Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

I think people are latching on to one person’s very poor choice of rhetorical flair. The case has nothing to do with terrorism and no one involved has actually been accused of terrorism, outside of this hyperbolic rhetoric.

But I do think it is bad practice for the state to turn up the rhetoric in its legal disputes when it turns a legitimate adversarial dispute about the legality of actions into an improper attack on a citizen’s character. But on the other hand, there are plenty of circumstances where we feel it is totally proper (e.g. criminal prosecutions, but probably also lawsuits for fraud, gross negligence, and intentional physical injury). It is hard to balance the state’s dual roles as neutral arbiter/enforcer of the law and adversarial participant in it. The executive/legislative/judicial split helps, but does not solve it.

The state is saying Malamud called his own actions "terrorism". I think it's irresponsible how the lawyers worded this in their suit. I also think it's irresponsible for the NYT to print this without this context.

From the suit[0]:

Carl Malamud, has indicated that this type of strategy has been a successful form of “terrorism” that he has employed in the past to force government entities to publish documents on Malamud’s terms.

Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, Defendant freely admits to the copying and distribution of massive numbers of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Annotations on at least its https://yeswescan.org website. See Exhibit 3.

I wonder what Exhibit 3 is and if it actually shows Malamud referring to his actions directly as terrorism. I wouldn't know how to look that up. Does anyone?

EDIT: It's from the prologue section here: https://museum.media.org/eti/

It's a joke that the lawyers used this as justification for sneaking the word "terrorism" unqualified in their suit.

0 - https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ga/pro_v_georgia/gov.us...

This doesn’t do the work you might think it does. To properly know the contents of the law, to the high standard you’re demanding, you would have to read every court case any bit related to the prohibition in question. The annotations merely include a non-binding, incomplete summary of that case law.

Fair notice is pretty narrow. I am pretty sure (could be wrong), that there is no requirement to codify even. If a state wanted, it could leave its laws uncodified and require you to go through every page of legislative records to discover what the law is. What it can’t do is pass literally secret laws and then hold them against you. There are states that still have common law crimes inherited from before the revolution. These are crimes that the state legislature has never defined, but are recognized by judicial custom (though it is widely agreed that even the courts in those states could not define new crimes in this way)

Unofficial versions of the law are available, somewhat.

The only official version of the law is the annotated one. Thus the only official law is deemed secret without payment by the state. Thus you cannot know the true law in Georgia without paying.

Not to mention the official annotations are considered authoritative. Lawyer and judges reference them, making them part of the law.

> The public can access the law with annotations at many libraries. Undoubtedly it's very nice to use the online version, but the annotations are accessible without too much effort.

This sentiment discounts whole segments of the population with mobility or visual impairments, for starters. Why shouldn't courts become more open over time to scrutiny, taking advantage of technical advances to increase transparency and by proxy faith in the institution of the courts?