© Is for California
You might think that there's nothing a government won't try. You'd be right. But I was near stupefied to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it's not alone.
The state tries to control -- through copyright -- how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!
The state's out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.
Yes, what's ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.
Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.
On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free
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Sunday, September 14, 2008
California Charges for its Laws
From Paul Jacob's Common Sense:
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1 comment:
The reason you have to pay for much of the public information is because thousands of people spend many years taking records and combining them into one place. You can go check out public records for free, you just have to go to where the record exists on paper and find it yourself. The money you pay is for the service of having someone else provide you with the records. You can easily conduct your own background checks using all the free information.
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