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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

#121
post #89
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…

> it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, And on that "the whole work done" is also another prominent anachronism of US flavour of British common law. Other common law countries, let alone mainstream civil law countries do not maintain automatic correctness, authoritativeness and infallibility of institute of justice, from which stems the ab…

Yeah let's not blindly worship common law.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#124
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. With Aaron Swartz there was no question of copyright infringement. He was infringing. With Carl Malamud and the state of Georgia there is ambiguity on the copyrightable status of certain kinds of legal materials (like descriptions and summaries of laws and legal decisions). This is what the courts for. Both sides have some basis for their position even though I side with Malamud on this point.

> Not quite. With Aaron Swartz there was no question of copyright infringement. He was infringing. He wasn't. He was 100% entitled to use his library access, and download every file he did download.

He didn't use his library access to download anything. He snuck into a server closet and hooked up directly to the server network and ripped the files from that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._...

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#125
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which do you think is most likely. Each aspect of the law is carefully considered and debated every N years before being reaffirmed or rejected? Or, Every N years the legislature passes a pro-forma "the laws are still the laws" bill, which no one bothers to read or debate or modify in more than a cursory sense?

Yeah, it sounds like a hell of a lot of work to re-evaluate every law every X number of years. Probably not the best use of time...

Sounds like a hell of a lot of work for the judiciary to sort through the morass created by never acknowledging or dealing with increasing anachronistic cruft created by "pass it once" legislation. To the point a citizen sans law degree (or to a point with one) doesn't necessarily know where they stand.

Laws are, and should be treated as maintenance items. If you can't be bothered to have a token yes vote, it doesn't belong on the books.

If nothing else, it also keeps the culture intact, and gives a more realistic rendering of your long term representatives voting proclivities and priorities. It forces politicians to take a position, and live up to it instead of taking refuge in building their career around niche special interests.

I acknowledge there are good points being made, and that yes, there has to be a willingness to change the way we approach the legislative process. I still believe it would not be as problematic as people think.

There's second and third order incentives created to have better discipline with regards to the structuring of legislation in order to facilitate easy processing by those bound by it, and those charged with reaffirming.

This manifests as a disincentive to create rider networks on unrelated bills, the ability to structure congressional committees around bundles of related subject matter (a procedure that currently works), and it allows the new voter to at least have their voice heard, and vote counted in regards to fundamental issues of the laws they are bound by. This takes it from something other people forced on you, to something you voted for. This would greatly increase the closeness of the voter to their government. Should dramatic upset happen, it represents a signal that a cultural consensus needs to be arrived at.

I doubt that the vast majority of people are so deluded to not be able to agree on the basics on a regular basis. I do, however, think that there may be a preference for less mainstream political movement in the absence of a requirement to agree on the fundamentals with regularity. Polarization becomes much more difficult when we're forced to come to a compromise to preserve what is truly important.

And what is truly important is that which can be passed no questions asked.

Deadlock is the gift of the Founders, but getting something done, even if it was a foregone conclusion, goes a long way to maintaining faith in the system.

And guess what? In X so many years, if the legislative process doesn't pan out...just let it drop, and go back to what worked.

Nothing even structurally changes. It's just default bill behavior that does.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that law is of very abstract, and ephemeral kind — the very criteria of fault in how USA approaches official crimes No, it's highly specific, drawing from cases going back to the founding of the Republic. > most of that law is state level patchwork and case law rather than federal level statutory rules Statute isn't stronger than case law. They're both law in a common-law system [1]. (Insider trading, for example,…

> No, it's highly specific, drawing from cases going back to the founding of the Republic. No, it isn't. Even if you do not consider the moderately modern exercise of official crimes laws, the few that were used are few . As what I know of their historicity, most of early work on that lines were about official crimes being an offshoot of treason/sabotage/sedition/subversion and such. And if you start discussing their…

> the court record of abuse of office cases is of charges not reaching the court to begin with or being dropped

For corruption, charges tend to come up. For more ambiguous forms of abuse, the investigations tend to do the political damage required to push people out of office. At the end of the day, you want a high bar for removing elected people from office. (You want a higher bar still for jailing them.)

> Statute is a clear writing in text

So are court opinions. Clear writings, in text, that describe the ruling's logic in detail.

Statutes can be re-interpreted by courts just as easily as precedents--it's a total myth that one form of the law is weaker than the other. If anything, case law is more concrete than statute--tangibly speaking, what courts decide is more important than what you think the text of a statute means.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#127
post #97
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 terror…

It doesn't, but it's still a bad headline. I'm on Malamud's side here. Georgia is clearly in the wrong, and they're behaving badly.

But it's not a story about Georgia trying to smear Malamud, it's a fairly dry story about the copyright case[1] they're bringing against him. Responsible editors don't take legal stories about appelate copyright cases and slap "terrorism" in the headline, they just don't.

[1] It's even a fairly subtle copyright case. The laws themselves are public domain, what he copied was the annotations (e.g. links to relevant court cases) that appear in the heretofore-privately-published law texts. Do curated links count as copyrightable material? I don't know! It's an interesting subject and I'm interested to read about it. But not when it's headlined as a terrorism accusation.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#128
> Providing public access to the state’s laws and related legal materials, Georgia’s lawyers said, was part of a “strategy of terrorism.”

Incidentally, "copyright terrorism" is an expression the Church of Scientology lawyers have used against critics nearly 25 years ago:

> The church said that it supports itself through donations for these services, and the former member was engaged in "copyright terrorism."[1]

* * *

[1] https://www.rcfp.org/church-scientology-sues-critic-seizes-c...

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#130
post #89
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…

> it ruled that “the whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, And on that "the whole work done" is also another prominent anachronism of US flavour of British common law. Other common law countries, let alone mainstream civil law countries do not maintain automatic correctness, authoritativeness and infallibility of institute of justice, from which stems the ab…

>In US on other hand, in principle and in theory, a judge or juror

Is that not what appeals and jury selection processes are for?

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