Online legal publishers squabble over the right to copyright the law | Hacker News Reader

Online legal publishers squabble over the right to copyright the law

arstechnica.com

42 pointsprotomyth26 comments

I'd like to see the law in a git repository or equivalent. Then people/lawmakers could vote to apply a patch (bill) to the law.

I've seen something like this suggested before, something like github for the law - lawhub but with a nice user friendly UI, be interesting to see the stuff evolve over and time and who was making the edits ;).

https://draftin.com/ has a lovely UI I like a great deal.

You mean, like https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze#german-federal-laws-and... is for Germany?

(That link is to a volunteer project to represent the German law, sourced from the official site at http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/, as GitHub repo with pull requests and merges for proposals and bills)

I'd like to see presidental debates revolve around a pull request :D

Yes!!! Democratic governments need this.

If one party or politician wants to logroll additional policies/amendments that work against the interest of the people, the records should permanently reflect their sleazy actions.

Campaigns shouldn't be about PR and a candidates ability to BS people for likes. Their commit history should reflect their true stance and impact on policy.

Anyone else find it ironic that access to the law is so difficult yet every adult citizen is expected to know every single law that applies at any time in any location in the US and all possible interpretations, case law history, precedents, rulings, etc in history. And that's just to stay out of jail?

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

For a modern improvement on this, look up anarcho-tyranny.

I always loved that part of the book. I think it's a perfect explanation/application for another quote.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Tacitus

Not surprisingly not a recent thing.

I consider myself to be very lucky to have taken Latin in high school and then and after studying Roman history (and much more nowadays), today's events don't surprise me hardly as much as they might.

Taking a step back, and putting aside copyright, which is a no brainier, providing access to the law is not free, most courts charge to access copies, directly, or indirectly. Best solution would likely be to have three non-profits take compete to provide access; otherwise you end up with situations like this were the states outsource access it an attempt to reduce costs and make money too.

That's a recipe for building up an "industry" where almost all of the money is expended collecting small amounts of money, while limiting access severely. (There's a huge difference in how many people (or computers) will read free text vs. text with even a tiny $$ cost.)

Compare to the alternative of uploading one copy to Public.Resource.org or the Internet Archive. It's probably cheaper for the courts to do this than to provide copies to 3 non-profits for further sale.

Edit: add Public.Resource.org, since they're in the forefront of making the Law available for free.

> Taking a step back, and putting aside copyright, which is a no brainier, providing access to the law is not free

Neither are lots of the essential functions of organized society. OTOH, universal access to a complete and accurate account of the law is arguably is an essential element of government of, by, and for the people.

> Best solution would likely be to have three non-profits take compete to provide access; otherwise you end up with situations like this were the states outsource access it an attempt to reduce costs and make money too.

I don't know that that's the "best solution"; a national rule that no government act has the force of law until and unless published in an official, universally and freely accessible, public domain, repository of the law meeting defined standards that include provisions relating to functionality and exportabilitym would not prevent states from outsourcing the work of providing the online repository, but would prevent it from being put behind a copyright wall preventing free use, and would prevent technical barriers from being erected to effective use in order to advance commercial interests, and would prevent it from being a way to make money rather than a way to provide free and equal access to the most fundamental information about government -- what their official, binding decrees are.

Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but simple putting something online is not providing access nor for that matter is it free, since taxes pay for it. Beyond that, huge, and often the most meaningful legal information is not pulled from the written laws, but case law that's resulted from past cases. More to the point, legal system as it is now has no responsibility to provided legal advice and clearly looks down on those who represent themselves. Beyond that, most law is not in Plain English, and as a result, not accessible.

Why?

Other countries manage to have laws available online in dozens of variations and translations, like http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/

And thanks to that, volunteer efforts like https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze#german-federal-laws-and... can be possible and legal.

Why does US law have to be costly?

>Why does US law have to be costly?

Because it is seen as a business opportunity. Essentially, capitalism.

This literally sounds as if things are being run by the Ferengi.

Who do you think the Ferengi are a parody of?

Yeah, but parodies aren't supposed to become real now, are they?

This isn't capitalism, it's rent-seeking.

Capitalism is an economic system first named and characterized by its critics for the way it favored holders of capital, not least of which the way its structure of property rights enabled and rewarded rent-seeking.

In this case, saying "this isn't capitalism, it's rent-seeking" is like saying, as you sail out of the Golden Gate, "this isn't the ocean, its salt water."

(That is, its wrong because the thing being described is both the thing it is denied to be and the thing it is proposed to be instead, and the latter is central characteristic of the former.)

No, it isn't. Capitalism is where the means of production are privately rather than publicly owned.

cap·i·tal·ism ˈkapədlˌizəm/ noun

"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state"

Rent-seeking is orthogonal to capitalism. You can (and do) have rent-seeking in non-capitalist economies too.

A citizen needs to have access to the law in order to behave lawfully. There needs to be free and easy access. A lawful society can't run in any other way.

The costs to publish the law is a total non-sequiter. Being expensive to publish doesn't make something copyrightable. It is expensive to publish any number of public domain works, that doesn't take them out of the public domain.

And, not only are public domain works not copyrightable, they're none-the-less very available, almost always for free. Making it copyrightable does nothing to help provide access to the content, and everything to hinder it.

In the US at least, laws are created by government employees and their work is paid for with taxpayer dollard.

Therefore, their work is paet of the public domain and can't be copyrighted or licensed. Period.

It's the law...

If somebody is claiming copyright to public works and/or limiting access for money, they should be publicly shamed out of existence.

Just put this country out of its misery. Why do we have to live with all this rent seeking bullshit?

Wasn't there a court case over patenting a tax-loophole, where it was rejected because it prevented people from equal protection under the law?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com