Liberating the Laws You Must Pay To Read 223
Writing for Boing Boing, Carl Malamud describes the campaign he's been waging to let U.S. citizens read the public safety standards that have become part of federal law — without needing to pay for the privilege. "These public safety standards govern and protect a wide range of activity, from how bicycle helmets are constructed to how to test for lead in water to the safety characteristics of hearing aids and protective footwear." Despite a U.S. Appeals Court ruling which said 'the law' should be in the public domain, many safety codes are still privately produced and then distributed for a fee, to recoup development costs. "Public.Resource.Org has a mission of making the law available to all citizens, and these technical standards are a big black hole in the legal universe. We've taken a gamble and spent $7,414.26 to buy 73 of these technical public safety standards that are incorporated into the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations." Malamud and his Public.Resource.Org foundation are trying — very cautiously — to make these laws more broadly available. "...even though we strongly believe that the documents are not entitled to copyright protection, and moreover that our limited print run is in any case definitely fair use, if a judge were to decide that what we did was breaking the law, 25 copies of 73 standards works out to $273,750,000 in potential liability. While whales may make bigger bets, we draw the line at $273 million."
Department of Health (Score:5, Informative)
can you tell me where in the Constitution it gives Congress power to provide government hospitals?
Does the "power to lay and collect taxes" and apply them to "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (Article I, section 8) count? Hospitals (are supposed to) defend the public from disease and increase health, which is an aspect of welfare.
Re:New Age Math? (Score:0, Informative)
I'd point you to the statute, but you couldn't afford it.
The statute for statutory damages. [copyright.gov]
Re:Contradictory court ruling (Score:4, Informative)
Not necessarily. A public domain work can be taken, possibly edited in slight ways, formatted and reprinted, and the new publisher can put a copyright on it. Now maybe their changes aren't enough for the copyright notice to be enforceable, but in some cases I suspect they would be.
In this case, the model code, as written by the SmartCode Association (or some other group), is privately owned. However, as implemented some parts of the code are modified, it's reformatted, and the name is changed. The new version published as law should/must be public domain. (When this is not the case, courts should force it open.) However, the original version, which differs slightly from the law version (including a different name - SmartCode 1.0 instead of The Laws of the City of Fairfax, for example) can retain its copyright.
Of course, if some other city wants to implement the same code, they don't have to go back to the private source. They can look at the law of the city that already bought it, and copy their public-domain law. The private source should have no right of recourse in this case (and if they do, the courts should correct this.)
NEC is available online for free (Score:4, Informative)
You can view the National Electric Code for free by going to http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=70# [nfpa.org] and then going down to"view the document online" and clicking the link, then sign in. If you don't have a username/passwd then you can register for free.