Georgia claims that publishing its state laws for free online is 'terrorism'

[Winehole23]

Government officials have threatened "rogue archivist" Carl Malamud with legal action many times for his efforts to make public government documents widely available for free, but the state of Georgia has set a new standard for fighting this ridiculous battle: It's suing Malamud for infringing its copyright of state laws (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2179815-ga-lawsuit.html) by -- horrors -- publishing them online.

The law has no copyright, because it's owned by the people. - Carl Malamud



The state's lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, accuses Malamud of piracy -- and worse, of "a form of 'terrorism.'" His offense: Through his website, public.resource.org (https://public.resource.org/index.html), he provides members of the public access to a searchable and downloadable scan (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-laws-of-georgia#/story) of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated -- that is, the entire body of state law. The state wants a court order forcing Malamud to stop.


Georgia and Malamud have been waging this battle for a couple of years, or ever since Malamud sent thumb drives (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ga/ga.gov.20130530.pdf) bearing the scans to the speaker of the state House of Representatives in 2013. A cease-and-desist order, which Malamud rebuffed, came virtually by return mail.


This isn't the first such battle Malamud has waged. For roughly two decades he's been working to make public laws, codes and court documents, well, public. At almost every turn he's been fought by government agencies that prefer to extract a fee from taxpayers for access, even though, as Malamud points out, the public pays for the work in the first place, via taxes.http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-state-of-georgia-copyright-wall-20150727-column.html#page=1

[Winehole23]

Georgia has gone further than any other state, Malamud says, by actually filing an infringement lawsuit. The state claims that Malamud has done more than merely publish public statutes. The texts of state laws, it agrees, should be "free to the public."

His offense, the lawsuit asserts, is the inclusion in his download of the "annotations" attached to those texts. These include "synopses of cases" interpreting the law, "summaries of Opinions of the Attorney General of Georgia" and other summaries. Each is "an original and creative work of authorship that is protected by copyrights owned by the state of Georgia," the suit claims.


Malamud doesn't accept the distinction. The whole package, he says, is "the official code of the state of Georgia" and to fully understand the law one needs to refer to the annotations too. To say you can have free access to one but pay for the other, he says, is like saying "you can have a sandwich for free but you have to pay for the mayonnaise, and the mayonnaise comes on all the sandwiches." He also points out that the free online version of the statutory texts isn't all that useful: As maintained by LexisNexis on a state contract, it can't be copied or downloaded, according to the attached copyright notice (http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/copyright.aspx).

same

[boutons_deux]

Freedom!

red-state Georgia State Law is SECRET

[DarrinS]

ok