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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

#131

Post by vajrabum »

Fnoord wrote: post #27
Nasrudith wrote: post #2

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.

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…

Did you notice that Mozilla plugins broke the other day because somebody forgot to renew a certificate? The law is the framework that our society runs on and business and pretty much ever other activity is a plugin. So do you really want to set us up for breaking the plugins because the cert (law) has expired when the legislature was too busy or forgot to renew? BTW, like any other organization legislatures have limited productivity (bandwidth). It varies from one to another but we aren't living in the days of Hammurabi where you could write it on two stone tablets. Replacing or even renewing the law for a modern technological society is not going to be a semester project for some script kiddies (legislators).

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#132

Post by burtonator2011 »

edm0nd wrote: post #124
baybal2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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._...

My understanding is that he did both. He was using library access for a while but it wasn't fast enough.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#133

Post by torstenvl »

baybal2 wrote: post #42
Nasrudith wrote: post #2

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…

You make three major errors. The first is that you conflate "criminal abuse of office laws" with the "acknowledgement that completely useless/incompetent people must be kicked out from official positions." The U.S. government is not required to convict someone of a crime in order to terminate their employment. Federal civilian labor law is an entire field of practice that is... quite verdant.

The second major error is that you conflate the presence of such criminal laws with anti-corruption measures. In reality, the existence of laws that allow jailing someone for making mistakes at work ("incompetence," "failing official audit," etc.) is a tool of corruption. Simply appoint the right auditor and you can eliminate anyone who disagrees with you. Making poor job performance a crime, for someone with no mens rea, is inherently totalitarian and abusive.

Lastly, it is simply not a factually correct statement to say that the "USA has very little in terms of law on personal liabilities of officials and their scope."

(a) First, I'll address the support you cited. Your reference to 25 C.F.R. § 11.448 is inapposite: it doesn't support your position because it isn't a statute, and it is utterly inapplicable anyway because it only applies on certain Native American reservations. A Bureau of Indian Affairs regulation was not a good choice for you here. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/25/11.448 and https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/25/11.118

(b) I'll address the presence of the law you claim does not exist.

(i) Brief overview. Title 5 of the U.S. Code (5 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.) is the statutory law that governs federal employees (except uniformed members, who are governed by title 10, title 14, or title 32, depending on component and status). Additional crimes are in title 18; additional constraints are found in specific titles depending on subject matter (e.g., the VA is governed by title 38).

(ii) Specific examples (procedurally): Chapters 43 and 75 provide specific guidance on holding federal civilian employees accountable for malfeasance of any sort. Any lingering questions you have about the U.S. system should probably begin there.

(iii) Specific examples (substantively): Since criminal statutes seem to hold special significance for you, let me direct your attention toward 18 U.S.C. § 201 (bribery), 18 U.S.C. § 203, 209 (supplementation of salary), 18 U.S.C. § 205 (representational conflicts of interest), 18 U.S.C. § 208 (personal conflicts of interest), and so on. Additionally, take a look at 10 U.S.C. § 892 (military failure to obey an order and/or dereliction of duty).

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#134

Post by falcrist »

gumby wrote: post #107
cs702 wrote: post #14

The Republic of Georgia claims that the legal code establishing the rights and obligations of its citizens (including annotations commissioned and approved by the state) should not be freely available to its citizens or anyone else, because it is copyrighted by the state. According to the article, 20 other states around the world are making similar copyright claims. The written laws of a state (along with annotations…

> The Republic of Georgia claims that the legal code establishing the rights and obligations of its citizens...should not be freely available to its citizens The federal government of the United States claims this as well, for example see Gilmore v. Gonzales . You are subject to classified laws and regulation to which you do not have access.

I knew there were secret courts (which are already pretty horrifying in themselves), but the idea that there are secret laws is deeply repugnant to my sense of fairness. How can a system of laws be just when the people ruled by it aren't allowed to know all of it?

It seems to me that the idea of secret laws is incompatible with the very foundation of liberal democracy.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#135

Post by indigochill »

salawat wrote: post #104
brobdingnagians wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule of law is important. And if you want to get rid of old laws, you should just get rid of them by vote. If the vast majority of old laws are functioning well, then you can keep them functioning, if there are a few ridiculous ones then you can go through normal channels of government. England had a case in the 1800s where everyone forgot that trial by battle still existed from the middle ages. Someone invoked it an…

The problem with that is that that basically ensures most blue laws stay on the books by way of legislative DoS. As every repeal bill takes up the same legislative slot as adding a new law. An approach with sunset dates ensure the most important laws are at the forefront of national discourse, and ensures that lawmaking doesn't degenerate to "keep trying til you pass it, then smooth sailing because no one ever active…

Drawing a lesson from managing software development backlogs (because of course), perhaps the best of both worlds is to have a certain segment of legislators whose job is to drive the repeal bills?

The problem both legislators and developers face is one of triage. There is always a high-priority backlog, and this means trivial issues that are stupid but not severe tend to go unaddressed unless someone goes on a personal crusade.

In the abstract, I agree that sunset would be ideal, but in practice I worry it would cause even more of a triage problem than legislators already face, which I think this proposal would address.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#136

Post by yellowapple »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
Fnoord wrote: 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 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? Moreover, cleanly sunsetting laws within our common law system is hard. Case law builds on statute. Regularly wiping away vast portions of case…

> Do we really want debt-limit style brinksmanship around murder statutes?

Do they? Or do they think they're somehow immune to murder being suddenly legal?

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#137

Post by klyrs »

vajrabum wrote: post #131
Fnoord wrote: 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…

Did you notice that Mozilla plugins broke the other day because somebody forgot to renew a certificate? The law is the framework that our society runs on and business and pretty much ever other activity is a plugin. So do you really want to set us up for breaking the plugins because the cert (law) has expired when the legislature was too busy or forgot to renew? BTW, like any other organization legislatures have limi…

> Replacing or even renewing the law for a modern technological society is not going to be a semester project for some script kiddies (legislators).

If only we had some kind of distributed system that could be used, to maintain a complex codebase with thousands of contributors... oh wait we already have git. Imagine if federal law was a monorepo, and state, county, city laws were branches. It sounds like a nightmare to manage, but lawyers are increasingly tech-savvy and, for example, bitbucket allows one to edit files from a web interface and immediately create pull requests. Additionally, there are already consensus-based and k-of-n cryptosystems that could be used to review and sign pull requests -- this could be the basis of a true technological republic.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#138

Post by dmurray »

indigochill wrote: post #135
salawat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is that that basically ensures most blue laws stay on the books by way of legislative DoS. As every repeal bill takes up the same legislative slot as adding a new law. An approach with sunset dates ensure the most important laws are at the forefront of national discourse, and ensures that lawmaking doesn't degenerate to "keep trying til you pass it, then smooth sailing because no one ever active…

Drawing a lesson from managing software development backlogs (because of course), perhaps the best of both worlds is to have a certain segment of legislators whose job is to drive the repeal bills? The problem both legislators and developers face is one of triage. There is always a high-priority backlog, and this means trivial issues that are stupid but not severe tend to go unaddressed unless someone goes on a perso…

Repealing laws (two out for every one in) was part of the current US president's electoral platform, so it seems like there is an appetite for this among the voters.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#139

Post by politician »

stupidcar wrote: post #49
cs702 wrote: post #14

The Republic of Georgia claims that the legal code establishing the rights and obligations of its citizens (including annotations commissioned and approved by the state) should not be freely available to its citizens or anyone else, because it is copyrighted by the state. According to the article, 20 other states around the world are making similar copyright claims. The written laws of a state (along with annotations…

The text of the laws themselves are open-source. It's the annotations that are the issue and this is, at least, an area where there is a reasonable ambiguity. Hopefully one that will be resolved in favour of greatest openness, but the state's position is at least not totally unreasonable. What is unreasonable, and why this is getting attention on HN is because Malamud's actions in publish the annotations has been des…

Are these annotations more than summaries of and links to related court findings?

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#140

Post by [deleted] »

dfxm12 wrote: post #73

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 Malam…

[deleted]
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