David Post , commenting on the State of Oregon’s rather perverse filing of copyright infringement notices on several websites that published the Oregon Revised Statutes,
What burns me up is that the State of Oregon would choose to assert its rather fanciful copyright claim for the purpose of making public access to the authoritative version of its laws more, rather than less, difficult. It is completely outrageous that in 2008 we do not have a complete and authoritative compendium of all of the laws of the 50 States, and the federal government, available at no cost on the net.
He incidentally doesn’t think Oregon has a very strong copyright claim, either.
There’s an old dictum that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” It would seem that there’s a strong incentive at work to keep people ignorant.
UPDATE (Alex Knapp): I can’t comment on the merits of Oregon’s position, as I haven’t had a chance to read the full facts of the case. However, I can definitively say that this statement is crap:
It is completely outrageous that in 2008 we do not have a complete and authoritative compendium of all of the laws of the 50 States, and the federal government, available at no cost on the net.
You can find this in several places, one of which is here. It’s also worth noting that all 50 states publish their codes on the web for free, as do most municipalities.
