On October 19, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Georgia’s annotated legal codes are not subject to being copyrighted. Therefore, groups are free to post copies of them on-line. In this case, Public Resources.org had posted the annotated code, but the state then sued to stop Public Resources from doing that. Here is the decision. Thanks to How Appealing for this news.
All government documents are supposed to be public domain. That’s always been the precedent, especially in a country where we’re supposed to have a government of the people.
So why did the various FOIA laws HAVE to be enacted ???
ALL sorts of DARK AGE monarch-oligarch stuff lurks in governments.
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PR and AppV
For once a good reply.
Because the government ignores literally every aspect of the constitution that doesn’t fit their bidding. Both the Repubs and Dems do it, and have for over 80 years. Started heavily in the 1910s when the Supreme Court really started becoming a politically biased tool for the majority party.
So FOIA was an attempt to try to make it look the government actually cared about transparency… political theater like everything else they do.
WHAT IS NEXT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN ???–
USA WAR PLANS AND WAR CODES ???
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Comparable State/Local stuff ???
— in case of riots, attacks by Martians, etc. ???
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LOTS of clueless folks about governments and govt *secrets* for 6,000 plus years
— which the monarch/oligarch HACKS want to be kept secret
— esp. who gets govt $$$, who does NOT pay taxes, etc.
Why would Georgia even want a copyright?
It is likely a pyrrhic victory.
Ordinarily, annotated codes are compiled by private companies and there is no question they are copyright protected. They charge 1000s of dollars and will vigorously enforce their copyrights. Lawyers purchase the bound editions to decorate their offices.
In Georgia, LexisNexis would do the underlying compilation subject to state oversight, and could then market the annotated code as “official”. Georgia got LexisNexis to sell the code for lower cost than might have been true otherwise, and also provided copies to libraries in the state, and received royalties from LexisNexis.
With the new decision LexisNexis may want out of their contract with the state of Georgia, and instead compile its own authoritative but not official annotated code. It might agree to provide free access to the unannotated code, as it does for many states.
Now a major task to look at the zillion new junk opinions and extract ANY new/old YES/NO/MAY legal points (in under a 1,000 words) —
esp. the worse and worse SCOTUS JUNK opinions (occult mystifying all sorts of stuff)
— on all sorts of subjects — esp. election LAW —
— due to more and more JUNK lawyers and esp. JUNK amicus profs.
See the now hundreds of pages in the Constitution Annotated
— *short* SCOTUS case summaries about each word in the USA Const.
Now large armies of *experts* writing LONG articles on each legal subject
— with mega zillions of court cites.
Avoid law libraries during earthquakes — likely fatal crush injuries
– zillion tons of laws, regs, court ops, legal books – 6 plus feet high
– multi-hundreds of sq feet in larger libraries.
Jim,
My understanding of the issue is that the only way to get a copy of Georgia’s laws was to pay the third party. There was no freely available public domain copy of Georgia’s laws. On top of that, the only available copy of law was the annotated version. For all intents and purposes, Lexis Nexis’s annotated version of the law was the official government approved version, and thus not able to be copyrighted. Had there been a freely available copy of the law, this likely would not have been an issue.
Stuff goes back to copyrights of versions of early laws and court opinions by private persons.
Early on –
Law text and mini court cites to law text.
See early named versions of USA laws — See table in 1 Stat. [USA laws] circa 1845.
See early US Reports with named Reporters – up to about 1875.
Related matter–
longer laws and opinions in 1860s — typewriters
longer subject indexes — auto printer typesetting
even worse with computers — laws, opinions and indexes
— public buried in zillions of words
— esp. by robot party hack special interest CONTROL laws and regs.
See the massive size of the US Code and Code of Fed Regs. — with zillions of cites.
Same in all States – much worse in larger States – CA, NY, etc.
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Recent econ boom in GA — major pressure on olde regime.