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Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

nytimes.com

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Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#91
post #79
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Sure, that would be great and there could be a discussion around how that should be funded. But it's hyperbolic to suggest that because the law and annotations are only available for free at libraries in print form that they're not available.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#92
post #74

Really the abuse of "terrrorism" so blatantly even by the standards of a government should qualify for some pretty damn harsh defamation law to the officials trying to hide behind the state. Those sorts of abuses of power are the kind of thing where we actually do need to be "tough on crime" for if we wish to be remotely free.

To be clear, the "abuse" of "terrorism" in this case amounts to rhetoric. They called the guy's tactics (posting the text of laws online) a "strategy of terrorism". The actual case seems to be a copyright dispute over whether or not the State of Georgia can copyright its own laws.

Sure, but the language matters. Since 9/11, in the US we’ve allowed the rule of law to devolve to the point where if the government can label you a “terrorist”, they can throw all your rights out the window, whether or not you’re a US citizen.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#93
post #13
post #4

I do not understand this story. How can law be "under copyright"?

It's a terrible article. My understanding is that the state has an agreement with Lexis/Nexis to have the laws annotated. In exchange Lexis/Nexis can publish and sell the annotations. Presumably, in order for this relationship to continue, the state must defend its copyright to the annotations which Lexis/Nexis has produced. So although using 'terrorism' is clearly ridiculous, the rest of it is not so clear cut. Also…

> It's a terrible article. My understanding is that the state has an agreement with Lexis/Nexis to have the laws annotated. In exchange Lexis/Nexis can publish and sell the annotations. Presumably, in order for this relationship to continue, the state must defend its copyright to the annotations which Lexis/Nexis has produced.

I don't understand why they need a relationship.

Good annotations are incredibly valuable. When I was in law school, both West and Lexis were publishing annotated versions of both federal law and the law of every state, entirely on their own. Pretty much every lawyer bought the relevant West and/or Lexis products for their practice areas, and pretty much every law library bought more complete sets of these products.

Has something changed making it so the publishers need financial encouragement from the state to make annotating worthwhile?

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#94
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're conflating "charged with" and "accused of". Note the title does not say "charged with" We don't have any context beyond a Georgia lawyer saying "strategy of terrorism." Given how broadly that term is used nowadays, sort of like "war on X", this could have been a reference to Public.Resource.Org's legal or PR strategy or many other things. It's a terrible choice of words, particularly for a government lawyer.…

> We don't have any context Actually, we have both context and original source documents, going back to 1992. Consider discussions on this page, which I suspect will include lots of people arguing the accusation, as a case in point of how very few people read and do their research. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899223

[deleted]

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#95
post #42

Really the abuse of "terrrorism" so blatantly even by the standards of a government should qualify for some pretty damn harsh defamation law to the officials trying to hide behind the state. Those sorts of abuses of power are the kind of thing where we actually do need to be "tough on crime" for if we wish to be remotely free.

USA has very little in terms of law on personal liabilities of officials and their scope. The dismal legal history for USA CFR 25 11.448 - abuse of office is a proof of that. USA is one of few countries where there is close to nothing amounting to codified criminal abuse of office laws, the few criminal abuse of office laws are state level in USA. The wider official crimes class of offences, is also poorly represente…

a lot of incompetence at the state level is protected behind Sovereign Immunity should it have negative affects on others and rarely does it ever reach criminal prosecution.

law enforcement falls behind the false state of qualified immunity, which can apply to every person in the confines of law enforcement, and that derived from a bad court ruling that perpetuates till today.

worse, people do not understand the full import of many laws and instead focus on how they negatively affect a disliked group. this allows politicians at all levels to protect themselves as well as punish those they don't like all with public support.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#96
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in the article.

No it doesn't. It says that court decisions are always public. As are statutes. You can't, to my knowledge, render your court decisions "not" public, by simply referencing an annotation and then saying, "well, we have a contract with a publisher". This legal obligation cannot, to my knowledge, be contracted away. So what kind of contracting was done to make this happen? This is my question. How did they manage this s…

So, the gist of it is that while the court decisions are public, things written about the court decisions, like news articles, may be copyrighted. The state of Georgia claims that this is the status of the annotations written by Lexis-Nexis.

Clearly, this shouldn't be possible: a work contracted by the state is a work by the state (ie a work for hire), and should be public domain. But there's money involved, and that tends to be the deciding factor in legal decisions in the US.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#97
post #86
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're claiming he referred to his own actions as terrorism here (in the prologue): https://museum.media.org/eti/ I disagree with that claim and I think it is irresponsible for a lawyer to call what he was doing a "form of terrorism" or "part of a strategy of terrorism". I think it's even more irresponsible for a lawyer to equate what he was doing and his words, a "form of standards terrorism", to unqualified "terro…

Yeah, but it's not a criminal prosecution of a terrorism charge. It's a copyright case.

Following that argument (which is beside the point), how does calling this guy a terrorist further their copyright case? The point is that this is poisoning the well.

Now every time this guy is googled, his name will be associated with terrorism, thanks to this suit, putting doubt on his work, which is meant to balance the power between the state and its citizens. You don't see why the state calling this guy a terrorist is reprehensible?

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#98
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sort of legal amnesia has major drawbacks. Hand politicians the opportunity to make crisis and they'll take advantage of it. Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes Yes. Presumably politicians don't want to be murdered by their opposition. It wouldn't lapse more than once.

Because the first time it did lapse, you'd probably crash society. I'd rather not make the attempt.

Think of pro and anti civil rights laws switching in and out of law, divorce, women's rights child labor, workers rights. If these hard fought civil rights expire they wouldn't come back automatically in today's world of ALEC.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#99
post #59
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure on which law this whole fad is based on. Is it an old law? > [...] The last time the Supreme Court addressed the matter, in 1888, it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all.” A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them. That way, the politicians…

> A solution to how ridiculous old laws are is automatically expire them... There are a lot of good reasons that this is a really bad idea. But the fundamental reason is that there are always a few politicians everywhere who can't be trusted to act in good faith.

Isn't this the idea of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights?

It's a part of the U.S. legal code that can't even be changed by legislatures with sudo access.

(Although SCOTUS can apparently update the firmware.)

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#100
There is so much confusion in this thread as to what this is about, I think we should bring out our famously flawed tech analogies. Say the IEEE writes a standard for a networking protocol. It's full of arcane acronyms and technical details, as well as some ambiguities here and there. So then I (as a private person, nothing to do with the IEEE) write a book explaining the protocol in usable terms. I also take some liberties to provide advise on 'best practices' on some of the ambiguous parts. My book is so useful and successful, that even most implementors of the protocol refer to it. Because of that, most implementations behave mostly the same in the corner cases.

Something like this happens quite a lot, to a greater or lesser extent. Nobody (well, copyright abolitionists would, out of principle, but I'm talking people who just want to get stuff done and get on with their life) would argue that I would lose copyright to my book, because it's so successful.

Now the IEEE pays me to write said book. This is where things become murkier (maybe). Because now, has my book become an extension of the standard? Does it depend on the relationship between me and the IEEE? Say, if I have access to drafts of the standard, and I provide feedback, does that make my book closer to being part of the standard? If my book just has clarifications and no opinion in it, does that make a difference? I would still say that, as long as it's possible to implement the standard without the book, it's not 'part' of the standard. But as the standard gets less clear, at some point, it becomes impossible to implement something in an interoperable way without having the book. Should I lose copyright my book in such a case? And does it still matter whether the IEEE has paid for it?

One difference between the IEEE and legislators is that one can say 'screw the IEEE, I'll just make my own protocol'. You can't do that with law. Is that sufficient a difference to make someone lose their copyright? Or should the IEEE just have paid me outright, as a contractor, to write the book, so that they can give it away for free? But then why bother with the book at all? After all, the book is just for making things easier, it's not a 'source' as such, regardless of how much easier it makes implementor's lives.

I don't think this is as clear or as outrageous a case as people are making it out to be here. We don't want to discourage people from making annotations, summaries and explanations. Maybe legislators should just write more clear laws to begin with. But the more you do that, the more you open yourself up to 'backdoors' and 'hole in the law' trickery. Not to mention that it becomes even harder to get political will to support a text in the first place - making perfect the enemy of good enough.

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