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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

Another possibility is for the states to publish the codes on their web sites, then the state would pay the copyright holder (out of their state budgets) for each person that accesses the code. Full copyright would still be in force, and per copy royalties would still be sent to the rights holder, yet free access is still available to those who the law applies to.

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What is the copyright holder contributing in this case? The government is passing laws and providing the access to them. Citizens aren't paying anyone for access. I'm not sure what the third party is doing that it should be getting paid in this situation.

What's the copyright holder doing in any case? They're the one that created the work! (Or who bought the right from the one who did.)

I don't even know where your question comes from.

"Yeah, nice. So you wrote a book, blah blah blah. What are you doing for me now? Why should I pay you anything? The text of the book already exists? You're just deadweight now."

So in the case of copyrighted laws in OP's scenario: The government passes laws (creating the text) and then someone or some company buys the rights to the text of the laws. Then the government (who created the text in the first place) pays the person who paid them to be able to display the text on a website?

And you can't see why I would question such a situation?

No, you mischaracterized the scenario. It's more like, a professional association writes their definition of how to build something while being "sure enough" that it won't flood, collapse, electrocute you etc. The government says, "oh, yeah, sounds right. Everyone has to do it that way." And then pays that group royalties whenever someone wants to check that they're in compliance.

That's no different from any other copyright situation, in terms of producing something of value and having to be paid for each copy, except that the government has propped up demand by making it the law and absorbing the royalty cost.

Make the jurisdiction keep a hard copy in every library and city hall / state building that it controls.

Contractors will buy a copy. And any novice that just wants to DIY can go look up the rules for free. And the copyright holder gets the sales from the library and city halls sales.

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