[Foundation-l] NYT: Who owns the law? (Noam Cohen)

[Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)]

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




On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/9/30 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> >> UK, Canada and Australia are the only three I can quickly think of
> >> where crown copyright is asserted over public laws, however the crown
> >> provides simple to fulfil reuse requirements that are essentially in
> >> place to prevent misuse.
> >
> > Do you have a quick link to the reuse requirements?
>
> http://www.opsi.gov.uk/about/faqs-crown-copyright.htm
>
> "Waiver means that although copyright is asserted, Government wishes
> to encourage the widespread use of the material. Users are permitted
> to copy or publish the material in any medium without having to seek
> formal permission or to pay a fee. Users should make sure that - the
> material is reproduced accurately and not in a misleading context;
> that the material is correctly acknowledged and that the source and
> status of the material is identified."
>
> This is the generic Crown Copyright waiver applied to such material.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
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