Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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It’s not so obvious. The annotations weren’t produced by the legislature and do not have the force of law. In a way they’re like any other law book that collects together public opinions and statutes with explanatory text, which are definitely copyrightable. The wrinkle in this case was that the legislature contracted with a private company to add the annotations:

> The Commission entered into a work-for-hire agreement with Matthew Bender & Co., Inc., a division of the LexisNexis Group, to prepare annotations

Allowing the private company to keep the copyright was basically a way for the legislature trying to get this work done on the cheap. After all if the legislature had told LexisNexis that the work would be public domain, it probably would have had to pay (or pay more) for LexisNexis to do the work.

This is typical. There’s myriad ways where the government can get some product or service for less money, or less money up front, by giving up some public right of privilege. The number of people who care about this sort of open government stuff is, unfortunately, pretty limited. I don’t think I know a single person outside HN who mentioned this case when it was pending or decided. And I work in Supreme Court practice! Also, this sort of thing is kinda Georgia’s MO. It attracts residents and businesses from Illinois and New York by having lower taxes. That often means cutting corners on things like this.

> The ... do not have the force of law

So you're saying this part

> the annotated version became the authoritative copy

is wrong?

Either way, you're describing a situation where the state cheaped out in a way that deprives its residents of their right to know what law governs them. I still call that obvious.

It’s not wrong, but I’m this context “authoritative” doesn’t mean the whole thing is “legally operative.”

Here is an example (reckless driving): https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2020/title-40/chapter-6...

The first part, subsections (a) and (b) is the actual law. That’s the only legally operative part that defines what reckless driving is. In most states, that is the only thing that is published.

The following sections are explanatory notes that don’t have the force of law and are not law. For example, it cross references relevant case law. In other states private companies will create these annotated versions of the legal code with these cross references, and those are definitely copyrightable.

They wouldn't include the commentary in their official copies if they didn't intend for it to affect how the law is interpreted. That makes "legislation" vs "explanatory notes" a meaningless distinction. It has a direct effect on the actions of people with guns and badges, therefore we the people have a right to know.

> In a way they’re like any other law book that collects together public opinions and statutes with explanatory text, which are definitely copyrightable.

If they're commissioned by Georgia, it would make more sense for them to be bound to explicit terms that require their work to go into the public domain. Shame on Georgia for not demanding/negotiating it that way upfront. IMO if their work becomes the text that legislators ultimately consult when considering new legislation, that deliberation should be public. If LexisNexis can't do it under those terms and no one else bids, Georgia should fund the work themselves.

Though I think it would be really excellent for the federal government to fund commercial open source software projects to satisfy the needs of state and local governments. So many of them have such uniform operations that you could accomplish a great deal by optimizing for the majority case.

That would depend on the restrictions accompanying the money. The federal government has had mixed success funding technology projects. The Feds aren’t necessarily experts at solving state/local-level problems.

For Malamud's similar case about building codes, the logical verdicts might be that privately-created text aimed at being building code does have copyright protection, but that it does not have the force of binding law until it has been put into the public domain by the government through agreement with the copyright holder. Getting a test case for this would be quite difficult though, as inspectors are notorious for exercising autocratic power and getting away with it.

It might also lead to the terrible situation where states just give up on building codes, but insurance companies continue to require them, creating de facto law through the backdoor of involuntary contracts.

In America it has become acceptable to reduced ever choice as between capitalism or burning it to the ground.

It has become encouraged. Both the government and the insurance companies would be happy for insurance to determine de facto law. Insurance companies would certainly take advantage of that power to help their bottom line, and government would tell insurance companies to dictate things that it couldn't pass or were even unconstitutional for government to have a say in.

How does it work in the US? Do the different legislatures typically publish their own law books or is that typically up to private ventures to handle?

Here in Scandinavia it seems the governments and other legislative authorities publish laws and rules on their home pages and it is then up to the publishers to keep track of what to put in the law book. Or not, because there are too many laws so a selection has to be made as it won't fit in a single volume. Different publishers then have different selections and annotations.

Here in Germany new laws used to be published in print by the legislature. However recently they switched the authoritative copy to a digital online version.

>>The annotations weren’t produced by the legislature and do not have the force of law

Well i believe they did, but it really comes down to if the annotations where needed to understand the law.

There are only 2 options here

1. The full public code including the annotations needed to understand the code is freely accessible to the public

2. Ignorance of the law becomes a valid defense

This is why the ruling by the court was the correct one

It’s like the difference between the ISO C++ specification and “the C++ Programming Language” book. The book will help you understand the specification, but the specification stands alone.

My understanding of the issue not like that at all, to extend your analogy it would be like if ISO published the Spec, but then every compiler used things only found in the C++ Programming Book to compile your programs, and any error codes were only found in the book

To bring it back to the Law, the official code was the Annotated Version which means that is what Judges, and Prosecutors would be referencing when looking at if you broke the law, what sentence you have, etc.

like how ISO publishes drafts for free, but charges for the final specification, so everyone just ends up implementing the most recent draft?

No. What dinged GA is that they incorporated the annotations into the law.

Other states contract West and Lexis to annotate, but those annotations aren’t incorporated.

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