4 ms·

>The idea of copyrighting a publication of legal statutes or codes could have some good No it cannot. Copyright grants things called "exclusive rights". They a

>The idea of copyrighting a publication of legal statutes or codes could have some good No it cannot. Copyright grants things called "exclusive rights". They are called such because, absent copyright, nobody is excluded from them. There is no good whatsoever in hindering people from copying, distributing, publicly performing, or creating derived works from existing laws or regulations. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by saying "Copyright doesnt always mean no-one else has rights to it." It's like saying shooting someone's leg doesn't mean you shot their arm. Copyright's sole purpose is to exclude rights from people who would otherwise have them. Pointing out that it doesn't take away all rights doesn't add to the discussion.

rolph 8y ago
if the public owns the legal text under a copyright then some 3rd party cant use that text to make money, and eventually claim it as thier own works, due to formatting, and secretarial time requireing offsetting revenue.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  Why would there be a need to prevent that? The only text that is authoritative comes from the legal branch of the government.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hopler 8y ago
    The need to prevent that is the same need for any copyrighted work --to protect the economic incentive of the author
ABCLAW 8y ago
>There is no good whatsoever in hindering people from copying, distributing, publicly performing, or creating derived works from existing laws or regulations. This isn't true. Let's say we decide that our copyright registry requires the submission of a full work to the government for archival purposes so we can compare a given work against the registered copyright. We'd obviously want someone to be able to check the register, but not gain the right to print someone else's registered work for sale commercially. If we didn't have any hindering, we couldn't actually run the registry at all! The discussion here presupposes that all works which relate to regulations or laws do not have any independent value outside of their legal function, which isn't necessarily the case. That said, when it comes to the text of legislation or a building code, your assumptions hold true. Just don't design a policy solution ignoring the other edge cases, though :).

rolph 8y ago

if the public owns the legal text under a copyright then some 3rd party cant use that text to make money, and eventually claim it as thier own works, due to formatting, and secretarial time requireing offsetting revenue.

rhn_mk1 8y ago
Why would there be a need to prevent that? The only text that is authoritative comes from the legal branch of the government.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hopler 8y ago
  The need to prevent that is the same need for any copyrighted work --to protect the economic incentive of the author

ABCLAW 8y ago

>There is no good whatsoever in hindering people from copying, distributing, publicly performing, or creating derived works from existing laws or regulations. This isn't true. Let's say we decide that our copyright registry requires the submission of a full work to the government for archival purposes so we can compare a given work against the registered copyright. We'd obviously want someone to be able to check the register, but not gain the right to print someone else's registered work for sale commercially. If we didn't have any hindering, we couldn't actually run the registry at all! The discussion here presupposes that all works which relate to regulations or laws do not have any independent value outside of their legal function, which isn't necessarily the case. That said, when it comes to the text of legislation or a building code, your assumptions hold true. Just don't design a policy solution ignoring the other edge cases, though :).