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."
But do I have to obey laws that I cannot see?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That would appear to be in violation of Georga's Open Records Act.
http://legal.gatech.edu/sites/...
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.
will last all of 5 minutes against a modern military.
Vietnam and Afghanistan would like a word with you.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It was originally supposed to take debtors as colonists and a few hundred were settled in Georgia. Most of the colonists however were tradesmen with skills. It seems the first Governor, General Oglethorpe, had ideas about how to establish a colony and he didn't really want a lot of losers with no skill set. He sold it as a buffer colony against Spaniards in Florida and the idea was to remove a lot of debtors from prisons in England and transplant them there. Oglethorpe was a cagey customer and basically performed a bait and switch on the King. If you look at Savannah, which he built, you'll see how it's all laid out, a planned city with parks and all. Really nice. The rest of the state has roads laid out by oxen and towns and cities that popped up willey nilly.
The modern military that cannot operate within the US. The Modern Military that likely would stand with the public or at least would face a major split in forces as some do and others do not.
Also Vietnam and Afghanistan would like to speak to you about armed citizens versus modern militaries. Oh and toss in that a large number of our citizens have extensive military training and are far more capable than the armed peasants of Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam the peasants tied up the US for over a decade, eventually forcing us to withdraw very demoralized. Afghanistan drove out the Russians, and then have kept us busy for well over a decade.
And finally the grand total of our armed forces is 2.5 million. Add in roughly another million police officers. We have a population of 317+Million. It would not take a large percentage of citizens to totally overwhelm all our government forces.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
It costs money to do anything legally. Even defending yourself I'm court requires time taken off of work and at least bus fair get to the court. A fee to the private companies to read the law is just on top of what one normally does to respect the judicial system.
Besides which, think of the added benefit to the economy and additional tax revenue on this exchange which is used to help support public services from fire and police to public libraries, infrastructure and child protection services. Won't anyone think of the children?
-- Your Congressional Representative and Public Servant