So there are a couple different issues here. One is just states claiming copyright on their actual state criminal code or whatever, and selling the rights to re

So there are a couple different issues here. One is just states claiming copyright on their actual state criminal code or whatever, and selling the rights to republish it to Lexis or WestLaw or whatever as a state revenue source. This is happens, but is not actually that common in the US, and there's pretty broad agreement that it's shitty, and it doesn't happen at the federal level because the US federal government can't own copyrights. Much trickier is "incorporation by reference," which is when the official law or regulation says "as part of our building codes we're going to adopt the 2012 version of the International Building Code in its entirety, and then amend it as follows..." without actually including the text of the IBC (or the fire code, or whatever), which is a document created by a private entity, and is copyrighted. This happens all the time, across levels of government, and it pretty clearly poses a problem, but it's not really clear whose fault it is or what to do about it. Individual city governments don't have the requisite expertise to concoct an entire set of fire codes for themselves, and it's not clear you'd want them to: we arguably all benefit from having the greatest experts in the country craft the best possible code, and product makers that sell across markets benefit from having a uniform standard. But because professional associations end up taking on this role since no single government will, it's not clear how to pay for the work of researching and writing the code, so they end up self-funding by selling the text itself. It's not clear that either the governments or the organizations are in the wrong, even if the public ends up suffering.