Accused of 'Terrorism' For Putting Legal Materials Online (nytimes.com) 191
Carl Malamud believes in open access to government records, and he has spent more than a decade putting them online. You might think states would welcome the help. From a report: But when Mr. Malamud's group posted the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, the state sued for copyright infringement. Providing public access to the state's laws and related legal materials, Georgia's lawyers said, was part of a "strategy of terrorism." A federal appeals court ruled against the state, which has asked the Supreme Court to step in. On Friday, in an unusual move, Mr. Malamud's group, Public.Resource.Org, also urged the court to hear the dispute, saying that the question of who owns the law is an urgent one, as about 20 other states have claimed that parts of similar annotated codes are copyrighted.
The issue, the group said, is whether citizens can have access to "the raw materials of our democracy." The case, Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, No. 18-1150, concerns the 54 volumes of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which contain state statutes and related materials. The state, through a legal publisher, makes the statutes themselves available online, and it has said it does not object to Mr. Malamud doing the same thing. But people who want to see other materials in the books, the state says, must pay the publisher.
The issue, the group said, is whether citizens can have access to "the raw materials of our democracy." The case, Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, No. 18-1150, concerns the 54 volumes of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which contain state statutes and related materials. The state, through a legal publisher, makes the statutes themselves available online, and it has said it does not object to Mr. Malamud doing the same thing. But people who want to see other materials in the books, the state says, must pay the publisher.
So, dumb question (Score:2)
Does that mean if I pay the publisher of the laws (who holds the copyright) to add to the EULA a clause saying the laws cannot be used to prosecute me, I can do whatever I want in Georgia. Subject to federal law at least?
Re: So, dumb question (Score:1)
To know what the law is.
Re: (Score:3)
Does that mean if I pay the publisher of the laws (who holds the copyright) to add to the EULA a clause saying the laws cannot be used to prosecute me, I can do whatever I want in Georgia. Subject to federal law at least?
Your question makes perfect sense in the Robocop universe, but not here...
(1) The state of Georgia holds copyright, but is subject to an agreement with the publisher about revenue from the publisher's annotations. The state of Georgia is the one who makes the agreement with the publisher.
(2) Even if such an EULA did exist, it would have zero bearing. Suppose you did something illegal. You'd have broken the Georgia law as written. The fact that someone's interpretations of case law are protected by copyright
Key point you implied (Score:2)
A key point you implied, but didn't state:
The summary says they copied "the law and other materials".
It's the "other materials" they got into copyright trouble over, not the law. They can copy and publisher the law all they want. What they can't legally do at this point is copy and distribute someone's copyright protected *commentary* discussing opinions of the law.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The lower court, however, concluded that "the annotations in the OCGA are sufficiently law-like so as to be properly regarded as a sovereign work. Like the statutory text itself, the annotations are created by the duly constituted legislative authority of the State of Georgia. Moreover, the annotations clearly have authoritative weight in explicating and establishing the meaning and effect of Georgia’s laws. Furthermore, the procedures by which the annotations were incorporated bear the hallmarks of l
Re: Key point you implied (Score:1)
Actually definitions are the first section of a st (Score:2)
> then you'd need the legal definition of "murder", which is not written down in the law
Actually the format used by most criminal statutes is:
Heading
Definitions
Prohibited Conduct
Defenses
Punishments, often referenced by class (class B felony)
See for example
https://statutes.capitol.texas... [texas.gov]
19.01 states generally what the statute is about
19.02(a) is the definitions
19.02(b) is the prohibited conduct
19.02(c) is the punishments, via the class references
Your title correctly mentions that there is case law, whic
Silly People (Score:5, Informative)
Don't you know that you are legally required to know the law, whether you are allowed to read it or not, even if the officer arresting you for breaking a non-existent one is not required to?
https://www.mintpressnews.com/... [mintpressnews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The Supreme Court should be ignored by most people.
Re: Silly People (Score:1)
So, for civilians "ignorance is no excuse".
For police "ignorance is expected".
This means they'll try their damned best to make sure police are utterly and completely ignorant of the law. They won't teach it. In fact you can tell them there's no such thing as "law". It's "reasonable" to assume an officer didn't understand a law if they were willfully ignorant of it. A nice side-effect being that your rights are enshrined in law so you have no rights per the police. True carte blanche for the PD. How handy.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you know that you are legally required to know the law, whether you are allowed to read it or not, even if the officer arresting you for breaking a non-existent one is not required to?
A fun supreme court decision would be: "Sure you can copyright it. But if you do you can't enforce it."
Think of the consternation THAT would cause. B-)
====
(I wonder if this is fallout from the case where they guy got around the copyright on the model electrical code by publishing the verbatim version enacted into {unc
Re: We need improvements! (Score:1)
Troll Much? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hey good for you, Obama made one and Trump makes them every fucking day. I mean day one he was claiming he had the largest inauguration in history even after photos came out disproving that.
What in god's name is your point here?
If I remember correctly you're the same cat that "proved" UBI would never work with a long, personally written essay where you fabricated literally every single data point. Not a single one had any rational bit of information attached to it, you literally just made up numbers that fi
You CAN keep your doctor. (Score:1)
IF the doctor wants to keep you. There's no way the government can FORCE the doctor to look after you, except in emergencies, which shouldn't be the government but his hippocratic oath. IF the doctor thinks they can't make as much money off you under the ACA, he can dump your ass, but that is not a problem with the ACA or government, it's with the rapacious greed of your doctor who ignores his oaths for cash.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
I believe the point being made was that the media didn't care when Obama lied. There was no "misleading statements" tally running at WaPo for the last president.
Yes we should hold Trump accountable. We should hold everyone accountable.
In practice the media only cares about "repubtards" being held responsible, to use your word. That is a serious problem. That is why Trump was elected in the first place. Enough people were sick of being ignored they were willing to burn the whole place down...not unlike Daner
actually son (Score:1)
the point is that trump is a liar and that morally bankrupt losers like you think you can normalize him by pretending that other people are as bad as he is.
The media did care, but counting was easy (Score:5, Informative)
E.g. Obama's false 'intelligence failure' claim [washingtonpost.com] (29 September 2014).
Here's WaPo's list of Obama's biggest whoppers [washingtonpost.com].
The reason there was no systematic count of Obama's falsehoods is that it wasn't needed: there were only eighteen over his 8-year presidency [nytimes.com].
You don't need a well-oiled procedure to count to eighteen. And you don't need to assign numbers; each falsehood can be named.
A lot of this is due to the simple fact that when someone pointed out that Obama was wrong he stopped repeating the false claim. Also, he got better: six in his first year, but the same number in his whole second term.
Trump has lied about hundreds of things, but the reason his tally of lies has reached 10,000 is that he keeps repeating the lies, even after their falsehood has been pointed out.
Re: (Score:1)
Despite your anti-media conspiracy theorizing, of course the media cared and reported about Obama's "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor".
The reason they didn't keep running "misleading statements" tallies of Obama's lies and false statements was because it was (like with most pollticians, whether Democrat or Republican) a rather low number and easy to remember individual examples. E.g. similarly most people remember Bush's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, to justify starting t
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
. There was no "misleading statements" tally running at WaPo for the last president.
There didn't need to be: not everything Obama said was true be he wasn't spewing 99% lies most of the time. He was much the same as previous mainstream presidential candidates, and so was generally treated similarly. Trump wasn't.
In practice the media only cares about "repubtards" being held responsible,
No, you're just being a little snowflake.
Let's actually compare:
https://www.politifact.com/per... [politifact.com]
https://www.politifact.co [politifact.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Your guy lies 99% of the time, but my guy lies only 97% of the time, so take that you stupid-head!
Yes, this is the state of modern political discourse. (Also, politifact is a propaganda site, not sure why you reference it.)
What will matter in 2020 isn't words, it's :are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" That will decide the election.
Re: (Score:2)
Your guy lies 99% of the time, but my guy lies only 97% of the time, so take that you stupid-head!
If you cut at half true, it's 50% vs 84%. So your 99 vs 97 is of course a wild misrepresentation from you. I'd expect nothing less given your political "opinions".
Also, politifact is a propaganda site, not sure why you reference it.
Lol yes! Facts you don't like == propaganda. Suuuuuuuure!
Re: (Score:2)
Your sig is amusing in context. You clearly define "facts" as "things posted by SJWs", which says it all.
The point is: do you know how you can tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. OK, Trump broke new ground with Twitter, so now he can lie while moving only his fingers. Innovative, to be sure, but it's not a difference in kind.
Anyone who believes anything any politician ever says about anything at all without independently verifying it is a fool. The Platonic ideal of a politician lies 5
Re: (Score:2)
You clearly define "facts" as "things posted by SJWs", which says it all.
Wow you really don't have a grasp of basic English!
I guess that explains why your posts are so incoherent.
The law isn't limited to the law (Score:5, Informative)
Laws exist and are written down. But they sometimes point to copyright material as being normative for the regulations.
A recent example is the revision of FIPS 140-2 into FIPS 140-3.
FIPS 140-3 contains very little material, FIPS 140-2 has lots. This is because 140-3 just points to ISO/IEC-19790:2012, which contains the new material.
ISO/IEC:19790-2012 is copyrighted by ISO and costs 178 Swiss francs ( https://www.iso.org/standard/5... [iso.org] ).
So regulations that hold the force of law, are copyrighted and you have to pay 178 Swiss francs for your own copy. If you add up the cost of the references, it's over $4000. The recent change to 140-3 has increased the quantity of such regulations by a few hundred pages.
Re: (Score:2)
FIPS 140-3 was abandoned in 2014, are you aware of any attempts to resurrect it?
Re: (Score:3)
>FIPS 140-3 was abandoned in 2014, are you aware of any attempts to resurrect it?
It's a standard now.
The effort was moved to ISO. The changes went into ISO. The new spec was to be a pointer to ISO 19790:2012.
We waited 5 years for that to happen. It happened two weeks ago.
https://csrc.nist.gov/News/201... [nist.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
"Laws exist and are written down. But they sometimes point to copyright material as being normative for the regulations."
Yea, this is just a sad indictment of representative not representing their people. Well, they do keep voting for them without even asking for a change much, so yea... its more important to them that their taxes are sorted than innocent people going to jail over it.
Re:The law isn't limited to the law (Score:5, Informative)
In Germany, once that would have resulted in the copyrighted standard becoming public domain. In Germany Laws are free, and it wasn't possible to circumvent that by just having the law require citizens to abide to some other, copyrighted document.
This was changed in 2003 by introducing 5 Abs. 3 UrhG. Now our laws aren't free anymore, either
Re: (Score:2)
What did he post? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Your use of the word "free" with scare quotes is clearly a "strategy of terrorism".
"Terrorism" in the state of Georgia is leaving a doily out of place in the front foyer. Slaves have been whipped for less.
Re: (Score:1)
According to TFA, he posted the laws and the annotations that Georgia commissioned LexisNexis to create. If you want to understand the law, you have to read the annotations. They carry legal-like weight. Georgia gets a percentage of the money LexisNexis makes when they sell access to the annotations. They farm out writing the laws so they can "save the taxpayer the burden of paying for the annotations". It also makes it so you have to be in a lawyer club to be able to read the law, which is BS.
Your country makes me laugh... (Score:1, Insightful)
.... your representatives don't give a shit about you. Everything is up for sale to the highest bidder. Big pharma, telecoms, music, movie, food industries control the government at state and national level. Unbelievable.
You are #1 lol
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
... and I only pay 78% tax rate!
Re: (Score:2)
>implying I could pay for american tuition with only 78% of an income
Please don't raise my stress, I can't afford another $500 bottle of generic anxiety chem.
Re: (Score:2)
Well Alex, I'm going to say "What is Wakanda?".
Re: (Score:2)
You make one of the best cases for Libertarian system of laws, where the system is designed to be minimalist. But then again, you have people wanting to tell others how to live, and that really messes up things for everyone.
Nonsense (Score:2)
All Laws are limits on personal freedom so if you're in favor of any then you're in favor of "oppression". Furthermore, the whole libertarian ideology is just like any other system of political beliefs in telling people how to live. Want to solve a collective problem with government? No, that's ruining freedom!
Clearly, the majority of Americans like having strong rule of law. That's how we got to the here and now. And sure, Democratic governance can be corrupted by wealth but at least it's still beholden to
Terrorism angle is BS, but (C) may have some merit (Score:5, Informative)
I think there was a case a decade or two ago that said the actual laws passed by lawmakers - be they cities, states, or otherwise - could not be copyrighted.
That doesn't mean some of the other things found in those books can't be copyrighted. Obviously, if the book included analysis and commentary suggesting such-and-so law would likely survive or fall to a court challenge, that would probably be copyrightable.
The difficult part is when the government all but requires you to cite or use books such as these, effectively forcing people to buy them. Any situation like this is contrary to the ideals of a democratic society. Whether it should be considered illegal or not will largely turn on how difficult it is to conduct business with the government without citing or referring to these books. If, say, a court says "you must cite this book" that's clearly requiring its use. If the court says "you must cite this book or an equivalent" and there are a myriad of "equivalent" books and some of them don't cost anything, that's probably okay, but if there are say only 2 or 3 "equivalent books" and they are all 10 times as expensive to use than the book in question, then you have an "all but required" situation which is un-democratic.
TFA comes right out and says what the issue is in this case:
In the Georgia case, the question is whether annotations commissioned and approved by the state may be copyrighted.
It also says why these annotations create an "all but required" scenario:
The annotations include descriptions of judicial decisions interpreting the statutes. Only a very bad lawyer would fail to consult them in determining the meaning of a statute.
One solution for situations like this may be for a civic-minded patron to bankroll re-doing the work that created the annotations and donating the work product to the public domain. This may deter other states from doing what Georgia did. Not an ideal solution - the ideal solution would have been for the Georgia Legislature to ask the taxpayers to foot the bill and have the original work product put explicitly in the public domain.
Terrorism angle is there for fear (Score:4, Interesting)
I should add (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe you ought to reread the article:
Re: (Score:2)
Not federal, and no (Score:2)
If it's commissioned and paid for by the state, wouldn't that make it public domain?
Nope.
First off, even if it was created by a State of Georgia employee as part of his job, it would not automatically be in the public domain. That applies to works of United States (federal) government employees.
Second, even at the federal level, works created by a third party can be under copyright even if they were commissioned by the United States federal government.
Now, whether copyright law SHOULD automatically put everything paid for by taxpayers in the public domain as a matter of statute, well, tha
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just the Federal government. It also applies to all edicts of any US government, including states, territories, and municipalities. It just goes further to say that the Federal government cannot own any copyright at all. That's not true for states, at least as far as federal law goes (states could always completely deny themselves copyright in a similar manner as the federal government, but they don't have to).
What Georgia did here was a sneaky way to get around this limitation. They was produced t
Re: (Score:1)
In 58586024 [slashdot.org] AC said "If it's commissioned and paid for by the state, wouldn't that make it public domain?"
I replied "no" with a long explanation.
You replied in the parent post to this one that laws and law-like material are not copyrightable.
You are probably right, but so am I: The AC was wrong, merely being a creation of the state does not make something public domain. The state can have someone on the payroll who paints a mural as part of his normal job duties, with the copyright going to his employer,
Do people here read? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about publishing the laws. It's about publishing an Annotated version of the laws. The state hired an outside firm to go through and put their opinions/justifications down for laws. Part of the deal was they would pay less or take a cut for the service if it could be sold. The laws themselves are public domain. But if you want a published outside opinion/commentary on them you perhaps have to pay the copyright holder. I say perhaps because it stills seems to have to be decided. I give no opinion, just saying what the actual story is about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The plebs are allowed to know the laws, but are not allowed to know the interpretation of the laws. Good loophole so they can keep charting people under laws that need a legal expert to understand.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Do people here read? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I am subject to the law, and ignorance of it is not an excuse, then I should have the unfettered right to all information regarding that law without financial burden. If the law requires copyrighted material to understand, then either the copyright should be invalidated or the law should.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not so much about who paid for the documents or why. The real reason both a lower and appeals court has decided (unanimously, in the appeals court case) that these are not copyrightable is because the annotations are actually cited by judges in determining cases. These annotations have the weight of law, and you cannot know the law if you don't know the annotations as well. They are sufficiently "lawlike" to fall under the federal copyright exemption for government edicts.
Re: (Score:2)
The law, all underlying documents, annotations and interpretations should be free to the citizens who paid for it with their taxes.
If it needs copyrighted material to understand then either the copyright or the law itself should be immediately invalidated.
"the laws are published. while a case affecting you might be affected by case law and precedent and judgments and all that stuff, which you might only learn about in books, that doesn't give you the right to have it all for free
Then why is the State suing (Score:5, Informative)
And speaking of not reading:
Emphasis added by me, but I think you get the point. The annotations have the practical effect of amending the law. The Georgia and the other states know this and they are actively using copyright to hide portions of the law.
Clarification Re:Then why is the State suing (Score:1)
âoeThe annotations clearly have authoritative weight in explicating and establishing the meaning and effect of Georgiaâ(TM)s laws,â Judge Stanley Marcus wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. âoeGeorgiaâ(TM)s courts have cited to the annotations as authoritative sources on statutory meaning and legislative intent.â
Emphasis added by me, but I think you get the point. The annotations have the practical effect of amending the law. The Georgia and the other states know this and they are actively using copyright to hide portions of the law.
I think you are misunderstanding Judge Marcus's comments.
I read Judge Marcus to mean that the annotations are authoritative, but the implication is they are authoritative because they accurately summarize the truly authoritative sources: The laws and the judicial opinions that ruled on these laws, not because they are somehow "magically self-authoritative."
In other words, if a controlling judicial opinion took 500 words of legalese to say X and the annotation took 100 words of mostly-plain-english with jus
You don't understand how American law works (Score:4, Insightful)
The example given is sodomy laws. It's still illegal in Georgia but the law was declared unconstitutional when applied to consenting adults. That's a pretty obvious example (which is why the article used it) but there's tons of grey area in law and no shortage of "activist" judges or laws written intentionally vague.
Hell, right now every State in the South is putting obviously unconstitutional abortion laws on the books in the hopes of getting before the SCOTUS and overturning Roe v. Wade. Don't underestimate the power of those annotations. They have legal force. They shape laws. And for a badly written law they _are_ the law.
Re: (Score:2)
The example given is sodomy laws. It's still illegal in Georgia but the law was declared unconstitutional when applied to consenting adults.
That's really awful. What the heck is this law still doing on the books if it's unconstitutional?
Also, from the article: “When you go to a statute, you see the language of the statute, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you the meaning,” she said. “You go to the annotations, which leads you to the court decisions, where the judges actually tell you what the words mean.”
That's horrifying too. Is the law a sacred text that only the high priests can interpret? Did the legislator
It's how our legal system works (Score:1)
Our entire legal system puts a huge amount of power in the hands of judges. In theory it's checks and balances but in practice it's meant to slow change and make our laws less progressive. Works too.
Re: (Score:1)
Your reply goes to the very heart of the abortion argument.
If it is just a parasite, I'd not give a rats ass how many abortions someone had. It would be like popping a zit.
However, my perspective is that abortion IS murdering an innocent human. The fact that it has not yet exited the birth canal is not relevant.
Everything else everyone always argues about is very inconsequential.
Human life, or no? The answer to that question is at the heart of the argument.
Taking this aside, what do you think of the right t
Re: (Score:2)
This is how common law works, which is what most western countries follow (with the exception of a few places like Scottland and I think France and Italy, which follow Roman law). And really, it sounds a lot worse than it is. There are built in checks and balances that keep things pretty fair.
Basically what happens is a group of representatives of the people (local, state, federal, whatever) writes a law. They have an intention behind the law when they write it, but they might not necessarily know the exact
Re: (Score:2)
The state DID buy the copyright. That's why the state is suing - it owns the copyright on the documents. It's more than likely in their contract with the publisher (who was given exclusive rights to publish at their own discretion in return for the copyright and a small royalty fee to the state) that the state must sue if there is a copyright issue.
States can own copyright, unlike the US Government. However, all edicts issued by any government is public domain. So the question is whether the annotations the
Well that kind of ends it right then and there (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Do people here read? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many times, "annotations" merely mean footnotes, links to related court cases, etc. They are theoretically copyrightable, assuming they meet the standard. This, in and of itself, is not a problem for publishers like PublicResource.
However, in the case of the CGA, part of the issue is that the "annotations" also include the *titles of the sections*. A set of laws without headings at major junction points of the law is basically useless for navigation. FindLaw (owned by Thomson Reuters), for example, also publishes the Code of Georgia, but in unannotated form, so once you get below a "Chapter" in the regulation, you're essentially just looking at a table of contents of numbers. This is the *only* state in the US that includes section titles in the "annotated" content.
Also, the *unannotated* code is not available from the State of Georgia, and the "official" code linked from the State is the *annotated* code, which is hosted by LexisNexis and hidden behind their spider-hostile web site. (California, New York, and Tennessee also have their official publications of laws outsourced to LN or WestLaw.)
Part of my job is maintaining a company-wide system that consumes and analyzes statutes and regulations from hundreds of jurisdictions (from countries down to villages). We look for changes, assign metadata, and use the database to do work for our clients (we don't compete with the "official" publishers). Sites like LexisNexis and WestLaw are purposefully designed to make my job difficult, because they are trying their best to monopolize and monetize publication of public domain laws. They use these annotation copyright claims, along with anti-spider technology and ludicrous TOS, to create virtual fences against anyone else publishing the same laws, annotated or not.
Annotated is the key bit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The question is really whether the annotations offer a significant (i.e. making a difference for judges) insight into the interpretation of the laws, in which case such insight should by all means be public knowledge. It's a different matter if the annotations are just cross references or so. I'm assuming the latter is true or it would have been part of the laws itself already.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
TFA makes it clear that The State of Georgia holds copyright on the annotations.
Re: (Score:2)
>Why should someone be able to steal that work
Because context always matters and in this case, the annotations are the context in which the laws get interpreted and applied to us.
Not really accused of terrorism (Score:1)
Had a hard time believing Georgia's lawyer would make terrorism argument. From the Court Filing:
Defendant’s founder and president, Carl Malamud, has indicated that this type of strategy has been a successful form of “terrorism” that he has employed in the past to force government entities to publish documents on Malamud’s terms. See Exhibit 2.
-12-
20. Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, Defendant freely admits
Based on quotations used, it seems like Carl Malamud used the term himself to describe his tactics.
Re: (Score:2)
Either way it's more of the hilarious dilution of the word into oblivion.
Strategy of Terrorism? (Score:2)
Georgia's lawyers are going to have to explain what they mean by that. I suspect, though, that they think they're clever and that tossing the word "terrorism" around will give them points in their favor when they appear before a judge. I cannot see how posting the State's laws with annotations is in any way a terrorist act but then I'm not batcrap crazy. Georgia's politicians might just be so afraid of their citizens that they actually believe that making the State's laws understandable to the public is a b
Summary is a rather biased take (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite how the summary makes it sound, the issue isn't copyright of the law. Courts have already found that you can't copyright the law [wikipedia.org]. What's at issue is copyright of annotations to the law [lowelaw.com]. That is, the references to court decisions and cases relevant to each particular section of law. The states are arguing that someone has to put in the time and money to find all those annotations. And if they cannot make money for doing so via copyright, they will not do it. And everyone will be worse off because they'll be referencing laws without knowing if court decisions have clarified or altered the interpretation of said law.
IMHO the simplest solution would seem to be for the states to hire a company to do the annotations for a fee, rather than for copyright ownership. That is, instead of hiring a company to do the annotations, the states "do the annotations" but subcontract the work to a company who does it as a work for hire [wikipedia.org]. That sidesteps the legal issue while making everyone happy (well, maybe not the company if it was looking forward to 130 years of royalties, and the government if it was hoping to get this work done without having to budget for it). As for this particular case, I can see it going either way. A decision against the states could potentially strip IP protection away from anything done for the government by a private company or individual.
Worst outcome would be if the states stop having the annotations done. Then you end up in a similar situation as with sales taxes in the U.S. There are over 10,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the U.S. that an online store has to track. Obviously it's impossible for all but the biggest stores to track that many jurisdictions to see if a new sales tax was passed that day. The best solution would be for there to be a single government database listing all the sales tax rates. The government jurisdiction updates their sales tax every time they make a change, every business downloads a copy of that master sales tax database at the start of the day. But the government doesn't do this, so you have to buy the database from a private company which tracks the sales tax rates. The problem being these companies do not indemnify you if they make an error. If you charged too little sales tax because this company made a mistake, the shortfall comes out of your pocket. That wouldn't happen with a master government database. Likewise, a master government annotation list would be ideal, as updates would be available to everyone simultaneously, and errors in the annotations would be the fault of the government (who made the annotations), not the private individual or company who followed the erroneous annotation.
SpaceX (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
You can avoid using a rocket. You can't avoid using the law.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or -- and I'm just spitballin' here -- the State could write easily understood and unambigious laws in the first freakin' case!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Summary is a rather biased take (Score:4, Informative)
But "terrorism" seems to be the new Godwin's law [wikipedia.org]. Meaning in order to get a clearer understanding of the case, you have to take a step back and look at references to this case before the T word started being thrown around.
Here is the reference: https://law.resource.org/pub/u... [resource.org]
Just to be clear, the defendant himself described his own work as "standards terrorism". When Georgia's lawyers made their filing, they said that the defendant self-described his work as "terrorism" (and they used quotes).
IMHO the simplest solution would seem to be for the states to hire a company to do the annotations for a fee, rather than for copyright ownership. That is, instead of hiring a company to do the annotations, the states "do the annotations" but subcontract the work to a company who does it as a work for hire [wikipedia.org]. That sidesteps the legal issue while making everyone happy (well, maybe not the company if it was looking forward to 130 years of royalties, and the government if it was hoping to get this work done without having to budget for it).
That's precisely what happened. In this particular case (according to TFA), "Georgia holds the copyright to the annotations, but the company has the right to sell them while paying the state a royalty."
And it was indeed done because Georgia wanted to get this done without having to budget for it. From TFA: "The state says this is a sensible cost-saving measure, “minimizing burdens on taxpayers” by sparing them from paying for the preparation of annotations."
In my mind, if Georgia paid up front for the annotations, then the burden of creating those annotations would be evenly spread amongst all taxpayers in Georgia. The royalty agreement is a way instead to spread the burden amongst the law firms who fight cases based on it, plus the interested citizens, plus a bit of padding for the publishing firm. I can't say a priori which is the most just way to distribute the burden. My instinct is that it should be borne by all taxpayers - but only if the taxpayers don't vote in someone who will reduce their tax burden by cutting what they think of as esoteric legal stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is not that any law student can write their own legal analysis and it'd be copyrighted. The problem is when you have a set of annotations that is the official interpretation. Like imagine that with the constitution there was an annotated version that in detailed specified what "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" means like who, where, when, how, what falls under the definition of militia, arms and so on. And if you tried to argue the law any other way they'd po
I mentioned this elsewhere on the thread (Score:2)
The prosecutors are using these laws to increase the threat of penalties and jail time in the hope of making the defendant plead guilty to a lesser charge because after decades of "tough on crime" culture and media there's no telling what a jury might convict you of, especially if you're in Georgia and not of the right "persuasion"...
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, you are correct. Don't you think they know that too? This is by design. That's what everyone is complaining about. It's another attack on FOIA.
Wasn't "accused of terrorism". Inflammatory bait. (Score:5, Informative)
There was no accusation of terrorism. This is inflammatory click-bait.
https://law.resource.org/pub/u... [resource.org]
Defendant’s founder and president, Carl Malamud, has indicated that this type of strategy has been a successful form of “terrorism” that he has employed in the past to force government entities to publish documents on Malamud’s terms. See Exhibit 2.
In other words it was Malamud himself who characterized his actions as terrorism. The Georgia lawyers are clearly putting the word in quotes to distance themselves from the accusation.
The next paragraph of the Georgia filing goes on: "Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, Defendant freely admits to the copying and distribution of massive numbers of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Annotations on at least its https://yeswescan.org/ [yeswescan.org] website." They don't use the quotes this time. I figure it's clear from the context that they're still referring to Malamud's own self-description, and I figure the court and all parties understand that. But whatever you claim about that, their accusation nevertheless is literally not an accusation of terrorism, but an accusation of copyright infringement.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's someone else who also looked at Exhibit 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
https://museum.media.org/eti/P... [media.org] - written by Malamud in which he refers to his actions as "standards terrorism"
https://archives.cjr.org/campa... [cjr.org] - Columbia Law Journal article which links to Malamud's self-description
Ongoing (Score:3)
Other Slashdot articles that should be included in the "related" links:
California in 2008: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Malamud and his Public.Resource.Org in 2012: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Original story about Georgia in 2015: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Terrorists are taking away all the incentive! (Score:3)
Without an exclusive monopoly, lawmakers will have no financial incentive to rule over you. Without profit as an incentive, why should they even bother? You terrorists are going to make it so that all the rulers go move to some other country and tell them what to do or not do, leaving you alone and free.
How fucking easy is this? (Score:2)
From TFS:
But people who want to see other materials in the books, the state says, must pay the publisher.
Follow the money.
Again, extremism. (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2, Interesting)
I was accused of domestic violence without ever having threatened anyone with violence or done anything violent... so, you know, it's whatever. You'd think it would require a criminal investigation or evidence or something - nope. I've got no criminal record, police were never called to my home, my wife and children never had any bruises or anything because I never fucking hit them, none of my belongings are broken because I don't get angry and throw things, there are no holes in the walls despite allegat
Fuck the fuckers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I don't have access to the laws then I don't have to follow them. Period.
What you don't have free access to are the annotations, even though the state paid to have the annotations recorded and holds the copyright. So when you want to know if an action is legal in Georgia, be able to cite the base law and supply your own interpretation.
What a travesty of democracy (Score:1)
This is just stupid and greedy (which are the most Germany, Britishy and Americany things) public records are public records and if a public office uses terms like "brand" or "copyright infrigement of public records" they are talking about a private company not a public government agency.
In Australia, All laws are copyrigtht. (Score:2)
One of the good things about the US is the idea that there is no crown copyright. Here in Oz you pay to read the laws.
If the copyright is supposed to pay for the parliament that makes the laws, then it is a huge loss making business.
Re: (Score:2)
The Swedish do it better. Their constitution says that all government documents must be accessible to the public. The result is that all court documents are public, with exceptions being short-term rather than perpetual. It makes trade secret litigation much more awkward.
Covered by Lawful Masses (Score:2)