'Public Resource' Wins 2012 Case. Judge Rules Posting Regulations Online is Fair Use (abajournal.com) 66
From an EFF announcement this week:
Technical standards like fire and electrical codes developed by private organizations but incorporated into public law can be freely disseminated without any liability for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The judge ruled that posting the materials constituted fair use — so the nonprofit group doing the posting won't be liable for copyright infringement. The American Bar Association Journal reports: The decision is a victory for public-domain advocate Carl Malamud and the group that he founded, Public.Resource.org. The group posts legal materials on its websites, including the standards developed by the three organizations that sued... "It has been over 10 years since plaintiffs filed suit in this case," said Malamud in a press release by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The U.S. Court of Appeals has found decisively in favor of the proposition that citizens must not be relegated to economy-class access to the law."
In 2012 Carl Malamud answered questions from Slashdot readers.
And now, finally, from the EFF's announcement: Tuesday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds the idea that our laws belong to all of us, and we should be able to find, read, and share them free of registration requirements, fees, and other roadblocks... "In a nation governed by the rule of law, private parties have no business controlling who can read, share, and speak the rules to which we are all subject," EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry said. "We are pleased that the Court of Appeals upheld what other U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court, have said for almost 200 years: No one should control access to the law."
Or, as the EFF puts it on another page, "Copyright cannot trump the essential public interest..."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
The judge ruled that posting the materials constituted fair use — so the nonprofit group doing the posting won't be liable for copyright infringement. The American Bar Association Journal reports: The decision is a victory for public-domain advocate Carl Malamud and the group that he founded, Public.Resource.org. The group posts legal materials on its websites, including the standards developed by the three organizations that sued... "It has been over 10 years since plaintiffs filed suit in this case," said Malamud in a press release by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The U.S. Court of Appeals has found decisively in favor of the proposition that citizens must not be relegated to economy-class access to the law."
In 2012 Carl Malamud answered questions from Slashdot readers.
And now, finally, from the EFF's announcement: Tuesday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds the idea that our laws belong to all of us, and we should be able to find, read, and share them free of registration requirements, fees, and other roadblocks... "In a nation governed by the rule of law, private parties have no business controlling who can read, share, and speak the rules to which we are all subject," EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry said. "We are pleased that the Court of Appeals upheld what other U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court, have said for almost 200 years: No one should control access to the law."
Or, as the EFF puts it on another page, "Copyright cannot trump the essential public interest..."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
But can the DMCA be bypassed for any docs (Score:4, Insightful)
But can the DMCA be bypassed for any docs that are DRM locked?
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But can the DMCA be bypassed for any docs that are DRM locked?
Separate issue.
Library of Congress is authorized to promulgate, as federal regulation, a list of DCMA exceptions. I believe they update that annually.
I expect this case will lead them to add explicit DRM bypass exceptions for such "sample legislation standards" at their next iteration.
Especially if we all ask for it in their pre-ruling comment period.
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Library of Congress is authorized to promulgate, as federal regulation, a list of DCMA exceptions. I believe they update that annually.
Every three years, expires unless renewed each cycle. Somebody needs to petition and show that DRM is interfering with a fair use exception.
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I remember back at the height of the NFC madness there were people talking about making the Print Screen key illegal. Of course, if there was ever any hope of that happening then Hollywood would have done it long ago.
This is the only sane opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
If the law isn't publicly available, how can we be expected to follow it?
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If the law isn't publicly available, how can we be expected to follow it?
Exactly.
Re:This is the only sane opinion (Score:5, Informative)
They expect(ed) you to pay a corporation to read the law, like any advanced fascist regime would do.
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Yeah. Regular people weren't meant to read the law, it's for professionals.
This kind of licensing and copywrite is part of the guild mentality.
You have to pay the guild to get any work done. If you want to do it yourself, you either need to pay in to become part of the guild, or pay to buy the guild's materials. For some things it's not legal at all to do it yourself so you must go through the guild.
To varying degrees this is present in utilities, medicine, engineering, and law. And in my town, glyphosate a
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And in my town, glyphosate and 2-4 d herbicide requires a license to purchase and use.
Considering how many people stupidly decide that if a 50:1 mix is called for, a 10:1 mix must be better, requiring some knowledge to buy the herbicides may be a good idea. I had a pesticide ticket about 40 years back, the test was timed, open book with a calculator if you wanted, so basically knowing the book and some simple math, easy to pass after the optional 2 day course, or a few hours with the book and practice test.
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If the law isn't publicly available, how can we be expected to follow it?
Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.
Re:This is the only sane opinion (Score:5, Informative)
In an era where even a lawyer has to look up the law to know it, it may be time to revisit that idea, at least for the finer points./
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Unfortunately, junking that rule won't work. If the prosecution has to prove that the accused knew the law, there would never be a conviction. Laws might as well not exist.
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That's why I said finer points and just revisit, not necessarily scrap. Perhaps adopt a reasonable person rule for knowing the law. For example, any reasonable person knows that robbing the liquor store or murdering someone is a crime, even if they don't know the fine points of the degree.
OTOH, if their mailbox is an inch too close to the road, we might need to cut them some slack.
Re:This is the only sane opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but what about: "if the law is too complex to be understood, or too hard to access, by a typical person that's a target for this law, the law is invalid"?
"Typical person" being a lower than average (but not totally idiotic) member of that class, "target for this law" being a class of people that usually deal with the subject matter (everyone for jaywalking, electricians/plumbers/etc for building codes, etc).
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A lot of the law is badly conceived and written, and we only get by because it is selectively enforced and because courts can interpret and invalidate it.
That's also why it's important to have "meta laws", like anti-discrimination ones that can get any law selectively targeting groups or any enforcement selectively targeting groups thrown out.
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"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
--George Carlin
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Yet we still punish them for breaching a law that is not understandable -- and not just by them, by anyone applying logic rather than political agenda.
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Unfortunately, junking that rule won't work. If the prosecution has to prove that the accused knew the law, there would never be a conviction. Laws might as well not exist.
Not really, there are standards of reasonableness that tend to prevail in such situations.
For instance, arguing that you did not know that you had to obey the speed limit would fall flat for anyone with a drivers license, since they received education in the law. We can typically agree on which laws a reasonable person should be aware o
Re:This is the only sane opinion (Score:4, Informative)
The insane part is the time and effort it took to get there. This shouldn't have needed two appeals, fourteen amicus briefs, and ten years. This could easily have been ruled from the bench.
The list of briefs in support of the appellant is abhorant. I mean the Copyright Alliance, sure, to be expected. But the American National Standards Institute, and the American Medical Association? The latter enjoys status as a quasi-legal body itself. I find it very troubling that they are concerned about the public knowing standards incorporated into law.
It's the right answer, and some say that means the system is working, but when it takes this much pain to get there, I don't agree that it represents a working system.
Re:This is the only sane opinion (Score:5, Informative)
The AMA publishes the CPT billing code books. They make big bucks from selling the codes used for medical billing.
The codes are legally required for billing.
This will cost them.
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Very simple: you hire a professional who has paid the money to get the law. Those are the folks who like this system.
The three organizations (Score:5, Informative)
The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), National Fire Protection Association Inc. (NFPA), and American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) are organizations that develop private sector codes and standards aimed at advancing public safety, ensuring compatibility across products and services, facilitating training, and spurring innovation.
ASTM, NFPA, and ASHRAE sued Public Resource in 2013 for copyright and trademark infringement and unfair competition.
Re:Allied with John The Pedo (Score:5, Informative)
The post by zidium is all we need to know to discard his posts as the ramblings of a Trumpist (a cult which hijacked the GOP.)
Whether or not Podesta is a pedophile (or anybody in opposition to the Trumpists who are often called pedos) has no relevance to the honest position of making public law PUBLIC!
Has everybody gone stupid?! Canceling people, their causes, and their legal positions by association has gone way too mainstream. It's beyond guilt by association; furthermore, you don't even need to prove anything - just accusations are enough.
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Has everybody gone stupid?!
Pretty much, yes. Note that "everybody" also includes people you agree with.
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It totally does include people who usually agree with me. People get triggered so easily and mindlessly demonize - this increased during social media and increased personalization by google, youtube etc. I've been observing this for decades, a gradual decline in tolerance. It's not intolerant at the start because you simply prefer the dopamine hits you get more of and crave more of those and the vapid suck-up personalities etc. then later as you become more sheltered "the other" looks so much worse due to
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Has everybody gone stupid?
No one has gone stupid. These stupid people always existed. Seriously Slashdot has always attracted some really "special" people, you just had to browse at -1 to see them.
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Yes, but...
ISTM that a much larger percentage of people are proud of their stupidity. This is probably because of various echo chambers reinforcing their opinions. It used to be that they'd find difficulty in discovering social support, but that's no longer true.
N.B.: This doesn't only apply to stupid positions, but to all unpopular positions. Including many that aren't so much stupid as evil. Also including those who are just weird. (For example, Slashdot is a community supporting ideas that would ha
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Not a Hillary supporter. I was free in my state to choose to vote 3rd party and I did.
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and this tells me everything to know you are truly unserious people; first you make an accusation that has had no evidence for years and present no evidence now. its also the most bottom of the barrel braindead argument you can use to protect your fragile brain from having to consider anything counter to the narratives you have a vested interest in keeping ("bad because liberal and liberals are pedos and that's the basis for all my political thought")
second, this ruling is a good thing by any measure but b
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and this tells me everything to know you are truly unserious people; first you make an accusation that has had no evidence for years and present no evidence now. its also the most bottom of the barrel braindead argument you can use to protect your fragile brain from having to consider anything counter to the narratives you have a vested interest in keeping ("bad because liberal and liberals are pedos and that's the basis for all my political thought")
second, this ruling is a good thing by any measure but because the person behind it, isn't even liberal just associated with a liberal and you dismiss it. if it was a conservative as the plaintiff you would be crowing about it nonstop. what a joke.
Really? It ought to tell you that you're being trolled on Slashdot. I bet this has happened to you before and will again.
Timely (Score:2)
I am just about to do some electrical work and need (access to) a copy of the relevant electrical codes.
I knew of the private publication of the model-codes-as-enacted and the litigation over them (which I recalled had limited their online publication and created risks when downloading), was just about to look into whether that was resolved.
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Yeah, but the interface is deliberately miserable to force you to buy a subscription to a heavily DRM'd service... that has a search function!
The code and referenced standards are a very messy web of documents, partially for the revenue stream that goes between multiple NFPA, ANSI, ASTM, and UL documents. To actually purchase all the documents you should have to support every nuance of the electrical code would be well over $100k every 3 years. The "bare minimum" is over $5,000.
So does anyone have links to the regulations? (Score:2)
... Especially the electrical code?
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(Found https://www.tooltexas.org/wp-c... [tooltexas.org]
This appears to be a Texas city that incorporated the 2017 version of the NEC and published it as a PDF on their web site.)
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You'll need the 2023 copy though. I say this as a licensed electrician. Who thinks the NFPA is a pain in the ass.
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Only if you intend to follow current industry standard, not if you simply want to follow the law. If the law mentions the 2023 copy, then it's fair game for publication.
If you simply want to follow the law, you need to find the specific standard incorporated by reference (IBR), which is basically never the current standard unless the IBR was made in the current year.
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... Especially the electrical code?
Did you search their site?
https://public.resource.org/ [resource.org]
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Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a fan of of interest groups creating "standards" which governments around the country simply rubber stamp with little to no meaningful thought, opportunity for public input during development or debate.
Governance of some of these organizations seems to be quite poor with little regard for evidence based decision making and tends to be heavily stacked to favor special interests and equipment vendors.
NEC participation for example is dominated by firefighters and equipment vendors with direct conflicts of interests to subject matter. Two decades after AFCI they published a paper trying to polish the fact they admit to STILL having NO evidence of real world efficacy despite costing billions per year in installation, maintenance and energy consumption. There are no requirements for impact studies or evidence based decision making.
Firefighters went nuts on rooftop solar effectively requiring outdoor high current electronics to be connected to each panel causing substantial increases in initial and ongoing maintenance costs resulting in additional fall risks to those performing the additional maintenance and installation steps. All this to address a hypothetical concern related to shock hazard to firefighters in the event of a fire that nobody will ever rely on working anyway.
There was no union of ladder climbers represented, no balancing of competing interests, no meaningful public notice or opportunity for public input. People wouldn't accept the FOP writing our laws yet this is directly analogous to what is actually going on with NEC.
Reliance on the private structures means governments lack the institutional competence and resources to effectively develop and evaluate requirements.
I personally think this practice should be discontinued in its entirety. Any regulations enforced by law should obviously be freely available to everyone.. yet this isn't enough. The underlying practice of farming out creation of law to special interests should be systematically dismantled. If special interests want to participate in a process that's fine more power to them. Rubber stamping literally everything they say verbatim is not.
Re:Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:1)
Firefighters did not go nuts. That's total nonsense. What you claim is overkill, is nothing more than having the ability to shut off each panel so there's not high voltage electricity running all over the roof, while firefighters are up there working.
Re: Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Protip: Solar panels output at best ~36-48V on their own, which means putting the inverter directly on the fucking panel makes it more dangerous since you moved high voltage from off the roof onto the roof.
Source: I was the fucking manufacturing tech at Sunspark Technologies.
Firefighters are fucking stupid.
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Ok, then what happens when you connect say 12 50V panels in series?
The per-module RSD requirement is stupid, but without it you cannot make an effective GFI or AFCI protection. The rationale for the requirement is what is insane. What I don't get is why none of the manufacturers have integrated them into the solar panels yet.
Re: Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:1)
600 volts with no way to shut it down.
I don't really get roof top solar myself. Doesn't make any sense. I've never heard of a situation where, who would use water pumps and hoses, to pump water, on an electrical substation that was burning. It just seems like a real bad location to put that kind of equipment.
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"600 volts with no way to shut it down."
Solar Panels are diodes. Black out one and you've given yourself a safe location to unhook the panel array, going every other panel with the blackout curtain.
Yea, I used to install these, too!
Re: Interest groups should not be writing laws (Score:1)
Thanks for mentioning that.
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The counterpoint is this:
Do you really want lawyers who know nothing of engineering or safety writing engineering safety standards?
NO, you definitely do NOT.
The current system isn't flawless by any means, but it's better than the alternative.
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If you're going to argue the constitution, you can't argue for the exception, as that's not part of the constitution. I might agree that it's a practical necessity, but that's not the basis you're arguing on.
FWIW, we really need a new constitution. I just wouldn't trust any collection of people I know to write an acceptable one. But amendments are just too hard. That has resulted in baroque reinterpretations of what various phrases means into totally different meanings. (Interstate commerce was never i
ISO Anyone? (Score:2)
ISO standards are expensive and licensed per engineer. It's a big problem.
Recent updates to FIPS makes the bulk of FIPS140-3 be contained within ISO 19790.
So the law of the land is written In a document that costs a lot of money to get.
It sounds like an equivalent situation and engineers should be able to start freely posting these documents.
Copyright cannot trump the essential public intr. (Score:2)
You can sue someone for downloading a show, or even for including a book used in the training corpus of a model. But... Copyright for thee, not for me, say the law men. Their field is too important, you see, unlike all the other ones.