Courts Agree That No One Should Have a Monopoly Over the Law. Congress Shouldn't Change That:
Some people just don't know how to take a hint. For more than a decade, giant standards development organizations (SDOs) have been fighting in courts around the country, trying use copyright law to control access to other laws. They claim that that they own the copyright in the text of some of the most important regulations in the country – the codes that protect product, building and environmental safety--and that they have the right to control access to those laws. And they keep losing because, it turns out, from New York, to Missouri, to the District of Columbia, judges understand that this is an absurd and undemocratic proposition.
They suffered their latest defeat in Pennsylvania, where a district court held that UpCodes, a company that has created a database of building codes – like the National Electrical Code--can include codes incorporated by reference into law. ASTM, a private organization that coordinated the development of some of those codes, insists that it retains copyright in them even after they have been adopted into law. Some courts, including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, have rejected that theory outright, holding that standards lose copyright protection when they are incorporated into law. Others, like the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in a case EFF defended on behalf of Public.Resource.Org, have held that whether or not the legal status of the standards changes once they are incorporated into law, posting them online is a lawful fair use.
[...] We've seen similar rulings around the country, from California to New York to Missouri. Combined with two appellate rulings, these amount to a clear judicial consensus. And it turns out the sky has not fallen; SDOs continue to profit from their work, thanks in part to the volunteer labor of the experts who actually draft the standards and don't do it for the royalties. You would think the SDOs would learn their lesson, and turn their focus back to developing standards, not lawsuits.
Instead, SDOs are asking Congress to rewrite the Constitution and affirm that SDOs retain copyright in their standards no matter what a federal regulator does, as long as they make them available online. We know what that means because the SDOs have already created "reading rooms" for some of their standards, and they show us that the SDOs' idea of "making available" is "making available as if it was 1999." The texts are not searchable, cannot be printed, downloaded, highlighted, or bookmarked for later viewing, and cannot be magnified without becoming blurry. Cross-referencing and comparison is virtually impossible. Often, a reader can view only a portion of each page at a time and, upon zooming in, must scroll from right to left to read a single line of text. As if that wasn't bad enough, these reading rooms are inaccessible to print-disabled people altogether..
It's a bad bargain that would trade our fundamental due process rights in exchange for a pinky promise of highly restricted access to the law. But if Congress takes that step, it's a comfort to know that we can take the fight back to the courts and trust that judges, if not legislators, understand why laws are facts, not property, and should be free for all to access, read, and share.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02, @05:12PM
...begs to differ. This matter will be resolved by his minions at the SCOTUS.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mcgrew on Saturday November 02, @05:21PM (2 children)
Well, the Constitution, of course, but it appears few have, but Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture [lessig.org] is right up there with it. There's a copy at Gutenberg.org as well.
CEOs and CFOs will hate the professor's book passionately, but it's very informative about copyright and is a good read.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday November 03, @05:26AM (1 child)
This is a special case though. What the title should really says is "Lawyers agree others shouldn't piss in their pond". If it was any other type of copyright-type dispute you can guarantee they'll come down on the side of whoever pays them.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 04, @03:22PM
True that there seems to be few lawyers like Lessig. He covers that in the book, saying how one lawyer's firm was adamantly against him helping Lessig because the firm normally sued people for copyright violation.
But it's not like lawyers ever hurt for clients. There are plenty of people to sue and defend.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Saturday November 02, @05:31PM (1 child)
It seems confusing how we end up here.
If you follow the money, it makes sense.
Lets say you have a regulatory environment that's "mostly the same" nationally but there are local variations, a percent or two or ten percent.
One "obvious" funding strategy is all 50 states could license a set of regulations that are really well written at a national level for about 1/50th the cost of developing their own independent copies.
Well the first state to turncoat will save a huge (well, 1/50th) the amount of money by keeping the non-copyrighted regulations and refusing to pay. This will replicate until all states give up.
The irony is the consumers have regulation that's 50 TIMES better than any individual state could afford if/when they go it alone.
The other problem is you can write a copyrighted textbook to pass the master electrician licensure test; Copyrighting the regulations seems a small step beyond that. Ironically in the IT world I think most certifications would include or require some amount of licensed or copyrighted IP as a primary source to achieve.
The long run effect is likely less effective regulation (probably good?) and funding will get very weird, there's going to be a lot of pressure to get the feds to fund the development of local electrical codes.
The way it works in the USA is my local city does inspections and if you want a building permit or a certificate of occupancy you need to follow the state code, they punt the entire task off to the state in about two lines of municipal law. The individual state that I live in does some really weird stuff trying to import the 2023 NEC into state statute and call it a state statute but its really plagiarized 2023 NEC. Its not QUITE as simple as "plagiarize the NEC" because there's about a page of federal exceptions such as good old Title 30 of the CFR regulating the wiring in/at mines such as the giant gravel pit down the road from me (well some miles away). I think they avoid the mining wiring issues by having no wires, they only shovel gravel during daylight hours IIRC. Anyway, its complicated.
You can buy a copy of the 2023 NEC for about ten cents a page, its VERY cheap compared to college textbooks, of course at about a kilopage its about a hundred bucks.
Adding to the confusion, its only $100. I'm pretty sure every public library has a copy "for free" around here, mine does, it certainly has textbooks that are more expensive, etc. Possibly, an interesting strategy legally would be some kind of consent decree that all public libraries in the nation will get sent a free copy annually. It would cost about $10M to send every library in the USA a copy of the NEC at list price but lets get real in bulk even with logistical challenges they could probably do it for less than $5M, which seems like a lot of money but ... is it? There's more than a million electricians on the USA, supposedly, and they all have a copy of the NEC, so they can just raise the price of a new NEC by $10 to fund this program and they'll pass along cost increases to the customers (whom get nothing out of this program, believe me)
(Score: 4, Funny) by pdfernhout on Saturday November 02, @10:32PM
by me: https://pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? -- around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by large corporations like MicroSlaw. Such organizations need the motivation of micropayments for application, discussion or reference of their laws to stay competitive. MicroSlaw needs to know who discusses what law and when they do so, each and every time, so they can charge fairly for their services and thus retain their financial freedom to innovate. And America is all about financial freedom, right! [Audience applause]. ...
Top law schools would have to shut their doors if most law was not proprietary, as who would pay $100,000 up front to join a profession where initiates release their work mainly into the public domain? Obviously there would no longer be any legal innovation without private laws requiring royalties when discussed, since who would spend their time writing new laws when there is no direct financial return on their investment? ..."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Deep Blue on Saturday November 02, @06:54PM (3 children)
I don't see i need to obey laws, that i need to purchase to know about.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday November 02, @07:35PM (2 children)
Actually, you cannot obey a law you can only know about after paying. There are two problems, 1) you may already have broken the law before you could assure access to the text and 2) you may not be wealthy enough to obtain a copy of said law. Therefore, a law that you need purchase access to is not only unfair, but highly discriminatory. I think there are some other laws that would make that illegal.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday November 02, @07:50PM
ignorance of the law excuses not with some exception... [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, @04:34AM
Unfotunately, we let our government write rules and laws you cannot access at all, paid or not. Lord help you if you violate some of them
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02, @08:19PM (6 children)
We assert or abandon that monopoly with our vote
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 03, @12:25AM (3 children)
Are you sure you don't try using more than your vote?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, @04:46AM (2 children)
Say want you want about their motivation, but please note that it's still the voters that make it happen
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 04, @06:34AM (1 child)
I said nothing about the motivation, I challenged the "with our vote" mean that was asserted.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, @06:59PM
Why? We always get what we vote for. Look at the numbers. Politicians have to win elections, and they cannot do that without the voters, and what we have here are voters that deny responsibility for their choices. Occam's Razor, babe
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Sunday November 03, @05:29PM (1 child)
Vote? Bullshit. When your government is that corrupt, the right response is to start shooting people. Fortunately the 5th Circuit isn't that corrupt in this case, so violence isn't necessary. If there Supreme Court were to come down on the opposite side though, violence would be fully justified. Tyranny of the majority is not acceptable, and having free access to the law is a requirement for a functioning democracy. If you don't have that, then the government should be destroyed by any means necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, @03:33AM
Our government is no more corrupt than the people (you know, the voters) who reelect 95% of congress back into office every time.
If you want to start shooting people, well, just GTFO! Don't want that kind of shit around here anymore. Enough people are getting shot already.
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Sunday November 03, @05:24PM
Trying to copyright the law is valid grounds for armed rebellion against the government, full stop.