The State of Oregon takes exception to Web sites that republish the state's Revised Statutes in full, claiming that the statutes contain copyrighted information in the republication causes the state to lose money it needs to continue putting out the official version of the statutes. Oregon's Legislative Counsel, Dexter Johnson, has therefore requested that legal information site Justia remove the information or (preferably) take out a paid license from the state.

All citizens are legally presumed to know the law, so claiming copyright over it might seem like an odd position for a state to take; wouldn't massive copying be a goal rather than a problem? But in his letter to Justia, Johnson makes a more nuanced case. While the text of the law is not copyrighted, the "arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables, index and annotations and other such incidents" are under copyright.

A quick visit to the Legislative Counsel's web site shows that Johnson is serious about two things: order forms and copyright. The only items in red on the entire page are a copyright notice that includes "Oregon Laws, the Oregon Revised Statutes, and all specialty publications" and a set of links to order forms for such scintillating works as Landlord and Tenant Laws of Oregon 2008.

The state also makes the complete text of its laws available online, and it welcomes sites like Justia to link these up. Republishing them, though, is strongly frowned upon, and Johnson indicates his hope that "it will not be necessary to litigate this matter" (translation: "we are willing to litigate this matter"). Justia still appears to be displaying the Oregon Code online at the same address Johnson mentioned in his letter.

Carl Malamud, who heads public.resource.org and has long been a proponent of making government information more accessible, works with Justia and also hosts a copy of the statutes in question. Although Johnson's letter was not directed at his activities, Malamud has already written Johnson twice in the last week, raising questions about the takedown request.

The second letter directly takes issue with the claim that Oregon's own publication of the statutes on its website satisfies its public interest requirements. Malamud ran the "Oregon Revised Statutes" portion of the site through the W3C's Markup Validation Service and found "503,482 HTML errors in the code." In addition, he asserts that the site does not meet accessibility guidelines, uses a robots.txt file to keep search engines from crawling at, and, generally speaking, "is an eyesore."

"Your policy objectives would be far better met by allowing the Internet and the legal information community to supplement your efforts and build new tools that make the Oregon Revised Statutes available in a much more comprehensive and systematic fashion," he wrote.

Such kerfuffles over access to government information aren't new, and they aren't isolated. Only last month, for instance, Malamud was upset about an exclusive contract between the Government Accountability Office and publisher Thomson West to scan Congressional legislative histories. Back in 2006, he testified before Congress regarding various business activities of the Smithsonian, including a deal with the Showtime cable network.

While businesses that want to repackage and publish government information have a right to do so, archivists like Malamud get worked up when they feel that the government is attempting to stifle the republication of such information in free online formats. Fortunately, the government is a complex place, and the news on public disclosure isn't all grim; Congress last year decided that drug companies should be required to disclose even negative clinical trials of new products to the FDA, which makes them available to the public.

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