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Supreme Court Versus Georgia

Giz

Philosopher
G
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Jul 24, 2002
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Interesting split from the court (I agree with the majority):

The Supreme Court ruled Monday against the state of Georgia in a copyright lawsuit over annotations to its legal code, finding they cannot be copyrighted.

Everyone involved in the case agreed that the text of state statutes could not be copyrighted. But the state of Georgia argued that it could copyright annotations that are distributed with the official code. These annotations provide supplemental information about the law, including summaries of judicial opinions, information about legislative history, and citations to relevant law review articles. The annotations are produced by a division of legal publishing giant LexisNexis under a work-for-hire contract with the state.

The copyright status of the annotated code matters because the state doesn't publish any other official version. You can get an unofficial version of state law for free from LexisNexis' website, but LexisNexis' terms of service explicitly warned users that it might be inaccurate. The company also prohibits users from scraping the site's content or using it commercially. If you need the official, up-to-date version of Georgia state law, you have to pay LexisNexis hundreds of dollars for a copy of the official version—which includes annotations.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/20...ap-us-supreme-court-georgia-code-lawsuit.html


For what it’s worth, the justices who think it’s fine to not let citizens know how the laws apply to them (without spending hundreds of dollar’s) are:

Thomas
Alito
Breyer
Ginsburg
 
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Giz said:
For what it’s worth, the justices who think it’s fine to not let citizens know how the laws apply to them (without spending hundreds of dollar’s) are:

Thomas
Ailton’s
Breyer
Ginsburg
Click to expand...

They don't think it is"fine". They are not arbitrating if things are fine or not.
 
Giz said:
For what it’s worth, the justices who think it’s fine to not let citizens know how the laws apply to them (without spending hundreds of dollar’s) are:

Thomas
Alito
Breyer
Ginsburg
Click to expand...

The pairing of Thomas and Alito with Breyer and Ginsburg should give you a clue that maybe there are some serious legal issues here. What exactly do you perceive as the glorious future arising from this decision? That Lexis-Nexus will continue to do the grunt work of annotating Georgia state law, even though they can't charge people for accessing it?
 
Brainster said:
The pairing of Thomas and Alito with Breyer and Ginsburg should give you a clue that maybe there are some serious legal issues here. What exactly do you perceive as the glorious future arising from this decision? That Lexis-Nexus will continue to do the grunt work of annotating Georgia state law, even though they can't charge people for accessing it?
Click to expand...

Perhaps the taxpayer should pony up to have a workable copy of the law available to all citizens ?
 
Giz said:
Perhaps the taxpayer should pony up to have a workable copy of the law available to all citizens ?
Click to expand...

Good idea.

But that option would have been available even if the dissent had carried the day. I'm not sure which side of the issue I would have been on had I studied the problem in depth (and as Bob correctly pointed out, the court's job isn't to produce the best policy outcome anyways), but it seems like no matter what the outcome of this case, the Georgia legislature probably should probably change how they do things anyways.
 
Brainster said:
Sounds like you have an issue with the legislature then.
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Yes, I think the state of Georgia was wrong on this one.

I think that being able to access a complete, accurate copy of the laws that a citizen lives under, should be available to all citizens. Same as a public defender should be available.
 
Giz said:
Yes, I think the state of Georgia was wrong on this one.

I think that being able to access a complete, accurate copy of the laws that a citizen lives under, should be available to all citizens. Same as a public defender should be available.
Click to expand...

A-friggin men.
 
Giz said:
Yes, I think the state of Georgia was wrong on this one.

I think that being able to access a complete, accurate copy of the laws that a citizen lives under, should be available to all citizens. Same as a public defender should be available.
Click to expand...

I agree. However, it does not follow from this that L-N is required to give up its lawful copyright to the materials it produced.

It also does not follow from this that such annotations are part of the law as such. It seems to me that the proper remedy is for the state of Georgia to either write the annotations into a bill, and pass them into law; or else for the state of Georgia to commission annotations under a commons license.

There is a basic principle that the people who do the work should get compensated for it, and that others should not benefit from that work without giving fair compensation. This principle is embodied in copyright law. The court cannot - or at least should not - nullify existing law simply because somebody somewhere feels very strongly that it should be otherwise than it is.
 
theprestige said:
I agree. However, it does not follow from this that L-N is required to give up its lawful copyright to the materials it produced.

It also does not follow from this that such annotations are part of the law as such. It seems to me that the proper remedy is for the state of Georgia to either write the annotations into a bill, and pass them into law; or else for the state of Georgia to commission annotations under a commons license.

There is a basic principle that the people who do the work should get compensated for it, and that others should not benefit from that work without giving fair compensation. This principle is embodied in copyright law. The court cannot - or at least should not - nullify existing law simply because somebody somewhere feels very strongly that it should be otherwise than it is.
Click to expand...

The. Georgia should employ eminent domain and purchase the annotations from LN
 
Does it say whose bright idea this was? Was it a revenue generating scheme or something else?
 
Giz said:
The. Georgia should employ eminent domain and purchase the annotations from LN
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Why is it that eminent domain always seems to be employed in bad faith?

L-N contracted with the state in good faith. They did the work they were hired to do. They received the agreed compensation.

If L-N suspected the state was just going to waive their legal rights and grab the work from them anyway, they might have thought twice about doing the work. Or they might have negotiated a much more equitable deal before signing the contract.

Your proposal seems like gangsterism, to me.

Also, it seems disingenuous to use eminent domain to seize from others work that you could have done, and should have done, yourself. Lexis-Nexis is not the villain here. They should not be treated like one.
 
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