If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I know legal definitions might not always mesh with lay definitions, but is this a standard interpretation of "commercial?" It makes sense if you factor in that the grants public.resource.org receives (a few 100k a year) are directly related to their presentation of information, but the quoted passage seems a bit all-encompassing.
I think having a 3rd party host laws behind a paywall is a terrible idea in terms of the public good, but I can at least see that the cost based argument behind it is coherent.
But the judge finding Malmud to be engaged in "commercial" activity and "profiting" without profiting is some Orwellian bs and seems to me to be belie a personal stake in this decision. After all, judges in Georgia have no incentive to see defense lawyers get better/freer access to the annotated case law (and the state prosecutors surely get it for free anyway). I hope Malmud succeeds in appealing.
It's not that I think all judges and prosecutors are evil authoritarians, it's just that there are a bunch of externalities at play:
- If they are elected, they'll want to be seen as pro law and order
- They probably know and work more closely with a smaller set of prosecutors than defense lawyers, and could develop interpersonal biases favoring them
- Related to above, far more judges are former prosecutors or corporate lawyers than defense or public interest lawyers
- And there's the general pessimism/dislike towards (accused and actual) lawbreakers that many on the inside of the judicial system are prone to develop after decades of dealing mostly with that segment of the population
Not to discount your experience as a clerk, but those were your complaints, not the judges you worked for, no? Do any of my points above accord with your experience, or am I totally off base?
But, even if all of those factors are in play, the most conservative, "tough on crime" judge sure as hell better care more about the rule of law than they do about an outcome in any one particular case. They need both parties to accurately represent what the law is so they can make correct decisions, even when those decisions are sometimes judgement calls that might more often go for the defense or the prosecution depending on the particular judge. Realpolitik should not infringe on respect for the rule of law, and to the extent it has that is a serious problem. I understand being cynical, but if that is how intelligent people view our judicial system working, then we are screwed as a country.
On the other hand, there's an opportunity for a sufficiently funded non-profit to cross reference official code books with judicial public records to auto-annotate the law with pertinent cases where it was used. What would be missing would be human-added value like brief descriptions of the outcome and how it is likely to apply to other legal cases.
On the other hand, if there's no way to machine-read the law, we have a questionable impasse.
Stripping out the annotations and publishing that should be completely kosher for copyright and would still give the controlling version of the law (assuming no copying errors were made, of course).
Joshuaheard is saying that making it the official version is a mistake. Not in the sense of "oops, we accidentally wrote down the wrong thing" but in the sense of "this is a bad idea caused by lack of foresight". Just as someone might say it's a mistake to ask a stranger in a bar to watch your bag while you go to the restroom. It's not an accident but it is a mistake.
According to the article:
> the annotations, which were copyrighted and owned by the state
If the state published an official version of its code and Lexis/Nexis took that and privately published its own edition with value-add annotations, then I think that argument that the annotated version can be under restrictive copyright would make more sense. However, if the state contracted with Lexis/Nexis and retains copyright on the annotations, Lexis should be getting paid by the state for the work, and the work should be free.
If we're talking about actual democracy, we might even say it never started.
Please stop.
This is what I see when I read your comment.
Then again, you could probably make a good argument that it's unfair even if all the laws are freely available.
Not making THEIR OWN LAWS in its entirety available for free for every citizen? What the hell is this?
It's not as if "laws being copyright-punishable" was an intended design decision when they were written up, so it seems disingenuous to phrase it as if this were the case.
What is fair to say is that the patchwork nature of America's state/federal system divide makes these kinds of gross inconsistencies happen more often than they maybe should, and it'd be fair to criticize Georgia in particular for letting/encouraging this to happen. But it's not a fair critique of the whole country, and you shouldn't add it to your mental reference of "ways the US is effed up" except to the extent that "some states do bad stuff" is already on there.
Also, the authorized publisher, LexisNexis, makes the entire code available online for free here.[1]
This I think was the sticking point for the article.
Not really. It continues the trend towards making poverty a crime.
As for your last sentence; that's the inevitable outcome of almost all civilizations which is why revolutions happen at a somewhat steady rate.
That's silly logic.
If you can't or won't argue the points I'm actually making, don't try to inject your own version of what you think I might be saying.
I am arguing the points you are making, I disagree with your claim that bad things happening during the formation of a country is the basis of that country. You are the one using generalized statements to label an entire nation of people as evil.
If you want to say some, I repeat some, of the founders had unfortunate attitudes toward slavery then that's fine. Some of them did, some of them did not. But you are heavily insinuating that everyone, EVERYONE, at the time of the formation of the country was in favor of indentured servitude and slavery. Which is simply not true. I would assume the indentured servants and slaves who later became citizens would not be in agreement with such things. Although, I'm willing to bet we could find examples of ones that were.
Did those individual points happen in the US throughout its history? Yes they did, I have no problem agreeing to that. But since you seem to suggest that the US is a bad country due to that history then by standard logic we must dictate that every other country that have had similar bad things in its history must equally be bad. Which is quite likely every single country this planet has ever had throughout human history. You are choosing to ignore the good to point out the bad and then blame everyone for it, whether they are responsible or not. That is silly logic.
Just because a country has bad moments in its history does not mean that is the basis and fabric of that country.
Plus, when the populace is ignorant of how easily they can become criminals in the eyes of the state, the easier they are to control.
I dunno about other states but in my country there is a small federal agency whose only job is to publish legal and civil information, including some very good books about the legal and political system; the state pays for most of it, so they are quite affordable (couple Euros).
Assembling the laws into a usable code is extremely labor intensive. Someone has to figure out where the new law fits into the old code and copy and paste as necessary. Governments often outsource the work to a third party vendor in order to free up internal human and monetary resources. The end effect is that the codifier controls the code.
There are all kinds of downstream effects. For one, computer-readable formats of the law are nonexistent. This also means that there is a huge barrier to creating interesting new technologies on top of the law.
I'm the cofounder at Open Law Library (http://www.openlawlib.org), a non-profit that is trying to fix this problem by introducing technology at all stages of the law making process. We're working with Washington D.C. right now, and you can find a glimpse into the future at https://beta.code.dccouncil.us/dc/council/code/ (bulk downloads available at the link at the bottom).
Of course the solution is to make it copyrighted / restricted / owned by a third party corporation.
What? Simplify laws or properly fund the ancillary tasks entailed in changing laws? Blasphemy.
This is corruption, nothing else.
I suppose the other question is if they intend (or are able) to appeal. It sounds like something that could potentially make it up to the supreme court if it is not already clear.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent#United_States_legal_...
For the life of me, why do we put up with this nonsense? We ought to be rioting in the streets over it until fixed.
(It's little wonder our democracies are in such big trouble when so few of the citizenry actually care about atrocities committed against democracy by 'The State'.)
(Note, in Googling, I see this issue has been brought up in at least one legal blog -- https://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/07/15/tear-down-thi... -- and apparently is a problem in not just Georgia.)
It seems like some folks may not like that a private company does the hosting or that they have exclusive rights to its reproduction. You could consider some reasons this might be the case that are reasonable, like the cost of maintaining it is actually cheaper by having a company who has the appropriate resources and infrastructure to support it, it's probably a challenge/costly to hire an internal team to maintain it at a high enough quality level, the hosting company made a deal with the government to reduce maintenance and hosting costs by having exclusive hosting/reproduction rights. These are all pretty reasonable things to happen,given that the source text is still freely available to anyone. I think anyone who has an argument against this is probably looking for a reason to get upset at what they perceive to be unfairness by "the other team", and won't be convinced otherwise. Such is life, oh well.
It's not a "team" thing, and I reject wholly the implication that anyone opposed to this is just trying to score political points for their "team." Perhaps people twisting the narrative to "they won't let anyone read the laws!" are indeed politically motivated, but that's not what you or I are discussing here -- and even so, you need to assume good faith if you want a discussion.
While it is reasonable for LexisNexis to be the official provider, it is not reasonable for them to abuse this privilege by charging silly amounts for certain kinds of access, and it is not reasonable for the state to sue to prevent others from distributing copies of what should by all rights be public domain and fully accessible material. Those problems are what's at issue here, not whether or not the state can hire a DB administrator.
1.) gives them right to force you to remove links to the content (section 6.b)
2.) gives them the right to advertise while showing you the law (section 8)
3.) does not require the provider to have accurate text, or be free from malware (section 11)
4.) requires indemnification (section 18)
5.) requires that the jurisdiction be New York (section 22)
6.) terms can change at any time, for any reason, without notice (section 26)
7.) cannot be used for commercial purposes (section 2.1)
8.) nor make a copy (section 2.1)
It doesn't cost any money to access it online, but the limitations on actually using are very real.
Want to provide a link to it via a blog to educate your local neighborhood? Want to know that the official law is free from errors? Want to use the law, but hold the provider accountable if the information is grossly incorrect? Want to sue the provider in Georgia since that's the official law? Want to know that the terms of service stay consistent from day to day? Want to use the law to help your business succeed? Want to provide a copy of the law to others so that they can educate themselves?
All of those items are restricted in some way by these terms of service, which are required before access to the law is allowed.
Without the annotations, you do not have the full law.
With apologies to otherwise intelligent people that have to live in that hell hole...
There is a widespread lack of education across the country mostly in rural areas and in poor urban areas. But it is not only south issue that is an issue all over the country. Combine that with wealth inequality and we get what we have.
You can see the same trends in elections, big cities mostly go blue or even dark blue, even in traditionally conservative states.
This problem exists for all of America.
Not that I am condoning it, but I'm curious if it has been attempted. I searched but did not find anything.
They lost the war, so now it's this neo-feudal free market applied to everything. The democratic free marketers should be bothered by this because they're going to take your system to its natural conclusion: the gangs of New York.
Voting is also becoming pay to play. You must pay $$ for a government issued photo ID that proves you're a citizen if you want to vote. And this can effectively be any amount of money, established by the necessary cost of production, using patented, proprietary technology owned by a corporation.
It's corporatocracy, kakistocracy, plutocracy, aristocracy - all in one.
What's fair is that LexisNexis be compensated for the value it has added to that Law (e.g., the "annotations"/links). They did the work. It is up to them how to share it. And sharing for free isn't always a viable business.
Note that there is nothing to stop Public.Resource.Org or anyone else from adding their own metadata on top of that Law and publishing it. But if it was done by LexisNexis and licenced by the state of Georgia of course they will come after someone that tries to publish the Law + The Annotations. And they would be right to in a capitalist society (which is where we all live and how we thrive).
If Georgia can still come after someone else for annotating the Law themselves (original work, not a copy of the work LexisNexis did) and sharing it how they want then I would agree there is some kind of problem there. But NOT the problem implied by the article headline (which is a little clickbaity IMHO).
What I gather from the article, though, and which I do find in a way even stranger than the copyright question, is this: Apparently Georgia has made the annotated version of their law "official"! Can this be right? For me, this sounds far worse than the copyright question - it would mean that you give an official stamp of approval to privately prepared annotations?
The article is not that clear on this question. Wikipedia [1] has some more on it, but not being a lawyer, I also can't answer the question I would have about it, which is this: What's the role of these privately prepared annotations for the judiciary process? Are they treated like law, because they are published together with the law? Or are they treated like any other private comment / annotations out there would? This, for me, seems to be the crucial question. If it is the former, they should be freely available (and, more importantly, not be written by a private company!). If it is the latter, then I think LexisNexis has some point claiming their copyright, no?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Code_of_Georgia_Annot...
If Georgia fucked those terms up and are bound by something we all feel isn't reasonable it needs to be stated, and I think we might be doing just that here on HN.
Removing commentary or replacing with original commentary would abridge the official code.
If LexisNexis should be compensated for the value they added, then the state should pay them for that value, just as they pay the legislators to write the law. The resulting code should be freely available to every citizen bound by it.
Nobody has an automatic right to be compensated for doing work.
Any right to compensation arises from people having benefited from that work, and from the receipt of that benefit having been voluntary.
Citizens of Georgia are required to obey the law. Judges use the annotations when deciding whether the law has been obeyed.
So, citizens of Georgia have two choices, risk breaking the law, or pay a third party for permission to know whether or not they are breaking the law.
LexisNexis's compensation is about as legitimate as that of a protection racket.
"Say, that's a nice law you have there. Be a real shame if someone were to... annotate it."
We have enough mistrust in the government these days and I think labels like "protection racket" should be saved for times when we really need them.
Something I might be inclined to do if they fixed the problem after becoming aware of it.
Did Georgia arrange a deal whereby its citizens can read the law of their land for free?
Did they declare the annotations were no longer considered part of the law?
Or did they spend tax-payer money on prosecuting somebody for having the temerity to make copies of the law?
I think it is not at all reasonable to give Georgia the benefit of the doubt.
My main quip here comes from my strong belief that much of our political climate comes from incendiary remarks (e.g., "protection racket"). And this is counter productive. Even if you are right it is still counter productive.
You catch more flies with carefully crafted honey.