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The State of Georgia in the US is suing the owner of the Public.Resource.org website for publishing the State of Georgia's own laws online.
According to the lawsuit [PDF] filed this week, Carl Malamud has "engaged in an 18 year long crusade to control the accessibility of U.S. government documents by becoming the United States’ Public Printer."
Although an alternative reading could be that he was simply publishing public laws on the internet.
At the center of the issue is not Georgia's basic legal code – that is made readily available online and off – but the annotated version of it. That annotated version is frequently used by the courts to make decisions of law, and as such Malamud decided it should also be made easily accessible online.
Georgia says that information is copyrighted, however, and it wants him to stop publishing it. Currently you can access the information through legal publisher Lexis Nexis, either by paying $378 for a printed copy or by going through an unusual series of online steps from Georgia's General Assembly website through to Lexis Nexis' relevant webpages (going direct to the relevant Lexis Nexis webpages will give you a blank page).
[...] However, the State of Georgia filing points to a little more animus than concerns over scanned documents. In particular it uses a quote of Malamud's from an article in 2009 in which he talked about committing "standards terrorism" to actually accuse Malamud of committing a form of terrorism. "Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, Defendant freely admits to the copying and distribution of massive numbers of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Annotations," reads the lawsuit in part.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @03:09PM
The laws in this case are available. It is the 'notes' that were not.
What are the 'notes'? They are a set of court cases in which the particulars of the language are pulled apart and 'what does this exactly mean'.
I used to work with DOT laws. Specifically hours of service. The law itself is maybe 2 paragraphs long. The 'notes' are several BOOKS of stuff. This sort of stuff is usually hashed out over the years in the courts.
For example recently in my state it was argued all they way up to the supreme court about wither a dude should have been pulled over. The law specified that a 'lamp' not plural must work on the back of a car. But the cop pulled the guy because he had a busted tail light. But the 'notes' as it were and using other laws it basically meant 'lamps'. The supreme court basically said so.
So those 'notes' are just as much law as the law itself. As it is how the law is practiced.
(Score: 2) by Refugee from beyond on Monday July 27 2015, @04:56PM
Is that kind of nuts? %)
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday July 27 2015, @05:15PM
Yes, it's how precedent based law works though. One mistake can persist for a very long time because of it. Some aspects are good, and some are very bad.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 27 2015, @07:36PM
So if you mounted an extra tail light on your car and it burned out, you could be legally pulled over?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Roger Murdock on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:13AM
You probably just need multiple lamps functioning, not necessarily all lamps functioning.