Georgia claims that publishing its state laws for free online is 'terrorism'

Georgia provides state legislatures with only printed copies of proposed bills. So when a change is made to a large bill, it is hard to be aware of it.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-state-of-georgia-copyright-wall-20150727-column.html#page=1

Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
July 27, 2015

Government officials have threatened "rogue archivist" Carl Malamud with legal action many times for his efforts to make public government documents widely available for free, but the state of Georgia has set a new standard for fighting this ridiculous battle: It's suing Malamud for infringing its copyright of state laws by -- horrors -- publishing them online.

The state's lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, accuses Malamud of piracy -- and worse, of "a form of 'terrorism.'" His offense: Through his website, public.resource.org, he provides members of the public access to a searchable and downloadable scan of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated -- that is, the entire body of state law. The state wants a court order forcing Malamud to stop.

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This isn't the first such battle Malamud has waged. For roughly two decades he's been working to make public laws, codes and court documents, well, public. At almost every turn he's been fought by government agencies that prefer to extract a fee from taxpayers for access, even though, as Malamud points out, the public pays for the work in the first place, via taxes.

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Georgia has gone further than any other state, Malamud says, by actually filing an infringement lawsuit. The state claims that Malamud has done more than merely publish public statutes. The texts of state laws, it agrees, should be "free to the public."

His offense, the lawsuit asserts, is the inclusion in his download of the "annotations" attached to those texts. These include "synopses of cases" interpreting the law, "summaries of Opinions of the Attorney General of Georgia" and other summaries. Each is "an original and creative work of authorship that is protected by copyrights owned by the state of Georgia," the suit claims.

Malamud doesn't accept the distinction. The whole package, he says, is "the official code of the state of Georgia" and to fully understand the law one needs to refer to the annotations too. To say you can have free access to one but pay for the other, he says, is like saying "you can have a sandwich for free but you have to pay for the mayonnaise, and the mayonnaise comes on all the sandwiches." He also points out that the free online version of the statutory texts isn't all that useful: As maintained by LexisNexis on a state contract, it can't be copied or downloaded, according to the attached copyright notice.

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The state's own lawsuit acknowledges that the annotations are "valuable analysis and guidance regarding ... state law." And the core of its case isn't that the annotations shouldn't be broadly accessible, only that the state doesn't want to pay the cost itself. LexisNexis shoulders the cost and in return gets the right to charge users, earning a profit.

If LexisNexis can't recoup those costs because Malamud is providing a free alternative, the lawsuit asserts, the state "will be required to either stop publishing the annotations altogether or pay ... using tax dollars."

Well, yes. Isn't that what taxes are for?

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