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If you want to read the official laws of the state of Georgia, it will cost you more than $1,000.
Open-records activist Carl Malamud bought a hard copy, and it cost him $1,207.02 after shipping and taxes. A copy on CD was $1,259.41. The "good" news for Georgia residents is that they'll only have to pay $385.94 to buy a printed set from LexisNexis.
Malamud thinks reading the law shouldn't cost anything. So a few years back, he scanned a copy of the state of Georgia's official laws, known as the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, or OCGA. Malamud made USB drives with two copies on them, one scanned copy and another encoded in XML format. On May 30, 2013, Malamud sent the USB drives to the Georgia speaker of the House, David Ralson, and the state's legislative counsel, as well as other prominent Georgia lawyers and policymakers.
"Access to the law is a fundamental aspect of our system of democracy, an essential element of due process, equal protection, and access to justice," said Malamud in the enclosed letter. The law, he reminded them, isn't copyrighted.
[...] Georgia lawmakers' response to Malamud's gifts was anything but peachy. "Your unlawful copying... Infringes on the exclusive copyright of the state of Georgia," read the response letter, written by the chairman of Georgia's Code Revision Commission, Josh McKoon. "Accordingly, you are hereby notified to CEASE AND DESIST ALL COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT."
[...] Now, the case has concluded with US District Judge Richard Story having published an opinion (PDF) that sides with the state of Georgia. The judge disagreed with Malamud's argument that the OCGA can't be copyrighted and also said Malamud's copying of the laws is not fair use. "The Copyright Act itself specifically lists 'annotations' in the works entitled to copyright protection," writes Story. "Defendant admits that annotations in an unofficial code would be copyrightable."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 01 2017, @04:26AM (1 child)
Yeah, I looked at the opinion and it clearly statutes are to be made available free. What is really weird about GA's official code is that it incorporates annotations and commentary into the official version of the code. The meat of the decision recognizes this:
(*) GA has an agreement w/ Lexis to be the publisher of its official code rather than choosing to do the publishing itself.
In most states, there are a number of ways to get copies of the statutes. You can buy books from the state containing the _official_ code and most states make this available online for free. These official code books contain just the laws, no commentary.
You could buy books with annotations by various publishers, Lexis and Westlaw being the most well known. These are very expensive as is online access to the annotated codes, but these publications are typically _unofficial_ versions of the law (but they are also almost always accurate with regard to the statutory text). The annotations are written by people the publishers hire and thus the publishers have a copyright on the annotations. You should never cite annotations because they aren't the law -- they are simply an aid in doing legal research.
Where things get weird with GA, is that it makes the annotations part of the official code (but it also includes three statutes indicating that the annotations aren't the law). But ... they're still part of the official code. It's just weird. I could understand how someone would be ticked off by it, however, violating the copyright and getting sued seems a bad strategy when they could have sued GA in some fashion, and sought a decision invalidating the copyright. If they won, THEN they could publish the whole deal. By reversing the order, they get totally hammered by copyright.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @05:01AM
If I can get enough money to pay the filing fee I will file an action against the OCGA with some much better legal theories than "fair use". Like I don't know, how about the fact that the O.C.G.A. belongs to the public? This ruling makes me want to become a terrorist and set the courts on fire, but I'll settle for filing my own lawsuit instead.