Slashdot Mirror
Publish Georgia's State Laws, You'll Get Sued For Copyright and Lose (arstechnica.com)
Presto Vivace writes: If you want to read the official laws of the state of Georgia, it will cost you more than $1,000. Open-records activist Carl Malamud bought a hard copy, and it cost him $1,207.02 after shipping and taxes. A copy on CD was $1,259.41. The "good" news for Georgia residents is that they'll only have to pay $385.94 to buy a printed set from LexisNexis. Malamud thinks reading the law shouldn't cost anything. So a few years back, he scanned a copy of the state of Georgia's official laws, known as the Official Georgia Code Annotated, or OCGA. Malamud made USB drives with two copies on them, one scanned copy and another encoded in XML format. On May 30, 2013, Malamud sent the USB drives to the Georgia speaker of the House, David Ralson, and the state's legislative counsel, as well as other prominent Georgia lawyers and policymakers. Now, the case has concluded with U.S. District Judge Richard Story having published an opinion (PDF) that sides with the state of Georgia. The judge disagreed with Malamud's argument that the OCGA can't be copyrighted and also said Malamud's copying of the laws is not fair use. "The Copyright Act itself specifically lists 'annotations' in the works entitled to copyright protection," writes Story. "Defendant admits that annotations in an unofficial code would be copyrightable."
Slashdot reader Presto Vivace adds: "It could have been worse, at least he was not criminally charged liked Aaron Schwartz."
Slashdot reader Presto Vivace adds: "It could have been worse, at least he was not criminally charged liked Aaron Schwartz."
In GA, the 'law' is technically the annotations. Because as anyone who has studied law for at least one semester knows... what is written in law doesn't matter. What matters is how the law is interpreted and enforced based on: common law, precedent/case law, other court rulings/supreme court rulings.
A couple states still have interracial sex/marriage as illegal on the books, but (I hope this is 'obviously') they are not enforceable because of SCOTUS rulings
Great, care to point out where those laws are available freely WITHOUT those annotations?
Yes, on the public website of the company that published the annotated texts. Here, to be incredibly specific.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The official Georgia Code is the copyrighted code with the annotations. Anything without the annotations is unofficial.
They publish an official code with annotations, but the official statutory law with official numbering is available for free online (here). And the annotations (by law) do not carry the force of law (as that *would* make them uncopyrightable, as the linked decision points out). In short: the summary is not only clickbait, it's actually wrong. GA law is 100% completely free and available to all with no copyright restrictions.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
That link goes to a blank page.
The link works fine for me, although it takes about 15 seconds to load. Georgia law is also available for free at the Library of Congress website.
Anyway, TFA is total baloney, and their main point that Georgia is using copyright to restrict access to their laws is false. The summary and headline are even worse. Fake news and garbage journalism, designed to manufacture outrage and generate clicks, rather than inform.
And the annotations (by law) do not carry the force of law (as that *would* make them uncopyrightable, as the linked decision points out). In short: the summary is not only clickbait, it's actually wrong. GA law is 100% completely free and available to all with no copyright restrictions.
In Georgia specifically, the situation is complicated and different from other states. (Even Wikipedia has a summary.)
Basically, in most states (and for federal law), the "annotations" are compiled references to relevant court cases, other laws, parts of the legislative record related to the law, etc. In almost all cases these are compiled by private businesses and copyrighted, sold to attorneys as a helpful tool. They have no official standing.
Georgia is different. The state of Georgia publishes an official set of annotations for its laws which apparently are maintained by the state (not a private business, as with most other annotated codes). Because of this official publication by the state government, Georgia case law frequently makes reference to the OFFICIAL annotations directly (since they are basically codified directly by the state), whereas in other states and for the federal government, you wouldn't reference the annotations directly (since they aren't official) -- you'd use the annotations to find references that you'd reference instead.
Georgia is a special case here, and it could legitimately be argued that keeping the official codified annotations private is basically keeping a STATE CODIFIED DOCUMENT from the public, which is obviously helpful for people who want to research the law, represent themselves in court, etc. In other states, the annotations are clearly owned by private businesses who compile them. In Georgia, they are an essential part of the official codified law as distributed directly from the state government.
So all those posts claiming this is "fake news" aren't quite right. It's true that you can get the text of Georgia statutes for free. But the state of Georgia here is also providing an official text that accompanies the code, but only for a fee. One could argue that, as an official state resource, it should be made accessible to the public too, like I always hear numerous Slashdot commenters bitching endlessly about how any scientific research with even a tiny percentage of government funding should have its results published freely and accessible for free.
Where are all those Slashdot commenters here yelling about access to government-sponsored documents here?? Instead, we just seem to have a number of modded up comments claiming TFA is "fake news." Sure, there's an argument that the state should be able to copyright its publications, so it's not clear that they should necessarily make it available for free. But the situation in Georgia with the state law is different from most states, making TFA's description *not* a clear-cut case (for or against).
it sounds like the "annotations" are fundamental to the law itself and provided by the same legislative organs that made it in the first place.
Annotations are basically collections of court cases, trials, history, and lawyers opinions.
They are not necessary, but they do make arguing a case easier if you have them
There are legal publishing services that make annotations for just about every court system there is. These annotations have been available since forever to lawyers for huge sums. Having these annotations make a lawyers job much easier because now someone else has done your research for you.
However, annotations do not carry the force of law because the previous court cases often conflict with each other and may be decided differently in the future, and annotations will often not have the most recent decisions.
Georgia hired a third party to create and maintain the annotations for Georgia law and add it to the official code as a favor to the people and screw the lawyers.
But it cost boatloads of money to compile and maintain the annotations. How to pay for it? Give the LexisNexis sole publishing rights.
Ga law mandated that the publisher maintain a free web site for the general public. I use it to check on stuff, and it works fine for me.