
You cannot have a digital copy of the DC Code - cmaggard
http://macwright.org/2013/02/20/you-cannot-have-the-code.html
======
throwaway420
This is certainly a problem, but I see a larger, more troubling problem here
associated with access to the legal code.

Yes, what laws exist should be made available in as many formats as possible,
including some easily accessible electronic format. I doubt that anybody here
would disagree with that.

But the real issue here is that there are so many laws and regulations that it
becomes impossible for any one human being to know all of them. Any person who
goes about their day in a normal fashion breaks multiple laws every day.

When the state starts policing moral and ethical behavior rather than merely
defending people against aggression, you come up with page after page of laws
and it becomes impossible to know what is correct. This culture of "every
problem needs a law to solve it" is in my opinion the priority here, not
merely making thousands of pages of useless laws somehow more accessible.
You're never going to read them anyway.

~~~
rayiner
There has never been a successful society of an serious complexity that had
law that could be codified in a form where one person could understand them
all. In feudal England prior to the ascension of the common law courts,
instead of law you had power: the King (acting through representatives) or
lower lords would adjudicate disputes and regulate society.

Saying "we have too many laws--nobody can know them all at once" is like
saying "Linux has too many lines of code--nobody can understand it all at
once." The complexity is unavoidable. You can shift it around, but you can't
get rid of it.

~~~
Retric
That's not true, the Code of Hammurabi had 282 laws which really was it. Now
most people could not read but the average person had a much better
understanding of what to avoid doing. The issue is the separation between well
understood laws with fuzzy edge cases and laws that people simply don't know
about.

~~~
rayiner
I wouldn't call ancient Babylon a "seriously complex" society. Pre-industrial
societies have limited complexity. When everyone is mostly a self-sufficient
farmer on his own land minding his own business, the need for law is
dramatically lessened than industrial societies where all the necessities of
sustaining one life may be the product of the labor of thousands of different
people all interacting with each other.

Also: Babylon was essentially a dictatorship. You don't need law when one
person is empowered to call all the shots.

~~~
Retric
Babylon had large city's and a range of industry's. We are not talking about
self sufficient farmers but weavers, blacksmiths, potters, architects,
construction workers, priests, teachers, warriors, etc. They dealt with
complex issues like what happens when you build someone a house and it falls
down killing the son of the person that bought the house.

~~~
phillmv
Our society is also, easily, 100x more complex than ancient Babylon. Not least
of which because it also has, what, 1000x times more people?

~~~
rayiner
I think social complexity scales non-linearly with size and population density
(like code complexity), and also scales with things like the number of people
possibly affected by one person's activity. Our society is easily millions of
times more complex than ancient Babylon.

~~~
Retric
That's more or less irrelevant to to the legal code. Consider what laws could
we remove with 150 million people or how dealing with 600 million people force
a lot of new legal complexity.

What really leads to complexity in the legal code is the level of
institutionalized corruption. AKA only companies owned by someone living
within 50 miles of X and 30 miles of Y may do XYZ. Coupled with the age of the
legal system which adds cruft over time.

~~~
rayiner
> That's more or less irrelevant to to the legal code.

Complexity in the society the legal code is designed to govern is irrelevant
to the complexity of that legal code?

> What really leads to complexity in the legal code is the level of
> institutionalized corruption. AKA only companies owned by someone living
> within 50 miles of X and 30 miles of Y may do XYZ.

Do you think that's what laws actually look like?

~~~
Retric
Facebooks social graph is incredibly complex, the code that maintains it is
slightly more complex than what you would need for 1/10 the users and 1/100th
the social graph.

Yes, that law was an exaggeration but there are plenty of examples that
include specifics on where the headquarters is which is effectively the same
thing.

As to pork, the 50 billion sandy bill 17 billion relating to sand and then a
bunch of random junk such as 33 million for Amtrack which is a for profit
company. Now in this case nobody felt the need to hide it, but there are
plenty of past spending bills aka law that have really specific contract
requirements. EX: 693,000$ (~1/20,000th the budget) for beef improvement
research in Missouri and Texas went to the Beef Improvement Federation as the
only group meeting the requirements despite not being directly named in law.
Granted by it's self not a big deal but plenty of things such as vary narrow
import tarrifs stick around ex: refined vs raw sugar.
<http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019>

------
themgt
Working with the local Code for America group, we've been trying to put a
basic budget app online and it's an amazing clusterfuck. The city published
incredibly incomplete budget docs in a Google Fusion table, and more detailed
documents in images-embedded-in-PDFs.

Trying to get access to the underlying information and talking with the city's
"chief information officer", turns out the actual budget numbers don't really
quite add up due to department moves and program changes and such, so they
literally have "a guy" who is entering numbers manually into a Word document
based on black magic, to make it all add up.

This is the sort of thing where if the tech crowd pushes to get the output
data open and accessible, it will be a strong incentive to stop the black
magic happening earlier in the process.

------
DanielBMarkham
"...this is not a failure of the Council itself..."

I'm calling bullshit. The council should make a law that says all legal code
stays in the public domain no matter what. Then a legal case would set up, and
then _all_ cities would have resolution on this.

There's nobody else but the council. We don't elect lexis-nexis, and council
members are the only guys there that represent our interests.

Yes, it's certainly fair to say it's a complex issue, and there are good
reasons why it's not available, but make no mistake: the council here is the
_only_ party responsible.

~~~
mlent
I agree to some extent, the Council did hire West to publish their code,
rather than self-publishing. Here in Arizona, the state self-published and as
a result, the laws are available online
(<http://www.azleg.state.az.us/arizonarevisedstatutes.asp>). I'm not sure I
know enough to understand why the Council chose West over self-publication.

~~~
Evbn
I bet you can guess. Hint: $

------
tantalor
You could make your own. Take the bills (which are free) and compile them
yourself. Boom, your own copy of the DC Code. You can then release it under a
permissive license or whatever.

The hard part is compiling the bills. From the blog,

    
    
      Each bill is then downloaded by an employee of the
      company that wins the contract for maintaining the bill.
      This person must hold a law degree from an ABA accredited
      law school, and they cannot be a subcontractor.
    

(<http://macwright.org/2013/02/13/the-code-compiled.html>)

This is why the code can be copyrighted. Like a cookbook which extends a
recipe with "substantial literary expression", the code extends the bills with
creative expression.

~~~
tmcw
The action/creativity editing of bills into the law is not a justification for
copyright, and it has not been used by West (or any other entity) to claim
copyright. West claims copyright on design, annotations, citation, and
database structure.

~~~
tantalor
So if they don't claim copyright on the law text itself, why not copy it? I'm
confused now.

Who cares if they copyright the design, annotations, citations (dubious!), or
database structures?

~~~
gamblor956
You can copy the _text_ itself, but much of the other stuff, i.e, the
formatting, is copyrighted.

Also, I'm going to point out that non-lawyers like MacWright usually
misunderstand the law (and he has in this instance), so his blog is generally
not useful guidance.

~~~
tmcw
You're right that I'm not a lawyer, but wrong about the rest. Beyond
formatting, inclusions of copyrighted text have allowed West to claim
copyright over the work - see adjacent comments (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5252150>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5252118> ) as well as this great article
by a real-life lawyer: [http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/07/15/tear-
down-this...](http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/07/15/tear-down-this-
paywall/)

~~~
gamblor956
The relevant conclusion from the legal blog: " _private publishers can’t claim
much copyright protection in state codes:_ "

The article and the HN comments linked are about _attempts_ by private
publishers to lay claim to state codes, not about their _success_ in doing so.
The blog article concluded that they would be completely unsuccessful as to
copyrighting the text itself and generally cites case law supporting this
proposition. (See the blog for the cites.)

As I stated before, the _text_ of the state codes cannot be copyrighted as a
basic rule of American law.

Other aspects can be copyrighted, and this is where copyright gets tricky. The
formatting (i.e., presentation) of a state code can be copyrighted, as can
analysis of the code (b/c that is a distinct work), and the particular
database selection can also be copyrighted within reason (meaning the
particular choice of items stored and the relationships between them, so long
as such choice and relationships are not purely functional).

------
skittles
Just scan the books, OCR the scans, and remove the copyrighted information
that the publisher added to the codes. You then have a perfectly legal,
digital copy. Nobody does this because the codes change over time and there's
no way to protect your work. It would be freely available to everyone as soon
as the first copy hits an open server. It would also be nearly worthless as
soon as the new version comes out (do you want to be the attorney that shows
up to court without knowing the new changes?).

~~~
officemonkey
Since passed laws are basically changesets of the existing code, it should be
a simple matter of applying patches based on the new laws.

In other words, once you digitize the code the first time, any git could
update it.

<http://macwright.org/2013/02/13/the-code-compiled.html>

~~~
kyllo
No pun intended, right?

That might actually be a great idea--store all state and federal laws in
public Git repos. Each bill introduced to the legislature is a pull request
and if they pass it, it gets merged.

~~~
officemonkey
It would be amazing to read the entire history of the bill, from initial
drafting through the congressional conference committee and see who was
responsible for every change.

~~~
kyllo
Exactly. You could 'git blame' the law.

Tech is so far ahead of government and industry it's mind-blowing. What is the
D.C. Council paying Westlaw for, again? Having version control and a database?

~~~
officemonkey
Don't forget burning a CD and printing off hard copies.

------
drucken
Why is something as basic as the description and distribution of public law
not treated the same across all US states? Surely, this is one area where
Federal statute must apply...

I mean I've heard of "jurisdictional arbitrage" but even for the US, this is
starting to be insane when it applies to the actual letters of the law!

~~~
davidp
Because technically[1] the US comprises 50 independent states[2]. Each is free
to conduct its affairs freely except for specific powers reserved for the
federal government[1].

Today people think of "the United States" as both a singular noun and a
singular government, but that's not the formal legal structure.

Your point is well taken, though: _All_ laws ought to be open and freely
available to the public. Anything else would be Orwellian.[3]

[1] If you hold the 10th amendment and its juridical descendants to have
meaning.

[2] In the 18th-century sense of the word, i.e. a sovereign jurisdiction.

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22> [4]

[4] Yes, I know Orwell didn't write Catch-22.

------
fleitz
Bullshit. There is no way the law is subject to copyright. The contractor may
claim copyright but I doubt it would standup in court at all.

~~~
jbronn
Although it's absurd, it's been claimed many times before. For example,
municipalities incorporate model building codes as law, which publishers
objected to being placed online. In 2002 this issue bubbled up to the 5th
circuit which held that the laws were not subject to copyright protection. The
case is _Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress_ , 293 F.3d 791:

[https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/293/293.F3d.791.99...](https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/293/293.F3d.791.99-40632.html)

This is compelling precedent if the copyright dispute ever reaches the federal
district court in DC.

~~~
brudgers
I was thinking of _Veek_ as I was reading the article. <IANAL> But my
understanding is that model codes can by protected by copyright, but that once
they are adopted as law, they cannot be. On the other hand, lack of public
access is due to the particular option DC chose - Municode.com has been around
for at least twelve years. We used it as the reference for city employees when
I worked in city government.

<http://www.municode.com/Library>

------
lignuist
Crowdsource a complete transcription and make it public. That should be legal,
but I'm not totally sure, since I don't have a copy of the law.

------
JackFr
I've long felt that novel legal arguments should be considered intellectual
property. Once lawyers are forced to pay to cite precedent, the whole
landscape will change....

~~~
timrogers
I'm confused by this comment. What change would you expect? What would the
benefit be? (Just interested.)

~~~
joe_the_user
I believe he's hoping the whole legal system would be forced to become less
ponderous - sad and not terribly admirable hope. Those people who supported
absurdity on the principle that "no one would let such absurdity stand" are a
sad footnote in the advance of bureaucratic complexity. The best you can say
is they probably haven't done as much damage as the simply greedy.

------
axusgrad
You can look at the DC Code from links here
[http://dc.gov/DC/Government/DC+Courts+&+Laws/DC+Laws](http://dc.gov/DC/Government/DC+Courts+&+Laws/DC+Laws),
but you cannot have it to re-use or republish. The guy posting does a lot with
open maps, so he probably wants to reuse the data in more interesting way.

------
dclowd9901
This article almost makes me want to create my own automated scanner/ocr just
to distribute it in torrent.

~~~
joshdick
That didn't end up well for the last guy who tried it ...

~~~
rosser
Actually, assuming you're referring to Aaron Swartz, he came out reasonably
well from his efforts with PACER, which is a lot more analogous to the
situation in TFA than JSTOR.

------
glfomfn
I cannot understand how its in public domain and you are not allowed to make a
digital copy. Obviously if someone has gone through the process of digitizing,
even if its in public domain, they can have a copyright over the specific
digital copy. However that doesn't stop you from creating a copy yourself,
right ? For sure that's not easily done but still that doesn't mean you are
not allowed to do so. Am i missing something ?

------
doug1001
disclaimer: my understanding of the legislative process is based entirely on
Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill"
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyeJ55o3El0>).

so a citizen's access to a particular DC statute is impossible without that
citizen infringing a copyright? I wonder if circumstances such as these would
constitute "fair use" (which as i understand it is a valid defense to
copyright infringement).

also, i'm aware that doing things that would otherwise constitute intellectual
property infringement, can be justified by the "Essential Facilities" doctrine
--originally an Anti-Trust safe harbor, though it's also been applied to IP.
This seems to apply here.

------
stcredzero
How about an "altruist black-hat" in China scrape the site then post a
torrent? This sort of thing has as much a potential for good as it has for
mischief. Someone could organize this.

------
thinkcomp
Federal laws are not copyrightable per 17 U.S.C. § 105:

<http://www.plainsite.org/laws/index.html?id=13347>

I'm not sure if D.C. is considered part of the federal government, but if it
is, then there's nothing to worry about in terms of copyright violations.

~~~
pilsetnieks
I assume that it is not the laws that are copyrighted but this concrete
representation of them - the same way, say, Beethoven's 5th symphony is not
copyrighted but recordings of its performances are - to the performers, not
the composer.

------
incision
Serious question...

If you had direct access to people (DC, not Westlaw) with the power to change
this. How would you phrase the argument against the current situation and what
would you suggest as an alternative?

~~~
tmcw
DC is interested in changing this and will have the opportunity to do so in a
year, when the Lexis contract expires and they can write a new one - or try to
bring it in-house.

------
ludflu
as someone who works for TR, this makes me sad.

~~~
tantalor
TR?

~~~
m0nastic
Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Westlaw (the contractor who presently
has the contract in DC)

------
crappy
The individual governments that are in this bind should just TAKE their
copyright back by eminent domain.

Done.

~~~
mlent
Then they have to pay fair market value for this. Consider how much money that
is. West Law's pricing model is a "secret", but it's estimated at $70 per
search or $27 per minute. For one person.

To buy DC's case law for one attorney, it's a little under $2,000.
[http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-
products/Westla...](http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-
products/WestlawNext/Essentials-Library--District-of-Columbia-WestlawNext-
PRO/p/100013946)

I'm guessing the "fair market value" would be INSANE.

~~~
ghuntley
Westlaw's T&C contains this wonderful gem....

Subscriber Agreement and this Order Form will automatically renew for
consecutive 12-month periods ("Renewal Term"), and the Monthly WestlawPRO
Charges for the Renewal Term _will increase 7% per year_ unless either party
gives written notice of cancellation to the other party at least 30 days in
advance of any Renewal Term

------
ianstallings
AFAIK all code books are like this. I've never seen one that is free but I
might be wrong.

~~~
tmcw
You are indeed wrong. Most states maintain the code internally and release it
in a complete, copyright-free form. Here are a few with nice mirrors:
<http://www.statedecoded.com/states/>

~~~
ianstallings
Cool thanks for the info! I always thought it was some racket like textbooks.

------
jrs235
Aren't statutes and laws merely facts? I thought facts aren't protected by
copyright.

~~~
timrogers
Not sure they can be considered _fait accompli_ necessarily because they are
"works". The rule [1] they can't be copyright by virtue of what they are seems
more compelling.

[1] [http://macwright.org/2013/02/14/the-law-is-public-
domain.htm...](http://macwright.org/2013/02/14/the-law-is-public-domain.html)

