[Infowarrior] - Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can't publish them

[Richard Forno]

Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can't publish them
Posted by Cory Doctorow, April 15, 2008 10:26 PM | permalink

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/15/oregon-our-laws-are.html

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

    The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites
like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon
laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.

    We've sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and
explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over
the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective
and from their own enabling legislation.

    The position of the Legislative Counsel is that their public access
obligations have been fulfilled by their web site. However, their web site
has over 500,000 HTML errors, does not meet Section 508 accessibility
requirements, has no metadata, as our second letter points out.

    Particularly galling is the fact that Thomson West has also made a copy
of these statutes and has done so without a commercial license, but the
Legislative Counsel explicitly told Tim Stanley of Justia that they weren't
going to send cease and desist letters to West. Evidently, it is much easier
to pick on the little guys.

    Oregon is not unique in asserting copyright over state law, but they are
definitely one of the more aggressive in this kind of FUD campaign. Justia
and Public.Resource.Org have decided this is an important issue to resolve
and we're going to hold firm on this. Anybody else who is making a mirror of
the Oregon law should drop me a line and let me know.