[A2k] Open Access to the Law in the U.S.

[Pranesh Prakash]

Dear All,
>From /.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=3D08/09/03/181251

The comments, as always on Slashdot, are interesting.

- Pranesh

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 Nathan Halverson <http://www.pressdemocrat.com/> writes
"California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to
share them. And that's not sitting right with Internet gadfly, and
open-access hero, Carl Malamud
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Malamud>. He has spent the last
couple months scanning tens of thousands of pages containing city,
county and state laws =97 think building codes, banking laws, etc.
Malamud wants California to sue him
<http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080903/NEWS/809030309/1350&title=3D=
Getting_access__one_document_at_a_time>,
which is almost a given if the state wants to continue claiming
copyright. He thinks a federal court will rule in his favor: It is
illegal to copyright the law since people are required to know it.
Malamud helped force the SEC to put corporate filings online in 1994,
and did the same with the patent office. He got the Smithsonian to
loosen its claim of copyright, CSPAN to stop forbidding people from
sharing its videos, and most recently Oregon to quit claiming
copyright on state laws."Malamud's talk at Google ("All the
Government's Information"
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3D2633159172413478267>) is also
well worth watching.