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State of Georgia sues Public Resource for posting their state laws
- sam_lark 11y agoLink broken?
- joblessjunkie 11y agoNo, they are being sued for distributing third party commentary and analysis of the law. http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.gand.218354/gov.uscourts.gand.218354.1.0.pdf http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.gand.218...
- Tortoise 11y agoWhat a misleading title. If you actually read the statement of claim posted at that link, you see that Georgia doesn't object to the laws being posted online for free, they do that themselves. But, they hired LexisNexis to produce an annotated code, and Public Resource is blatantly copying all the annotations. This is exactly what copyright is supposed to protect. If Public Resource wants to they can make their own annotations.
- cgtyoder 11y agoIf GA hired LN to produce an annotated code, then that means the annotations are owned by Georgia, which means they are public record and not therefore copyrightable.
- rimunroe 11y agoDocuments produced by or for a state or federal government are not automatically public record.
- cgtyoder 11y agoYes, you are right I should have said public documents to be more precise. "Public record" is different than "copyrightable" which is what the issue is about. Public documents, that is owned by the state aka the people, cannot be copyrighted. (edited)