On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 5:01 AM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)
<newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In the US, actual court decisions and statutes are in
the public domain,
according to a seminal case called Wheaton v. Peters decided in the early
nineteenth century. (Wheaton and Peters were two of the early Reporters of
Decisions for the U.S. Supreme Court.) There is a host of caselaw dealing
with questions such as whether the page citations for decisions are
copyrightable and whether using them is fair use. There are more recent
disputes concerning whether private companies may assist munipalities in
codifying their ordinances in return for an assignment of copyrightability
on the collection.
There is thus an ample body of free material that we could republish if we
chose to. However, Findlaw and similar sites are doing a reasonably good
job of making caselaw and statutes available, so I don't know that there is
a role here for Wikimedia at least regarding the law of the United States.
Newyorkbrad
While not complete yet, Title 17 of the USC on Wikisource is an
example of how we _can_ do a better job.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_17
It is complimented by many of the texts of the laws as they were enacted..
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/U.S._Public_Law_105-80
... and a house report which is often referred to to understand the
spirit of the changes that were made.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:H.R._Rep._No._94-1476
--
John