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."
Re:New Age Math? (Score:5, Interesting)
spent $7,414.26 to buy 73 [...] 25 copies of 73 standards works out to $273,750,000
Am I the only one who doesn't get the math? Or does the judge exponentially impose penalties under copyright protection?
That's exactly what the copyright cartels try to do . 73 standards works x 25 copies each = 1,825 instances of infringement, working out to $150,000 per instance. Considering the MAFIAA likes to say they can claim up to $250,000 per infringement, that's (sadly) on the middle range of what they claim they can demand.
Re:Wikileaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. They should have kept the purchase quiet and leaked it. Worst case scenario, imagine the hilarity of the US government scrambling to keep it's own laws secret.
Re:Ignorance of the Law is supposed to be no excus (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what you get when you allow private industry and corporatist groups like ALEC to write the laws.
The reason we have laws that are "fucking convoluted and obtuse and hidden away" is because there's somebody who is profiting from those laws being that way. There is no other reason.
Re:Ignorance of the Law is supposed to be no excus (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ignorance of the Law is supposed to be no excus (Score:4, Interesting)
You* elect the poiliticians that enact such complicated laws and the bureaucracy that uses your ignorance of the laws to do things pretty much how they want to do them.
Although I deal with 'regulators' on a daily basis, I have only applied the law as written rather than lobbying for new codes, rules, or procedures. Like most lawyers, I'm essentially a guide concerning a subject that people have no interest in learning about until they have a very specific need, and even then are not interested in doing the leg work of learning it themselves. You may as well outlaw tourist guides, reference librarians, and historians. The only thing they do is filter information that is convoluted, obtuse, and hidden away as well.
*Not you specifically, but the collective you that responds to political pandering and is loathe to acutally think through issues or accept a difficult compromise. [snark]You specifically have failed to think through the lawyer issue, and the second thing a sane society would do is outlaw your ability to vote.[/snark]
Re:Ignorance of the Law is supposed to be no excus (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to be rude, but you do know what a preamble is, right? While it might seem otherwise blatantly obvious, the purpose of the US Constitution wasn't to enrich a king or grow tobacco for export. It was created to, as one of its main purposes, "promote the general Welfare". That doesn't mean Congress has carte-blanche power to do anything or everything it wants in the name of "the general Welfare". That's as absurd as those who would argue action needs to be done "for the children".
Well, the general spirit of the document is to frequently speak in terms of the Federal government's actions in relationship to states, although that's admittedly not a hard rule (the Bill of Rights comes to mind as well as various "people" references). In any case, I can only really see your argument holding up in the context of "the health of the American people is tantamount to the health of the United States" and hence use that as justification. But, that's honestly a bit of a stretch. I think the line gives more justification for the CDC and FEMA than anything. And while yes, the current system puts the US at an economic disadvantage compared to other countries, I don't really think having the economic edge as a road to prosperity was really in the mindset of the framers of the Constitution. After all, the line in question speaks of duties, imposts, etc, which if anything are more about limiting trade.
Or perhaps it was a legitimate concern about the validity of the legislation? You see, I'm actually quite for things like social security, welfare, socialized healthcare, etc. But I also recognize that the language of the Constitution was never really written in consideration of the US as it is today. And as much as people don't like to think of it, it's not an unreasonable point to raise that instead of poking at various vague wordings throughout the document based in a language and a culture foreign to us--as you in continuing on note, businesses and corporations of then are quite different from now--that it might be appropriate to amend the Constitution to better establish the Will of the People who do seek a much more active Federal government in their lives. After all, for all the rantings about the new health care laws, the same people who tended to gripe about the expansion of medical care for all through the government, even if through a mandate, were just as likely to gripe about the shrinking of medical care for some (the elderly) through the government; the speaks to me more of a selfishness that I don't think is actually commonly shared.
Re:Just to clarify... (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget bike helmets. Try the National Electric Code or NFP 101 (fire life safety code). Both are a part of pretty much every building code in America, and both cost a fair chunk of change to get a copy of. Officially, it's a copyright violation to reproduce either one on the web.
A few years ago, some city or county somewhere got into a fight for this very reason. They posted the relevant code to their website, and got hit by a DMCA takedown notice. They fought back by arguing that the state constitution required public dissemination of all laws, and noted that the code's inclusion by reference was in fact mandated by the state legislature. I believe they ended up with a license to make it available on their website, behind a ghetto-fabulous paywall (of sorts) intended to restrict access to only citizens of the town, contractors licensed to do business there, and people with a bona-fide building permit in the municipality.
Re:Laws referencing SAE and UL standards. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not always the way it works, though. The following is a bit off-topic, and mirrors something I've said before in some older discussion that I don't care to find at the moment. :P
I work for a semi-large (>$1B annual sales) specialty chemical and polymer company. We have a dedicated group of people whose jobs revolve specifically around maintaining compliance with the various standards from OSHA, EPA, FDA, etc. They keep us meeting our customers' needs and expectations, in addition to keeping us safe, clean, and in compliance with all the appropriate laws and regulations.
In our specific industry, there are a small handful of global companies of similar size, and tons of smaller, regional companies (usually privately owned) who are two or three orders of magnitude smaller than the big boys. These companies don't have teams of people devoted to regulatory compliance - often, they don't even have one dedicated person. Likewise, our customers come in all kinds of sizes. Paralleling our industry, each specific market usually has a few big boys and countless smaller players.
With these small companies - on both sides of supply - there's a significant amount of (sometimes willful) ignorance of the law. Neither the supplier or the customer may be aware, for example, that they're not supposed to be using various chlorinated solvents to improve the performance of the material, which enables them to use cheaper, lower-performance polymers to make, say, packaging coatings or adhesives. We know that we're not allowed to do such things, and that puts us at a cost disadvantage. If we were to do what they do, we'd get slapped down hard because not only are we a big, juicy-looking target for the fairly-rare regulatory review, but since we knew better it becomes a willful violation, which usually bumps the fines up by a factor of ten or more.
The little fish can plead ignorance, if they even get reviewed, which in my anecdotal experience I've not ever seen happen.
On the topic at hand, I believe laws should be publicly available for review. I just wanted to comment on how regulatory structures don't always serve to keep the little guy out - often, they're simply more binding on the big guys.
Re:Ignorance of the Law is supposed to be no excus (Score:5, Interesting)
Over 50% of the US House of Representatives are lawyers. Likewise for the Senate.
You* are full of shit.
*Your profession and collective members, as such.