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If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

arstechnica.com

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Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#41

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

flyaway wrote: post #5

> [the judge] made the extraordinary finding that Public.Resource.Org is engaged in "commercial" copying despite being a nonprofit, stating that the organization "profits" by "the attention, recognition, and contributions it receives in association with its copying and distributing the copyrighted OCGA annotations, and its use was neither nonprofit nor educational." I know legal definitions might not always mesh with…

This struck me as the most outrageous aspect of the story.

I think having a 3rd party host laws behind a paywall is a terrible idea in terms of the public good, but I can at least see that the cost based argument behind it is coherent.

But the judge finding Malmud to be engaged in "commercial" activity and "profiting" without profiting is some Orwellian bs and seems to me to be belie a personal stake in this decision. After all, judges in Georgia have no incentive to see defense lawyers get better/freer access to the annotated case law (and the state prosecutors surely get it for free anyway). I hope Malmud succeeds in appealing.

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#42

Post by gremlinsinc »

mabbo wrote: post #8

This is how democracy ends. You can go to jail for committing crimes you didn't know were against the law, but you can't know what the laws are unless you pay nearly a month's wages at minimum wage.

If America were a democracy, there's a big difference between Republic and Democracy

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#43

Post by joshuaheard »

The text of the Georgia law is not copyrightable, and the article states this. The issue is with the annotations, which are basically links to related resources. These are made at great effort and expense by Lexis/Nexis, a private company. These annotations are copyrightable. The mistake is Georgia making the annotated version of its codes the "official" version.

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#44

Post by athenot »

dzdt wrote: post #26
jcizzle wrote: post #19

Here's the full, freely available state of Georgia code: http://www.legis.ga.gov/en-US/default.aspx . It seems like some folks may not like that a private company does the hosting or that they have exclusive rights to its reproduction. You could consider some reasons this might be the case that are reasonable, like the cost of maintaining it is actually cheaper by having a company who has the appropriate resources an…

The "annotated" version is the official law of Georgia. The freely available code you link to is missing the annotations, despite those being officially adopted as law as well. Without the annotations, you do not have the full law.

This is important, as court decisions are based on the annotated version.

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#45

Post by throwaway2048 »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #42
mabbo wrote: post #8

This is how democracy ends. You can go to jail for committing crimes you didn't know were against the law, but you can't know what the laws are unless you pay nearly a month's wages at minimum wage.

If America were a democracy, there's a big difference between Republic and Democracy

I see these comments without fail whenever anybody mentions the term democracy. Everybody knows what is meant by the term, your pedantry is neither insightful, nor interesting, its just distracting, pointless noise.

Please stop.

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#46

Post by Freak_NL »

JimmyM wrote: post #38
NoGravitas wrote: post #33

Look, a correct use of HTTP status code 451: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ga/georgia.scan.2013/go...

I see 403 in Chrome DevTools, though.

For compatibility reasons perhaps? I would expect evergreen browsers such as Firefox and Chrome to handle a proper HTTP 451 without issues though.

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#47

Post by unclenoriega »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #42
mabbo wrote: post #8

This is how democracy ends. You can go to jail for committing crimes you didn't know were against the law, but you can't know what the laws are unless you pay nearly a month's wages at minimum wage.

If America were a democracy, there's a big difference between Republic and Democracy

> I understand your meaning, and I know everyone else understands your meaning. Still, I need to clutter the discussion with misguided pedantry.

This is what I see when I read your comment.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#48

Post by Roboprog »

Yeah, some days I think the US civil war was a mistake, and the south should have just become a separate country. Sort of a "Mexico North", or something.

With apologies to otherwise intelligent people that have to live in that hell hole...

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#49

Post by plussed_reader »

joshuaheard wrote: post #43

The text of the Georgia law is not copyrightable, and the article states this. The issue is with the annotations, which are basically links to related resources. These are made at great effort and expense by Lexis/Nexis, a private company. These annotations are copyrightable. The mistake is Georgia making the annotated version of its codes the "official" version.

"Mistake."

Re: If you publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose

#50

Post by jackhack »

mabbo wrote: post #8

This is how democracy ends. You can go to jail for committing crimes you didn't know were against the law, but you can't know what the laws are unless you pay nearly a month's wages at minimum wage.

Secret laws, Secret courts, hush orders... Hardly the USA described by the Constitution I read.
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