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Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

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Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#51

Post by rat87 »

skrebbel wrote: post #41
tsahyt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewriting law to be machine-readable as in "instructions a machine can understand" would be quite a task I suppose. Interesting project though. Would that even be possible? How well does the law map on the black and white logic of a computer?

Sometimes, I fantasize about turning that around. What if parts of the law (say, fiscal law sounds like a candidate) are chosen to be as black and white as the logic of a computer? Policymakers could get automated compile errors when trying to craft conflicting laws. They could instantly compute what the effect of a law change is on this and that demographic or persona.

There are serious problems with trying to make laws black and white. A certain amount of flexibility is frequently a good thing. Let the judges knowledge/judgement decide. An example of problems with the alternative is 3 strikes laws.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#52

Post by Tichy »

gchpaco wrote: post #24
mcrider wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't US law not public-domain anyway? Or at least on a state by state basis? I remember a copyright issue concerning someone reprinting some of Oregon's laws.

The law is non-copyrightable. However a lot of state laws say "You will build your building according to Document X by Corporation Y" and that is copyrighted and not given out without a lot of money. The reason why these exist is that lawmakers aren't experts in, say, concrete; and those who are tend to be employed privately, and make industrial standards. As an example consider specifying that a program will be writ…

The scary consequence could be that eventually there will be laws prescribing certain programming techniques for software projects.

In Germany I think it is almost already the case, because if your software project goes awry, the judge will want to know that used current best practices of software development. I only picked that up in passing, though, reading about a case with another focus. But it scares me, because I don't necessarily agree with all current "best practices". Imagine being sued because you didn't include 99% test coverage. Or worse, because you didn't use Java.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#53

Post by gpvos »

damncabbage wrote: post #6

There was a great discussion on HN previously about this topic which also explains why a straight git implementation isn't viable for US law; I'm not sure if doing the same with Germany's laws would be similarly difficult: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3968653

Since Germany has a civil law instead of a common law system, this might be easier. (But I don't know, really.)

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#54

Post by thomasz »

Tichy wrote: post #52
gchpaco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is non-copyrightable. However a lot of state laws say "You will build your building according to Document X by Corporation Y" and that is copyrighted and not given out without a lot of money. The reason why these exist is that lawmakers aren't experts in, say, concrete; and those who are tend to be employed privately, and make industrial standards. As an example consider specifying that a program will be writ…

The scary consequence could be that eventually there will be laws prescribing certain programming techniques for software projects. In Germany I think it is almost already the case, because if your software project goes awry, the judge will want to know that used current best practices of software development. I only picked that up in passing, though, reading about a case with another focus. But it scares me, because…

Requiring a certain degree of test coverage by law sounds like a good idea for life-critical systems.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#55

Post by dhucerbin »

coopdog wrote: post #12

They should definitely do this for bills also, so you can easily see who has incorporated what into each bill, and how the bill is evolving as it happens

In Poland we have project "Sejmometr" /Parliment-o-meter/ [1]. It's website with almost current information about parliment works - bills, voting, speeches. It even have json api [2]

[1] http://sejmometr.pl

[2] http://sejmometr.pl/api/dokumenty

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#56

Post by icebraining »

tsahyt wrote: post #42
skrebbel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, I fantasize about turning that around. What if parts of the law (say, fiscal law sounds like a candidate) are chosen to be as black and white as the logic of a computer? Policymakers could get automated compile errors when trying to craft conflicting laws. They could instantly compute what the effect of a law change is on this and that demographic or persona.

> automated compile errors when trying to craft conflicting laws That just made my day :) It's actually a good idea, I think. I'm just not exactly sure whether that would work because laws govern the real world and in the real world, logic isn't binary. However, such laws would at least be understandable for mere programmers ;)

Logic in computers doesn't have to be binary either. There are plenty of implementations of fuzzy logic, including some programming languages.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#57

Post by ubershmekel »

raphman wrote: post #38
damncabbage wrote: post #6

There was a great discussion on HN previously about this topic which also explains why a straight git implementation isn't viable for US law; I'm not sure if doing the same with Germany's laws would be similarly difficult: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3968653

As discussed in the linked HN discussion, VCS/diffs are not compatible with the established workflow for discussing and changing laws. However, as far as I understand, this repository is not primarily intended as a tool for supporting lawmakers but serves two purposes: a) It allows the public to track all changes made to a law. b) it allows NGOs and other parties to suggest changes to a law by forking the repo and se…

This is about as revolutionary as officially letting the plebs read the bible.

Pretty damn revolutionary.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#58

Post by hendrik-xdest »

NonEUCitizen wrote: post #44
Groxx wrote: post #9

Awesome stuff. I couldn't find anywhere though: is this an 'official' project, or is it just someone who processed the XML forms into markdown? Also, this: "All German citizens can easily find an up-to-date version of their laws online." And it's only 130 megs of markdown when zipped (246 unzipped)! A mere 4,737,628 lines[1]! Surely you have time to read it, right? And therefore be a well-informed, law-abiding citize…

I think this is where "German citizens can easily find an up-to-date version of their laws online" : http://www.bgbl.de/Xaver/start.xav?startbk=Bundesanzeiger_BG...

It's not. You still have to have the complete text of the law and manually add the changes that are described in the Bundesanzeiger. It states for example something like "Change in BGB: Paragraph 123, section 45, change the word 'and' to 'and/or'. Only completely new texts would be printed in full.

The Bundesanzeiger is merely the last step in the law making process. First, the two law making institutions (Bundestag, Bundesrat) have to vote in favor of the law and the president has put his X under it. Only after the law is published in the Bundesanzeiger it takes effect.

Re: Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked

#60

Post by _delirium »

ubershmekel wrote: post #57
raphman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As discussed in the linked HN discussion, VCS/diffs are not compatible with the established workflow for discussing and changing laws. However, as far as I understand, this repository is not primarily intended as a tool for supporting lawmakers but serves two purposes: a) It allows the public to track all changes made to a law. b) it allows NGOs and other parties to suggest changes to a law by forking the repo and se…

This is about as revolutionary as officially letting the plebs read the bible. Pretty damn revolutionary.

Anyone can already read the laws, though. I'm less sure that reading them specifically via git is a major revolution. it's possible something compelling will be built on top of it, I'll admit.

For the U.S. code, something like Cornell's LII interface, which for a long time has displayed both the current version of the law and, for any section, the history of amendments to that section, seems more user-friendly than a git repo: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text

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