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State of Georgia sues Public Resource for posting their state laws (archive.org)
14 points by brie22 on July 22, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


No, they are being sued for distributing third party commentary and analysis of the law.

http://ia801504.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.gand.218...


What a misleading title. If you actually read the statement of claim posted at that link, you see that Georgia doesn't object to the laws being posted online for free, they do that themselves. But, they hired LexisNexis to produce an annotated code, and Public Resource is blatantly copying all the annotations. This is exactly what copyright is supposed to protect.

If Public Resource wants to they can make their own annotations.


If GA hired LN to produce an annotated code, then that means the annotations are owned by Georgia, which means they are public record and not therefore copyrightable.


Documents produced by or for a state or federal government are not automatically public record.


Yes, you are right I should have said public documents to be more precise. "Public record" is different than "copyrightable" which is what the issue is about. Public documents, that is owned by the state aka the people, cannot be copyrighted.

(edited)


Link broken?




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