> Among those opposed was Beverly Quail... She said there’s no such thing as read-only publication online, thanks to the ease of making electronic copies. And t

> Among those opposed was Beverly Quail... She said there’s no such thing as read-only publication online, thanks to the ease of making electronic copies. And taxpayers should not foot the bill for publishing standards of interest to very few people, she said. That's actually exactly what taxpayers should foot the bill for, many of the services the government provides do exactly that, spread the needs of the few across the many, making it cheaper per-person to provide something, like the text of legislation. Wouldn't it be great to live in a world with universal access to ~~healthcare~~ legislation? > Malamud, an associate member of the ABA who received special privileges of the floor, noted that the public would be prohibited by this motion from printing, searching or copying the law, and would have to preregister with a private vendor before reading the law. Those are some pretty terrible constraints and it's kinda funny that one of the supposed reasons to oppose this is that it costs tax payers money, yet you can't copy the legislation and put it somewhere else. This hosting/mirroring issue was solved decades ago by having the trusted source provide a hash of the document in question, and then allowing anyone to mirror it. Interested parties need only verify the hash to ensure they have the document in question. Edit: Whoops, should cite the better article (linked to in the OP) that I got those quotes from: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/after_strong_debate_house_calls_for_publication_of_privately_drafted_standa/ http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/after_strong_debate_h...