have the authority to do whatever is supported by the democratically expressed will of the people. It only has the authority to do those things the Constitution gives it the authority to do, with the caveat that even there it only has the authority to do them according to the democratically expressed will of the people.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison