3 ms·

It's not like legislatures are taking novels or source code for various OSes, apps, ..., and incorporating it into law in order to vitiate the relevant copyrigh

It's not like legislatures are taking novels or source code for various OSes, apps, ..., and incorporating it into law in order to vitiate the relevant copyrights. These are laws written by third parties to be laws. In any case, both (1) and (2) could be answered "no" and still resolve this case -- legislatures would then have to rewrite those laws or acquire the copyrights on them. And, as you point out, (2) could be answered "yes, when the work is intended by its owners to be incorporated into laws" (which would immediately cease to be the case). Besides questions of how the courts have ruled / should rule on these issues, on what grounds, and so on, there's a policy question. I don't think we should want the law to not be in the public domain as a matter of policy. Question for the lawyers of HN: can governments take copyrights via eminent domain? Statutorily or constitutionally? Perhaps only national governments rather than State/provincial?

test6554 8y ago
What if someone writes a new law as a literary work about banning soft drinks or limiting sugar. They write hundreds of these literary laws in many different forms using lots of varying language with the specific intent to copyright it so that it makes it very difficult to draft an actual bill that bans soft drinks or limits sugar use in processed foods without violating some soda company's copyrights.
- YawningAngel 8y ago
  Reproducing a document you did not reference coincidentally is not a copyright violation
rayiner 8y ago
ASTM, etc., are composed of people who develop standards and use standards independently of any incorportation into any laws. ASTM predates the federal legislation encouraging incorporation of privately developed standards, on which public.resource.org relied, by almost a century. The laws are recognition of standards the industry had already designed for itself. ASTM members are mostly companies that design products to, and build according to, the standards. The monetization strategy of charging for the standards thus is simply the building industry taxing itself to support standards development. The interesting thing about this case is that there are three things (the standards model, open access laws, and reliance on expert technical standards) that all are desirable, standing alone. It’s the interaction between them that gets hairy.

test6554 8y ago

What if someone writes a new law as a literary work about banning soft drinks or limiting sugar. They write hundreds of these literary laws in many different forms using lots of varying language with the specific intent to copyright it so that it makes it very difficult to draft an actual bill that bans soft drinks or limits sugar use in processed foods without violating some soda company's copyrights.

YawningAngel 8y ago
Reproducing a document you did not reference coincidentally is not a copyright violation

rayiner 8y ago

ASTM, etc., are composed of people who develop standards and use standards independently of any incorportation into any laws. ASTM predates the federal legislation encouraging incorporation of privately developed standards, on which public.resource.org relied, by almost a century. The laws are recognition of standards the industry had already designed for itself. ASTM members are mostly companies that design products to, and build according to, the standards. The monetization strategy of charging for the standards thus is simply the building industry taxing itself to support standards development. The interesting thing about this case is that there are three things (the standards model, open access laws, and reliance on expert technical standards) that all are desirable, standing alone. It’s the interaction between them that gets hairy.