PACER should have been free from the beginning. Gatekeeping legal information for profit (even if only used to supplement appropriations) isn't only a problem at the federal level. In many states you need a commercial subscription to even read court opinions and statutes, let alone search. Localities in most places rely on commercial publishers to archive the text of ordinances, which only those with ridiculously expensive subscriptions can access. The digitization of everything had just begun when I retired, but the handwriting was already on the wall. The contrast with the widespread availability of technical doc is staggering: and reminds me of why I changed careers.
If you start dabbling in DIY remodeling you'll soon find yourself trying understand parts of the national electrical and plumbing codes. They actually remind me a lot of reading the C++XX standards--clearly the product of a ton of time and effort by a bunch really smart and experienced people. There's no way in hell an elected body could/should ever wrote those. So, while I'm not saying that the current system is ideal or even fair, there's absolutely a need to compensate somebody to write and maintain these standards.
Which is irrelevant to whether citizens should have to pay for the texts. If you want private parties to write them, write their contract so the government is paying for full rights to the text, and then distribute them for free.
There is an entire missing and/or inadequate subset of the law that the country as a whole and regional governments need to adopt, regulating how governments are allowed to enter into contracts. I'm sure people here could name a dozen other categories but a few that come to mind that should very possibly be banned:
- Entering into NDAs -- should governments be allowed to keep secrets for a business they enter into a contract with or do the people have the right to know everything a gov learns in the course of doing business?
- Proprietary products, software & services -- if an off-the-shelf alternative exists should govs be permitted to pay for something that they might have to trash as soon as as a contract ends? or something that might go up in price any possible % if they wish to renew?
- Sweeping prosecution agreements -- should govs be able to contract with police unions on matters like deferring interrogations when the suspect or indicted person is police? or similarly for government officials?
- Privatizing -- should govs be allowed to sell basically anything? that is, if the public has funded the ownership & maintenance of something with tax dollars should a government be able to transfer it to some business or individual rather than lease? without a vote / auction?
The NEC is available to read online for that reason, although if your not an electrician, it's nearly incomprehensible. I have an entire book explaining bonding and grounding. It requires too much experience to understand, but it is still essential to a free society that laws be public.
They are privately copyrighted because those organizations research and develop the codes which is a significant expense.
Since it's unlikely that taxpayers will accept paying for all of this stuff, the likely outcome is that specific code references will be removed from the law and replaced with an insurance requirement. And insurers are going to require the ferris wheel or elevator or boiler to comply with the same code that used to be in the law.
Thank you for that. I hadn't seen that case before. I sued the State here in Illinois a couple of years ago because I tried to FOIA some statutes and was rejected under the copyright exemption. The State even had their database admin come to testify that they paid thousands of dollars a month to LexisNexis. I cited all the previous district court and appellate rulings (from other circuits), but ultimately lost.
> It’s the other way around - you can’t sue a state in another state’s court
Sovereign immunity means you can’t sue a state in its own courts, either, except in the ways it has agreed to be suable, which tend to be a small subset of those reasons for which any other party would be.
I didn't say it's fine and in another comment I added that nobody disagrees that codes referenced by laws should be freely available, but the organizations making those codes do need to be compensated.
How happy would you be if you were an engineer who developed a set of equations around some dangerous piece of equipment and your consulting business was built around selling your expertise. Then the state government comes along and says "nice work, now it's the law".
I don't know how you get around the insurance backdoor that I mentioned. Any ideas?
Edit: Looking at the link you posted, that seems to be specifically about annotations to the law. How does it cover codes incorporated by reference? It might be right there and I'm not seeing it. I'm not used to reading these types of materials.
> How happy would you be if you were an engineer who developed a set of equations ... Then the state government comes along and says "nice work, now it's the law".
Personally, I'd be ecstatic if my work could have such a wide reaching impact as that
The organizations don’t write model code because they want to own the copyright they write model code so they, an unelected entity, can exercise an inordinate amount of power over legislation and draft regulations that further the business interests and line the pockets of their members.
Even without copyright protection the special interest groups will continue writing model code exactly as they were except that member corps might have to kick in a bit more money now that ordinary citizens won’t be subsidizing their efforts to manipulate the democratic process.
That was a very fact specific case that ruled that the GA legislature's copyright on the GA code was invalid. It's a stretch to expand that to something like the National Electrical Code or International Building Code since those copyrights are not owned by a legislature.
> regulations are just as much part of the law as statues.
The ruling does apply to regulations, it doesn't apply to material referenced in regulations (either directly or indirectly), which a whole lot of copyrighted things are.
(For an example of indirect reference, the HIPAA transactions and code sets rule regulations adopt CMS’s Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System as a standard code set for certain purposes. Great, as it's a federal government product, and therefore free from copyright burdens.
Except that the “Level 1 codes” in the HCPCS are defined by reference as the AMA’s Current Procedure Terminology codes, and the definition of that code set is under copyright and not freely available.
I honestly feel like America is on a different planet sometimes. If it's required by law, then it should be free to read. What do you mean organizations research and develop codes at an expense? What organisations? Anyone other than the government is in charge of setting up the law? That doesn't ring any alarm bells there?
Organizations such as everyone that works on standards at ISO, IEEE, etc. Should they be free to read? Yes! How am I supposed to comply with a law I can read, but can't follow? But the government doesn't need to do everything. In fact, quite a few laws defer to "best industry practices".
Of course, but these organisations, even if private entities, will be paid by the government to conduct research and offer best practices and advice, so if the taxpayer is already paying for it....then it should be free to read - OP made it sound as if private organisations conducted research out of their own good will and therefore it was justified to charge the public for it.....which is fine, but not if the rules become law!
Today the government usually doesn't pay them. They fund themselves by selling paper and electronic copies of the code. The idea is that if you are designing some type of equipment, then you should help pay for the development of the code governing that equipment.
It maybe makes sense for esoteric things but not at all for common things (like the building and electrical codes covering all houses.
Edit: Sometimes private organizations did write the codes for their members and later the government notices that's what everybody is using and it's working, so make it the law of the land.
It's frustrating that the government doesn't step in to pay/fund on behalf of the public in situations like that. Standards organizations should want such a guaranteed income stream.
>I honestly feel like America is on a different planet sometimes.
"America" is a loosely-coupled minimum-viable veneer over private capital. As built, extraction and concentration of value is the primary purpose of the system. The roots of this settler-colony are still visible.
Forcing people to buy privately owned IP to comply with the law is effectively a tax. Taxpayers are still paying - it's just political money laundering.
There should be no user-fee on being able to know the law. That's the point, not that non-governmental organizations shouldn't be compensated if their work is used, required, or referenced by a law.
I think legislatures and code bodies will workaround this by removing references to particular codes and adding requirement to carry insurance. And before an insurer will cover a dangerous piece of equipment, they are going to insist on an engineering inspection and report declaring the equipment is safe to operate and inspectors and engineers mostly rely on the published codes.
It's also things like HIPAA where you have to conform to certain electronic formatting standards that are non-public documents, where it's not strictly about safety, but creating an actual standard.
It's similar for electrical and structural codes: when I'm occupying a building (not just living or owning, but working or shopping too), I can trust that it meets certain standards as set by law. These things are codified by law to be minimum standards, not about making people liable to produce their own, as the past has been shown many times, there will always be people who will knowingly put money over the lives of people (e.g. via fake or otherwise unscrupulous insurance companies in this case). Now, I don't mean that insurance shouldn't or can't be a part of the "system", just that the "standard" shouldn't be whatever someone will insure.
Also, I'm not even advocating that copyright should be assigned to the government, just that access to the basic standards be free in perpetuity. This would prevent people from selling works composed primarily of the standard, but allow the basic standard to be freely accessible. I believe this would also cover annotated guides unless the annotations make up more of the work than the original standard does? The original organization still has the sole ability to sell authoritative supplementary and annotated materials. As long as the basic standard could reasonably be followed without said materials:
* a bad situation would be the standard saying to use the "appropriate wire gauge for the situation" but only give the appropriate guage in supplimentry material, and a
* good example would be the standard stating that "in a plenum, wire meeting «such and such» rating must be used", and as long as "«such and such» rating" is something that could reasonably be found on the wire itself then fine, even if the supplimentry materials make it easier to identify such cabling or find the most appropriate/cost effective type for a given situation, as long as any cable with the rating would be safe.
Professionals, especially if egged on by their insurance companies, would most likely purchase the authoritative materials. On the other hand general consumers doing work for themselves, could reference library copies or cheaper, non-authoritative references. Much as it is now for many things like major electrical and structural changes, inspections need to done by certified individuals, who require insurance, and who are probably only insurable if they have their own access to the standards and supplementary materials.
A similar situations that exist current is the "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways". It is published by the as a free pdf by the Federal Highway Administration, but only a few partnered corporation are allowed to sell print copies. I cannot find a definitive answer as to why, but in the early 1970s the FHWA became the owner and began publishing it, but before that it was a joint consortium of private entites most of who are still involved in its development.
While discussing transportation, AASHTO's "A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets" (a.k.a. the "Green Book") contains guidance and standards. There are some documents published by the FHWA that come close to my good example above, but some fall into my bad example, where it says to consider this, but then gives not minimum design standards. So, in general that is a mixed bag, and could beuch better. However, I still think that both are illustrative that a system where the basics are available, but other commentary is paid.
There are other, transitionary, options for current standards even if, for instance, all new ones must be freely available.
For instance, it could be mandated that any standard that is currently proprietary, but required, must be held in some form at the county or local level in a manner accessible to the general public. The Green Book referenced earlier, could have to have a reference copy be available at a library in the county or a county office building open to the public. Similar to the electrical code, the general public doesn't need to have this constantly available to justify the money and storage space, but may have specific questions they want to look up, or verify for themselves.
Citizens have a right to know what the law is. That doesn't mean that the government can't work with technical organizations to ensure that while basic access is free, said organizations can still profit from the work they put in to create said standard.
Needs don't get much more basic than "shelter" and in order to build a home in most of the US that means consulting electrical, plumbing, and gas codes, among others. Most jurisdictions just pass legislation to adopt a particular edition of a code book developed by a national association.
It gets worse. The codes are regularly changed in ways I've heard numerous experienced journeymen describe as being baffling, and it's fairly obvious that the changes happen to force everyone to buy a copy of the new edition.
Lot of the trades are just rotten to the core. For example, master electricians are almost completely exempt from continuing education/examination requirements that non-master-level electricians have to endure. New code comes out, all the regulars have to pass an exam about it. But the ME? He gets to flip open his wallet and sneer, "Master-electrician-license-immunnnniiittyyyyyy!"
Your average 25 year old electrician is probably far more up to speed on current standards than the 50 year old ME people are more likely to give work to because of "experience."
You are correct that the public does not want to pay for them, this does not mean the government should be allowed to adopt them as well
The government should not adopt anything as law that is not publically accessible, the law absolutely has to open access to all persons if you are expected to follow it.
If the public does not want to fund the creation of building codes, then the building codes need to be done away with, or simplified to the point where the public will be willing to fund there
The building codes, like most standards, are filled with all kinds of things that have nothing to do with safety which the the sole area the government should be concerned with.
Government should have a safety code, then let the market compete for builders that want to voluntarily adopt the other standards
So there should be no minimum requirements for insulation for example since that's not really a safety issue or for pipe diameters etc.? There are a ton of things in building codes that are modern industry best practices that have nothing or very little to do with safety.
While building codes sometimes get implemented overly slavishly with old retrofits, in general requiring contractors/builders to meet minimum industry best practices is a good thing given that otherwise it's even more caveat emptor than it already is.
And, of course, any subsequent buyer has very little idea what standards the house was built to. (Which they may not anyway with older houses but at least codes are a start.)
This is a difference in worldview as to what the proper role of government should be.
For insulation, no I do not believe there should be a government enforced standard, and analog to the IT world, we have all kinds of "standards" almost none of them enforced by law. Companies advertise they are complaint with standard X, or Y because it advantageous for them to do so
Builders of home could to the same, insurers of home could require it in order to insure a home, or provide discounts if a home is compliant with X standard, mortgage companies could require it, or factor it in to the appraisals.
There are all kinds of market based, none government methods to apply standards
Government action, which you must remember is back by the threat of violence, should be reserved for things that directly impact safety
>>any subsequent buyer has very little idea what standards the house was built to.
Here I do see a role for government, in disclosure laws, and enforcement of fraud if a seller claim a home was built to X standard and it was not
Even though you aren't likely to build a petroleum distillation column in your apartment, you don't mind helping to pay for the ongoing R&D involved in producing the engineering codes governing that equipment? For esoteric stuff like that, I kind of like the user-fee model. If we all pay, it feels like another subsidy to (in this case) oil and gas companies.
There are wide swathes of laws and benefits in our society that will never touch me personally - that doesn't invalidate them. Just because I don't need a wheelchair I don't begrudge the push for ramp accessibility - ditto for things like childcare which my parents benefited from but which I've got no intention of exercising. These benefits build a better and more equitable world and I'm fine with paying an almost inconceivably small personal expense to maintain them.
Not everything in life needs to revolve around an absolute maximization of personal gain.
The same can be said about research colleges being backstopped by the taxpayer and having their research being paywalled by JSTOR. Are you willing to make the argument that all of this stuff should be paywalled?
You're being downvoted because people just want everything to be free without ever paying for it or doing any work to achieve it. They're the same people who expect politicians to fix everything for them, rather than us having to personally get involved in solving societal problems.
This is an interesting choice of terms, since in the legal world "dictum" typically refers to a statement included in a legal opinion that is not central to the court's holding (decision). The full name is "obiter dictum", meaning "something said in passing", but it's almost always just called "dictum" or "dicta" (plural).
So although the ordinary definition of "dictum" is akin to pronouncement/dictate, in the legal context, "dictum" is a term of derogation ("that's just dictum"). To a lawyer, "central dictum" would be a contradiction in terms. Of course, this isn't a legal forum, so there's nothing wrong with what you said. It just causes mental hiccups for those of us afflicted with a legal background!
Technical docs are better but far from perfect. For example, could you please link me to a copy of the C++ standard? It's ISO/IEC 14882:2020, if that helps.
The drafts are available in openstd, both of older versions of the standard[0], and the next, upcoming version[1].
Those are not technically the actual standards, but they're pretty close. But yes, I too dislike the fact that ISO standards are paid for. You know what bugs me the most? ISO 9660, the standard behind the .iso file format. It's been published in 1988, and today still costs roughly 130EUR to buy...
It's getting even worse than that. In some cities and counties, you have to pay to read real estate records online. Public documents that were free just a few years ago are now behind paywalls. Even though my tax dollars paid for these systems that were supposed to make the public documents public.
Want to read it for free? Come on down to the courthouse, fill out a paper form, and we'll find the right book for you. Also for a fee.
