Ok, I was all ready to go ballistic over this one, but after reading the text of the bill, I'm not really seeing the issue.
A few quick notes:
SEC. 4. PERMITTED ACTS.
(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday December 01, 2003 @11:11PM (#7605782)
You need to read the case about the building codes. I suggest you go to the guy's site where he tried to publish the building codes, and the case went all the way to SCOTUS.
Last time I checked (few months ago) the codes still weren't published even though he won.
I've tried getting the codes myself, for my state. They're over $70. Think about it for a minute. These aren't just a collection of facts. These codes are the LAW. So I have to pay a private company to find out what the law is.
What did the guy do? After searching through various retail locations and coming up empty, he decided to publish THE LAW of building codes for the particular town he was interested in, and he was taken to court by a private company.
I thought I could search my state/city's web site to find out what the codes were, but thanks to the private company, virtually all states/cities/towns in the US "adopt by reference", and don't publish what the actual codes are, therefore you are forced to pay if you want to know what the law is.
To make it simple, codes are necessarily published in a certain order, in a certain format. Changing the format wouldn't work. So if the private company publishes a book of codes (they do), you can't copy the book and put it on a web site, according to the proposed law. If the company also publishes the codes online, you can't do the same. So you'll go to their site you say? They don't publish all the codes. And the ones they do publish, you have to go through multiple directory trees, or they make it exceedingly and annoyingly difficult to get more than one or two sub sections at a time. If you are familiar with building codes, this is a non-starter.
The other option is 1. going to the library (it's a reference book, you can't take it out. or 2. going to the county clerk (a major pita in most cities, and it's a reference, you can't take it home).
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format. There are dead tree versions and unhelpful govt workers, but these are annoying to deal with.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format.
No, the parent was aggravated because this new bill will make it AGAINST THE LAW to republish the law. Not someone's interpretation of the law, or their handy concordance of the law, or their nice formatted book of the law, but the law itself!
If it were against the law to re-publish (which implies a publication in the first place) then the company publishing the laws would also have to stop publishing...
I'm more in agreement that this is a case where someone is taking data compiled by someone else and publishing that, which should be against the law. If you can point to the section that says that no-one has the right to look up the text of the law and re-publish that... but to me it seemed the law was only about re-publishing someone elses dat
If it were against the law to re-publish (which implies a publication in the first place) then the company publishing the laws would also have to stop publishing...
Not if they owned the exclusive right to publish, ie copyright.
but to me it seemed the law was only about re-publishing someone elses database (like via a database scraper)
But it's not "like via a database scraper." It's more like "looking up the law at the library, copying it down, and putting it on a website."
Not if they owned the exclusive right to publish, ie copyright.
That's what I mean, I don't see how the law is saying that is disallowed - the law is the law and not copyrightable! Only a work based on the law would be copyrightable, in this case the database. You would always be able to go back to the original musty tomes that make up the law and publish that if you liked. You just can't copy the work of someone else who did so. I don't see where this new law is saying anything like there's a landrush
From "I'm feeling lucky" google search for 'building codes publish court case', or here [constructionweblinks.com].
(article dated last Feb 10.)
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether building codes, once enacted into law, retain copyright protection. The Supreme Court's decision to hear the issue came after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that building codes, when enacted into law, could not be copyrighted.
skip skip skip
The Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. (SBCCI) is a non-profit organ
That does clear it up, though I think there are a number of vectors an angry citizen could use to force the matter and get free versons of the law that they could republish...
Still, very irksome that they would publish laws by reference instead of by value!
So, basically the local government is being lazy (or cost efficient...) by allowing someone else to develop the building codes that they should be developing.
In a weird way, it sort of works out: gov't spends taxpayers money developing building codes then tries to recoup it through ?taxes, OR allows someone else to develop the building codes and lets them worry about paying for development costs (in this case, by selling it to those who use it.) It's the ultimate user pays system.
Hell, why not subcontract out all lawmaking and have Congress meet once a year to update all the references to the corporate databases of laws? It would save taxpayer money in so many ways. Congress wouldn't need to employ so many staffers to get things done, the Federal Register could be reduced to a few pages telling people where to go to find the laws.
And anyone who actually wants to know the previously perfectly legal action they're about to take is now a felony, all they'll need to do is pay the La
The "you can't copy my database" law covers the content, not the context.
Thus it doesn't matter if you got your version of the building code from some musty tome - the fact that you are publishing the information in any form at all means that you've "stolen" the information that the database compiler "owns". This isn't a case of copyright infringement - it's not the presentation of the information, it's the information itself that is covered.
Think about that the next time you write your friend's name and
I don't think you have this one quite right - IF the codes were copyrighted (currently not possible per the 5th Circuit's en banc decision, but under SCOTUS review), then you would not be able to copy or distribute the codes w/o permission. The db law would not change anything in this imaginary world - it would be a straight forward application of copyright law.
The proposed db bill only comes into play if someone compiles non-copyrighted/non-exclusively licensed material into a convenient form. The db
Yes, you were reading the poster wrong. He couldn't republish the codes that the clerk gave him because those codes ARE the company's codes. It's true that "the only way you can get in trouble is if you republish a lot of this data and can't prove you got it from anything else except the commercial database." But the catch is that there is no other source for this information.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday December 01, 2003 @11:50PM (#7606051)
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format. There are dead tree versions and unhelpful govt workers, but these are annoying to deal with.
You are misunderstanding, and that's what's annoying. The government entities, whether they are state, city, or town, are NOT publishing period. They have INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE the codes (laws), and they have purchased for the clerk (because the clerk is in the court) one copy for the clerk's use. Because everything that is in the clerk's office that is a law can be read by the public during certain business hours, the public can access if the clerk is not busy, if it isn't a lunch hour, if you can take time off during a work day...
These are laws. Not a collection of facts like baseball statistics.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in an easy-to-use format. Problem is that they charge more than you want to pay.
More wrong. One organization put together the code. They make their money by selling the code to the trades that are forced to buy from their monopoly if they want to work. Forced to buy the law. Are you understanding this? Forced to buy the law. Not baseball statistics.
Therefore, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're mad that you can't take their data and republish it. Since that's all that I can see is prohibited; you're still free to hassle that clerk until they cough up the codes and then publish THAT. In fact, the only way you can get in trouble is if you republish a lot of this data and can't prove you got it from anything else except the commercial database.
Even more wrong.
The only place you can get it is from buying their book, from the clerk (you can't take it out, you can't sit there and hand copy, you can't bring your own photocopy machine to the clerk's office) or from the library (sit there and copy, what by hand? Copy machine? Who's, yours? Theirs? How much paper/toner will they allow you? How much time?)
And those are the three places, according to facts as came out in the court cases over the building codes case. Regardless of whether, and as it was listed in the case, you collected the code (LAWS) from buying the book, from the clerk, from the library, YOU STILL CAN'T PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK, OR ON THE INTERNET. WHETHER FOR PROFIT, OR NOT. The guy won the case, now the National Electrical organization, and joined by the Building Code organization are pushing this bill to overturn that case.
So, while I can sympathize with your dilemna, you might direct your anger more towards the useless govt workers who aren't publishing the codes in a useful manner than the DB company that spent a lot of time trying to make them more usable (if more costly).
As stated earlier, it isn't a government problem of not publishing codes in a useful manner. And it isn't a database company spending a lot of time trying to make them more usable. It is a private organization that is putting together, and publishing the codes (LAWS) themselves, and restricting anyone else from listing those codes (LAWS), and threatening/taking to court anyone who tries (the National Electrical Code Assocation was the case, the Building Codes association joined, and the National Fire Protection Association has threatened others).
So then the problem isn't this bill, it's the fact that we have a corporation making laws and not the government. Perhaps that is what needs to be addressed.
Waitaminute. Your local government has (through laziness) a body of law with references to a commercial document. What prohibits your local government from publishing that law explicitly, should it choose to do so? Is the government body contractually obligated not to publish the law explicitly? It strikes me that the error is with the government body for referencing someone else's IP in a law, and not with the company which is gleefully charging for it. Could you not seek legal aid to get a court order to
The guy won the case, now the National Electrical organization, and joined by the Building Code organization are pushing this bill to overturn that case.
I didn't think you could do that - get a new law, or have an existing one altered, and then retroactively apply it to previously settled cases.
If true then, for example, if it became legal to smoke certain currently illegal substances, literally millions of people could flood the appeals courts to get prior convictions overturned or erased from the recor
The guy won the case, now the National Electrical organization, and joined by the Building Code organization are pushing this bill to overturn that case.
I didn't think you could do that - get a new law, or have an existing one altered, and then retroactively apply it to previously settled cases.
I think what was meant was "overturn the precedent set by that case", not the case itself.
It happens in federal law as well. For example, the FDA has recognized several standards bodies such as the USP as being "blessed" in setting policy. If you follow these policies you won't run into trouble - if you don't you're on your own. And yet, if you want a copy of the USP, you have to pay an arm and a leg for it.
I'm all for private companies selling guides to complying with regulations. But no regulator should endorse a particular standards body without making the standards public information.
O
"Be there. Aloha."
-- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
I don't see what's wrong here (Score:5, Informative)
A few quick notes:
Open them eyes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time I checked (few months ago) the codes still weren't published even though he won.
I've tried getting the codes myself, for my state. They're over $70. Think about it for a minute. These aren't just a collection of facts. These codes are the LAW. So I have to pay a private company to find out what the law is.
What did the guy do? After searching through various retail locations and coming up empty, he decided to publish THE LAW of building codes for the particular town he was interested in, and he was taken to court by a private company.
I thought I could search my state/city's web site to find out what the codes were, but thanks to the private company, virtually all states/cities/towns in the US "adopt by reference", and don't publish what the actual codes are, therefore you are forced to pay if you want to know what the law is.
To make it simple, codes are necessarily published in a certain order, in a certain format. Changing the format wouldn't work. So if the private company publishes a book of codes (they do), you can't copy the book and put it on a web site, according to the proposed law. If the company also publishes the codes online, you can't do the same. So you'll go to their site you say? They don't publish all the codes. And the ones they do publish, you have to go through multiple directory trees, or they make it exceedingly and annoyingly difficult to get more than one or two sub sections at a time. If you are familiar with building codes, this is a non-starter.
The other option is 1. going to the library (it's a reference book, you can't take it out. or 2. going to the county clerk (a major pita in most cities, and it's a reference, you can't take it home).
Can you see it now?
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format. There are dead tree versions and unhelpful govt workers, but these are annoying to deal with.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:2)
No, the parent was aggravated because this new bill will make it AGAINST THE LAW to republish the law. Not someone's interpretation of the law, or their handy concordance of the law, or their nice formatted book of the law, but the law itself!
Not seeing it (Score:2)
I'm more in agreement that this is a case where someone is taking data compiled by someone else and publishing that, which should be against the law. If you can point to the section that says that no-one has the right to look up the text of the law and re-publish that... but to me it seemed the law was only about re-publishing someone elses dat
Re:Not seeing it (Score:2)
Not if they owned the exclusive right to publish, ie copyright.
But it's not "like via a database scraper." It's more like "looking up the law at the library, copying it down, and putting it on a website."
Re:Not seeing it (Score:2)
That's what I mean, I don't see how the law is saying that is disallowed - the law is the law and not copyrightable! Only a work based on the law would be copyrightable, in this case the database. You would always be able to go back to the original musty tomes that make up the law and publish that if you liked. You just can't copy the work of someone else who did so. I don't see where this new law is saying anything like there's a landrush
Re:Not seeing it (Score:2)
skip skip skip
Thanks (Score:1)
Still, very irksome that they would publish laws by reference instead of by value!
Re:Not seeing it (Score:1)
So, basically the local government is being lazy (or cost efficient...) by allowing someone else to develop the building codes that they should be developing.
In a weird way, it sort of works out: gov't spends taxpayers money developing building codes then tries to recoup it through ?taxes, OR allows someone else to develop the building codes and lets them worry about paying for development costs (in this case, by selling it to those who use it.) It's the ultimate user pays system.
Either way, someone is
Re:Not seeing it (Score:1)
And anyone who actually wants to know the previously perfectly legal action they're about to take is now a felony, all they'll need to do is pay the La
Re:Not seeing it (Score:1)
OH NO! It's the Slippery Slope Of DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
If you don't like it, get out there and vote vote vote!
Re:Not seeing it (Score:1)
Thus it doesn't matter if you got your version of the building code from some musty tome - the fact that you are publishing the information in any form at all means that you've "stolen" the information that the database compiler "owns". This isn't a case of copyright infringement - it's not the presentation of the information, it's the information itself that is covered.
Think about that the next time you write your friend's name and
Re:Not seeing it (Score:1)
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:1)
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are misunderstanding, and that's what's annoying. The government entities, whether they are state, city, or town, are NOT publishing period. They have INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE the codes (laws), and they have purchased for the clerk (because the clerk is in the court) one copy for the clerk's use. Because everything that is in the clerk's office that is a law can be read by the public during certain business hours, the public can access if the clerk is not busy, if it isn't a lunch hour, if you can take time off during a work day...
These are laws. Not a collection of facts like baseball statistics.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in an easy-to-use format. Problem is that they charge more than you want to pay.
More wrong. One organization put together the code. They make their money by selling the code to the trades that are forced to buy from their monopoly if they want to work. Forced to buy the law. Are you understanding this? Forced to buy the law. Not baseball statistics.
Therefore, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're mad that you can't take their data and republish it. Since that's all that I can see is prohibited; you're still free to hassle that clerk until they cough up the codes and then publish THAT. In fact, the only way you can get in trouble is if you republish a lot of this data and can't prove you got it from anything else except the commercial database.
Even more wrong.
The only place you can get it is from buying their book, from the clerk (you can't take it out, you can't sit there and hand copy, you can't bring your own photocopy machine to the clerk's office) or from the library (sit there and copy, what by hand? Copy machine? Who's, yours? Theirs? How much paper/toner will they allow you? How much time?)
And those are the three places, according to facts as came out in the court cases over the building codes case. Regardless of whether, and as it was listed in the case, you collected the code (LAWS) from buying the book, from the clerk, from the library, YOU STILL CAN'T PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK, OR ON THE INTERNET. WHETHER FOR PROFIT, OR NOT. The guy won the case, now the National Electrical organization, and joined by the Building Code organization are pushing this bill to overturn that case.
So, while I can sympathize with your dilemna, you might direct your anger more towards the useless govt workers who aren't publishing the codes in a useful manner than the DB company that spent a lot of time trying to make them more usable (if more costly).
As stated earlier, it isn't a government problem of not publishing codes in a useful manner. And it isn't a database company spending a lot of time trying to make them more usable. It is a private organization that is putting together, and publishing the codes (LAWS) themselves, and restricting anyone else from listing those codes (LAWS), and threatening/taking to court anyone who tries (the National Electrical Code Assocation was the case, the Building Codes association joined, and the National Fire Protection Association has threatened others).
So get your facts straight.
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:2)
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:1, Interesting)
Your local government has (through laziness) a body of law with references to a commercial document. What prohibits your local government from publishing that law explicitly, should it choose to do so? Is the government body contractually obligated not to publish the law explicitly? It strikes me that the error is with the government body for referencing someone else's IP in a law, and not with the company which is gleefully charging for it.
Could you not seek legal aid to get a court order to
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:2)
I didn't think you could do that - get a new law, or have an existing one altered, and then retroactively apply it to previously settled cases.
If true then, for example, if it became legal to smoke certain currently illegal substances, literally millions of people could flood the appeals courts to get prior convictions overturned or erased from the recor
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:1)
I think what was meant was "overturn the precedent set by that case", not the case itself.
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:2)
SCOTUS n. A highly sensitive patch of skin between the legs running from the genitalia, to the anus. Usage: Yo, Bitch! Lick my scotus.
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:1)
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:1)
Re:Open them eyes... (Score:2)
I'm all for private companies selling guides to complying with regulations. But no regulator should endorse a particular standards body without making the standards public information.
O