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Taking a step back, and putting aside copyright, which is a no brainier, providing access to the law is not free, most courts charge to access copies, directly,
by nxzero 11y ago
Taking a step back, and putting aside copyright, which is a no brainier, providing access to the law is not free, most courts charge to access copies, directly, or indirectly. Best solution would likely be to have three non-profits take compete to provide access; otherwise you end up with situations like this were the states outsource access it an attempt to reduce costs and make money too.
- greglindahl 11y agoThat's a recipe for building up an "industry" where almost all of the money is expended collecting small amounts of money, while limiting access severely. (There's a huge difference in how many people (or computers) will read free text vs. text with even a tiny $$ cost.) Compare to the alternative of uploading one copy to Public.Resource.org or the Internet Archive. It's probably cheaper for the courts to do this than to provide copies to 3 non-profits for further sale. Edit: add Public.Resource.org, since they're in the forefront of making the Law available for free.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Taking a step back, and putting aside copyright, which is a no brainier, providing access to the law is not free Neither are lots of the essential functions of organized society. OTOH, universal access to a complete and accurate account of the law is arguably is an essential element of government of, by, and for the people. > Best solution would likely be to have three non-profits take compete to provide access; otherwise you end up with situations like this were the states outsource access it an attempt to reduce costs and make money too. I don't know that that's the "best solution"; a national rule that no government act has the force of law until and unless published in an official, universally and freely accessible, public domain, repository of the law meeting defined standards that include provisions relating to functionality and exportabilitym would not prevent states from outsourcing the work of providing the online repository, but would prevent it from being put behind a copyright wall preventing free use, and would prevent technical barriers from being erected to effective use in order to advance commercial interests, and would prevent it from being a way to make money rather than a way to provide free and equal access to the most fundamental information about government -- what their official, binding decrees are.
- nxzero 11y agoMaybe I'm a bit jaded, but simple putting something online is not providing access nor for that matter is it free, since taxes pay for it. Beyond that, huge, and often the most meaningful legal information is not pulled from the written laws, but case law that's resulted from past cases. More to the point, legal system as it is now has no responsibility to provided legal advice and clearly looks down on those who represent themselves. Beyond that, most law is not in Plain English, and as a result, not accessible.
- kuschku 11y agoWhy? Other countries manage to have laws available online in dozens of variations and translations, like http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ And thanks to that, volunteer efforts like https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze#german-federal-laws-and-regulations https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze#german-federal-laws-and... can be possible and legal. Why does US law have to be costly?
- dublinben 11y ago>Why does US law have to be costly? Because it is seen as a business opportunity. Essentially, capitalism.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThis literally sounds as if things are being run by the Ferengi.
- lisper 11y agoThis isn't capitalism, it's rent-seeking.
- dragonwriter 11y agoCapitalism is an economic system first named and characterized by its critics for the way it favored holders of capital, not least of which the way its structure of property rights enabled and rewarded rent-seeking. In this case, saying "this isn't capitalism, it's rent-seeking" is like saying, as you sail out of the Golden Gate, "this isn't the ocean, its salt water." (That is, its wrong because the thing being described is both the thing it is denied to be and the thing it is proposed to be instead, and the latter is central characteristic of the former.)
- maxxxxx 11y agoA citizen needs to have access to the law in order to behave lawfully. There needs to be free and easy access. A lawful society can't run in any other way.
- clinta 11y agoThe costs to publish the law is a total non-sequiter. Being expensive to publish doesn't make something copyrightable. It is expensive to publish any number of public domain works, that doesn't take them out of the public domain. And, not only are public domain works not copyrightable, they're none-the-less very available, almost always for free. Making it copyrightable does nothing to help provide access to the content, and everything to hinder it.