SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 01 2017, @05:38PM (1 child)
Georgia courts aren't at all bound by what some random Lexis-Nexis employees think. That's just stupid.
The annotations aren't binding, but their status is a little more complicated in Georgia, since the annotations are actually published by the state, who officially endorses them as part of the published code.
It so happens the State of Georgia is the copyright holder of those annotations, because they purchased them or something.
Georgia, unlike other states, publishes an OFFICIAL set of legal annotations as PART of the official legal code [wikipedia.org]. It seems Georgia has contracted various private legal entities over the years (apparently now Lexis-Nexus) to help maintain that, but the Code makes clear that the STATE has final editorial say on all of these annotations.
A better comparison would be to say that the state of Georgia hired some private contractors to help maintain its official legal code. But unlike other states, this official code includes annotations. In other states, these annotations are clearly compiled, maintained, and sold by 3rd parties, and they have no official status.
In Georgia, however, state officials have decided to incorporate the annotations directly into the official legal code distributed and published by the state. Is Georgia legally entitled to copyright said annotations? Of course. But there is also a moral issue here about whether a state should keep parts of its official legal code (which is Georgia is DEFINED as including the annotations) from the public. From what I understand, the official status of the annotations also makes it possible for lawyers to cite the annotations directly as references, whereas in other states you'd cite only the public documents found by the references from the annotations.
Pirating legal annotations is well-established as copyright infringement, so it really wasn't a hard case, and the guy lost on summary judgment.
Yes, but as noted, these legal annotations have a unique status unlike what exists in other states or in federal law. And I would argue, their official status as endorsed by the state arguably puts people without access to them at a significant disadvantage legally. That may not change their copyright status, but it's still a lot weirder and more suspect a practice than in other states where there's no "official" annotations as part of the legal code and any such annotations are always created and owned by private businesses.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Saturday April 01 2017, @07:55PM
The annotations aren't binding, but their status is a little more complicated in Georgia, since the annotations are actually published by the state, who officially endorses them as part of the published code.
No, their status isn't complicated at all. According to the opinion, the state has passed multiple statutes clarifying that the annotations do not have the force of law. They couldn't be more clear about that.
Most people who would buy a printed copy of the entire legal code of the state are lawyers who would likely like to have Lexis-Nexis's annotations to help them in their research, so the "official code" available for purchase includes them, but that's it.