Tag Archives: open_access

Georgia Claims Its Annotated Laws Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Carl Malamud For Publishing The Law, by Mike Masnick, techdirt (Jul 30, 2013). Masnick notes that, technically, states that claim to be able to copyright their laws are on reasonably firm legal ground, even if they're on completely illogical common sense ground but that fact "doesn't make it any saner to claim such a copyright." Among other things, Georgia claims (apparently as a justification) that the unannotated Georgia Code is available to the public at no charge at www.legis.ga.gov. Masnick continues:

It's not as if the state needed the "incentive" of copyright to publish an annotated version of the law. If anything, this seems like copyright misuse. But, even beyond that, it just seems counterproductive from a public policy standpoint to want to make your own laws harder to understand.

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