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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."
Aaron Schwartz is a sad case, but what does that have to do with copyrighting public law?
He was publishing public records of cases, which is a similar nonsensical offense to publishing the law.
Isn't the issue over the ANNOTATIONS and not the laws?
What am I missing?
you have a ruling class, you just don't like to acknowledge them. You'll never get rid of them ( wealth and privilege gains you entry and you're not getting rid of that any time soon) but there's a lot more you could do to reign them in if you'd stop pretending they don't exist.
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Aaron Schwartz is a sad case, but what does that have to do with copyrighting public law?
TFA isn't about copyrighting public law either. It is about copyrighting ANNOTATIONS AND COMMENTARY. Fake news.
Great, care to point out where those laws are available freely WITHOUT those annotations?
They are simply being used as a vector to allow copyright to be exercised on public information.
Its exactly like adding a copyright page to the front of a public document, and claiming that page is copyright, therefore the whole document is.
The fact is that a public of 'public servants' dont want the general public to have free access to the laws that govern them, and are willling to
spend the publics money to protect the public from knowing their own laws.
Nice, isnt it.