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Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this even made it to trial is flabbergasting, and truly highlights how unacceptably broken our copyright system is.

They were suing people for literally explaining the laws to people... as a violation of their copyright.

If that's something we have to even consider - I want this fucking garbage copyright system destroyed.

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They were suing people for copying copyright-protected works. The usual arguing over exceptions ensued.

In this particular case, is the problem that copyright laws confer too many rights to the owners, or is the problem that legislative bodies are adopting inaccessible text as law?

> They were suing people for copying copyright-protected works.

Those works are our literal laws.

Suing people for sharing the law is not an acceptable position in ANY discussion. Period. Full fucking stop.

There is NO way you can claim to be any sort of democracy if we cannot talk about our laws,

I don't fucking care how we got there (I do, but not for this discussion) - the fact that we are here AT ALL is a HUGE flashing alarm blaring about how fucking off the rails the laws here have gotten.

I agree with the decision and in principle absolutely agree with what you are saying about our laws.

But you're oversimplifying the case here. They weren't complaining that the law was being published, they were complaining that their standards were published. The court agreed with PR that once those standards were incorporated into law, they were subject to fair use publication under the auspices of making available and explaining our laws to the public.

The courts agreed and here we are. But as another user wrote, this wasn't about copyrighting the law, it was about the inclusion of copyrighted material in the law and whether or not it fell under a different category with regards to fair use.

I'm sure I'm oversimplifying or missing something too, but I, who am generally opposed to how copyright is currently handled in the US, can see that there is more nuance to this case than your post admits to.

So what you're saying is that we're A-OK as a society with the gatekeeping of critical safety information behind private paywalls and copyright.

Safety information that is gathered at the expense of the public: we suffer the consequences that inform the standards. My fellow citizens have paid for those lessons with fucking blood.

You are saying we are all better served if copyright (another "benefit for the public" according to the proponents, mind you) were to apply to that information as default.

We are collectively better if we forced to enrich a private organization to simply read and understand critical safety information.

That is what you are saying?

Because my clear and immediate response is: fucking bullshit.

This tone doesn't feel especially productive. You asked:

> So what you're saying is that we're A-OK as a society with the gatekeeping of critical safety information behind private paywalls and copyright.

but the comment you're responding to explicitly said:

> I agree with the decision and in principle absolutely agree with what you are saying about our laws.

So like... they're obviously not saying what you're accusing them of saying. They're just explaining why this litigation occurred in the first place (and agreeing with the outcome, which seems to be the outcome you also want).

Maybe, but it’s the law. The feeling-based approach to what-is-right is spectacularly unproductive and also somewhat unpleasant to interact with.

Isn't the "feeling-based approach to what-is-right" the whole intent of the jury system?

Given the fraction of cases that make it to a jury, one might conclude it’s not a big part of the law.

Delving a bit deeper into the law, the jury is not deciding the law; they are deciding what facts are true. They do this, quite often, based on feelings. But they do not (jury nullification aside) decide what the law should be.

If I say the red car ran the red light and you say the blue car ran the red light, the jury decides who ran the red light. The question of who is allowed to run the red light is not something the jury ever addresses. This question is only ever a “should” question in the ballot box or the legislature.

Yes, all laws should be publicly accessible, but there are multiple ways legally to address the situation. You can just as equally say that the copyright is valid and people are prohibited from sharing the incorporated code, but the state legislatures violated the constitution by making private laws and thus the laws are overturned.

Or you could look at the actual intent of copyright law in the first place and invalidate any copyright that becomes part of the encoded law. This then removes the burden from any individual that publishes the law, and forces the copyright holder losing their holding to fight the state.

I don't have time to pursue this. But I suspect that you could argue that a state doing this is violating the commerce clause. I feel like states can create some types of monopolies but not others.

You can create a power monopoly, like I have to connect to PG&E's grid and pay them. But California can't pass a law giving Hasbro the sole right to sell toys in California.

In law, I believe what this would violate is more properly known as the Dormant Commerce Clause, if you are interested in learning more.

> is the problem that legislative bodies are adopting inaccessible text as law?

This one. Anything the government deems a standard or law should be in the public domain, accessible directly from government sources. And obviously, from there, anyone who wants to copy it would be able to.

>is the problem that copyright laws confer too many rights to the owners

Although this is also a problem due to excessively long copyright terms, but not in this specific case.

Alternatively, inaccessible law should be unconstitutional and unenforceable.

I don't think this is a practical outcome. If the law for seatbelt standards references a copyrighted document for materials, I don't want my car company throwing out the standards because the doc is copyrighted. It should simply be the case that the copyright is forcibly expired and the document with the information referenced by law is in the public domain.

This basically allows legislators to force anything into the public domain by simply referencing it in a law.

I'd rather see legislators forced to negotiate with copyright holders to make their works public domain, or else have their laws become invalid and thrown out, and have their governments subject to lawsuits for trying to enforce copyrighted laws.

> This basically allows legislators to force anything into the public domain by simply referencing it in a law.

Legislators can presently force literally whatever they want into the public domain simply by creating a law that does that. It's a toxic principle to place copyright on a pedestal where profit overrides the public good and copyright holders can hold good regulation hostage.

Anything the government does that isn't public should not be legal and have zero force.

Anything else and democracy does not work.

AND it must be in a language that a non-lawyer can understand reasonably well, without at least making a big mistake.

Both. But it's important to clarify that the publisher is not a victim of IBR, they profit enormously by having their standards take on the force of law. ANSI is active (on behalf of organizations including the plaintiffs) in lobbying for private standards to be incorporated into public law [0], and they're not doing it purely out of a desire to save the government time.

[0] https://www.ansi.org/outreach/government/ansi-activities

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