Appeals court upholds right to post public laws online

The fact that this even made it to trial is flabbergasting, and truly highlights how unacceptably broken our copyright system is.<p>They were suing people for literally explaining the laws to people... as a violation of their copyright.<p>If that&#x27;s something we have to even consider - I want this fucking garbage copyright system destroyed.

Excellent ruling. The next question in my mind is whether incorporating private standards into legislation without compensation violates the the takings clause of the constitution.<p>It is well established that this clause applies to intangible property such as copyright. Furthermore I disagree with some aspects of the courts assessment regarding the purpose and impact to revenue. On the first point, there is a large overlap between people who need to know the legal requirements for building and those who want to know best practices - the later is nearly a subset of the former, especially once these best practices become the law. Furthermore, the distribution of incorporated standards has historically been a legal gray area at best. Just because there was little evidence of lost revenue in the past doesn&#x27;t mean there won&#x27;t be significant lost revenue after it becomes unambiguously legal.

This is great, I&#x27;ve suffered as a result of how this was previously. I built a garage and had it inspected. I failed an electrical inspection and was given a reference in the National Electrical Code. When I went to look it up to figure out how to remediate, most of the links were trying to sell a copy. NEC wants $145 or a $11.99 monthly subscription. I had to find an illicit copy in order to comply with my local regulations.

It is great to see this made clear in the U.S., as it facilitates the flow of information and efficiency. Canada also needs to do this for legally mandated regulations referring to the CSA, NRC, etc.

The conflict here is it costs a lot of effort (time and money) to do the hard work of figuring out what a good code should be. Used to be large cities (New York) would pay for it, and small towns would copy it - which meant if you lived in a smaller city you were freeloading off of New York (and in some cases you had to do something that made sense for New York but not where you were) which is unfair to New York&#x27;s taxpayers. By have some organization create a standard towns can more equally share the cost of building a good standard.<p>Standards organizations need to pay the engineers who do all the complex calculations to figure out what works. However I think everyone agrees the law shouldn&#x27;t be hidden from people who need to obey it.

Can&#x27;t wait to get my hands on more of the RTCA standards documents behind aviation equipment&#x2F;avionics regulations. Instead of having to beg borrow or steal just to be able to provide free help&#x2F;advice to organizations like the FAA.<p>Lots of input there from taxpayer funded organizations like the FAA and Mitre and MIT Lincon Labs and us tax payers end up expected to buy it back again...

This is superb, and Europe should follow suit.

So, prior to this ruling, there were laws that the public couldn&#x27;t get access to? I assume you could get them from magistrates and stuff though still, right? Or was it a complete lack of access?<p>Obviously online is still way preferred it just is crazy to me to think there was a law somewhere that you couldn&#x27;t easily get the full text of. How the heck am I supposed to follow a law I can&#x27;t read? lol

Well, there goes my defense that I couldn&#x27;t know the law because it was copyrighted and I didn&#x27;t have the money to buy a copy of the law in order to know what I could and could not do.