Posted on 07/29/2015 6:22:34 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Government officials have threatened "rogue archivist" Carl Malamud with legal action many times for his efforts to make public government documents widely available for free, but the state of Georgia has set a new standard for fighting this ridiculous battle: It's suing Malamud for infringing its copyright of state laws by -- horrors -- publishing them online.
The state's lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, accuses Malamud of piracy -- and worse, of "a form of 'terrorism.'" His offense: Through his website, public.resource.org, he provides members of the public access to a searchable and downloadable scan of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated -- that is, the entire body of state law. The state wants a court order forcing Malamud to stop.
Georgia and Malamud have been waging this battle for a couple of years, or ever since Malamud sent thumb drives bearing the scans to the speaker of the state House of Representatives in 2013. A cease-and-desist order, which Malamud rebuffed, came virtually by return mail.
This isn't the first such battle Malamud has waged. For roughly two decades he's been working to make public laws, codes and court documents, well, public. At almost every turn he's been fought by government agencies that prefer to extract a fee from taxpayers for access, even though, as Malamud points out, the public pays for the work in the first place, via taxes.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I would be willing to bet the State Bar Association of Georgia is the real driving force behind this.
The greatest thing lawyers have is their knowledge of the law over that of the layman. They have their own legal data bases and software tools that allow them to search statutes, etc. for applicability to any number of inputs.
In the case here, a free public SEARCHABLE database is competition to the legal profession.
IOW, you can bet your ass lawyers are behind this.
I think the state official that filed this lawsuit should be personally liable for the court costs.
The states appear to have cozy relationships with LexisNexis and WestLaw.
Tar and feathers.
“At almost every turn he’s been fought by government agencies that prefer to extract a fee from taxpayers for access, “
Now we get to the heart of the matter. In Georgia if it moves they tax it and if doesn’t there’s a charge for it. LOL!
Are these people insane?? Who elects these nitwits?
That is the traditional solution.
How can a law be copyrighted? Doesn’t copyright only protect creative work?
The government has found it very profitable to charge people for filing fees for documents then charge the public later per page to obtain copies of them. I bet the real issue is they wanted to charge people to access it which is complete BS when you figure the public already pays taxes to pay government employees and the lawyers who drafted the code in the first place. The problem is the government is a fat pig who can never be fed enough.
Copyright the language in their Law Books? C’mon now children.
So then copyright the court interpretation of the laws?
-PJ
Cockroaches don't like it when you turn the lights on for everyone to see them.
Are you saying that many, if not most, laws aren’t “creative”? ;-P
I guess I wouldn’t disagree with that if it helps to get to who is really behind this.
“The states appear to have cozy relationships with LexisNexis and WestLaw.”
I think you’re right.
> The states appear to have cozy relationships with LexisNexis and WestLaw.
Yep and therein lies part of the problem because they serve fatcat law firms and government bureacrats who can afford their expensive prices to obtain copies of documents.
Government should stick to fighting real crime, not made-up crime.
I don’t have any background on this situation, but as a general rule public laws are in the public domain and therefore not copyright protected.
However, annotations added to them might be copyrighted. Some states have official codes—not copyrighted. A private publisher can add annotations to the official code and copyright the annotations.
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