Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online • Hacker News Board

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

unlimit wrote: post #18

samfriedman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frequently the letter of the law itself is publicly available, but there are also significant annotations and explanations that form the real body of the law/code as used by the courts, law enforcement, etc. It is these annotations that are copyrighted by the large legal companies contracted to write, compile and publish them. For that reason it is a common occurrence that the version of the law citizens are held to…

> Frequently the letter of the law itself is publicly available, but there are also significant annotations and explanations that form the real body of the law/code as used by the courts, law enforcement, etc So its the interpretation that is used. Then shouldn't the interpretation be open to public? What kind of justice system is this?

> shouldn't the interpretation be open to public? What kind of justice system is this?

The kind where a federal court tells the State of Georgia to do exactly that.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#32

Post by cptskippy » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #15

Why would there be any issue at all with putting the law online? Serious question. What do, say, reporters in Georgia do when they write a story about court proceedings or what-have-you? Is the state code just never referenced? Or explained? Or even just written out so that people can see what happened and how it worked? Is the general public simply not allowed to know what laws they live under? Or is it that only pe…

I think the issue is that it's out of their control. You can access the Georgia laws online however they're in an incredibly hard to use/search/read format from a Lexus Nexus portal they pay to have hosted but which gives them complete control of the content.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#33

Post by gnode » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #29

ohiovr wrote: post #4

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

Sometimes the law will refer to a third party set of codes. For example, the law might say that it's illegal to operate a pressure vessel unless in satisfies all the requirements of ASME Section VIII Division 1 or 2. As you might guess, the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code is a copyrighted work owned by the ASME.

This is indeed a problem, but doesn't appear to be the issue in this case. In a sense, this is the opposite. It's more like:

The law says: pressure vessels must be pretty sturdy even when really hot.

A standard comes along and proclaims to abide by said law, while fleshing out the details of how sturdy and how hot. Lawyers and judges then make reference to it as what the law always meant, and effectively give it legal force.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#34

Post by ebg13 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

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.

> the abuse of "terrrorism"...abuses of power The federal court opinion [1], which rules in favor of Malamud's NGO, does not once mention "terrorism". The case is a copyright one. (And an important one at that.) I'm guessing the quote was from the lawyers' remarks, not the actual charges. So serious faux pas more than abuse of power. [1] http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711589....

You're conflating "accused of" and "charged with". Note that the title does not say "charged with".

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#35

Post by airstrike » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #12

samfriedman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frequently the letter of the law itself is publicly available, but there are also significant annotations and explanations that form the real body of the law/code as used by the courts, law enforcement, etc. It is these annotations that are copyrighted by the large legal companies contracted to write, compile and publish them. For that reason it is a common occurrence that the version of the law citizens are held to…

> the large legal companies contracted to write Are private companies actually writing annotations that affect judges decisions? That sounds like they are effectively writing the law. Or, if they're just compiling judges' writings, how do they have copyright on those?

IANAL but I believe those annotations are written by renowned jurists and approved by the state, so presumably they are "writing the law" in the way the state wants it to be written

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#36

Post by macspoofing » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #17

This is what they accused Aaron Swartz of too. "Misdemeanor Terrorism" was one of the charges I believe. The lawyer that said that this is 'terrorism' should be disbarred. This is borderline slander.

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.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#37

Post by Tor3 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

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…

One should think that this would enable anyone accused of a crime to argue "Your Honour, I could not know that my act was illegal as the law in question is unaccessible to me."

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#38

Post by bilbo0s » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

shoes_for_thee wrote: post #20

bilbo0s wrote: post #15

Why would there be any issue at all with putting the law online? Serious question. What do, say, reporters in Georgia do when they write a story about court proceedings or what-have-you? Is the state code just never referenced? Or explained? Or even just written out so that people can see what happened and how it worked? Is the general public simply not allowed to know what laws they live under? Or is it that only pe…

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 so that a take down notice is suddenly legal, as opposed to explicitly illegal?

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#39

Post by mhb » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #19

ohiovr wrote: post #4

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

It technically isn't. The annotations in question are expert's analyses of the law, approved by the state. The defendant was told he could publish the actual law, and his own analysis. However it gets really murky when “Georgia’s courts have cited to the annotations as authoritative sources on statutory meaning and legislative intent.” I can see the argument against this being freely publishable. If I wrote a textboo…

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.

Re: Sued for copyright infringement for putting legal materials online

#40

Post by ebg13 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #3

Note: Georgia's lawyers called it a "strategy of terrorism". Carl Malamud is not being charged with terrorism. This is a copyright case as it pertains to official state law. Claiming "terrorism" is a significant detriment to the story.

You're conflating "accused of" and "charged with". Note that the title does not say "charged with".