WWU, Seattle, Vancouver Visit 2008
Hi Friends,
Dan, Cicely and I flew over Oregon and headed up to LexBlog Country in the great Northwest. We were there to do some interviewing of computer folks... but we also had some fun (Seattle/As game, Vancouver and more :).
Dan and Cicely ran the booth at Western Washington University. We met a lot of great people.
Then it was off to Seattle to meet Kevin O'Keefe at the LexBlog offices to talk blogs and to see a baseball game.
Then off to beautiful Vancouver for fun...
... and a visit the UBC Computer Science Department.
more on copyright and codes later this week...
Peace,
Tim
:: Crystal River, Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch
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Cease, Desist & Resist - Oregon's Copyright Claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes
Hi Friends,
Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:
[T]he Committee ... claim[s] a copyright in 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 the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.
Now, the letter is more detailed than the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes website:
The Legislative Counsel Committee claims copyright protection in those parts of Oregon Revised Statutes that are legally subject to copyright protection.
My take after reading the above claim on their website was that the State of Oregon was claiming a copyright to the annotation section and not the code itself. Accordingly, our copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes did not include the annotations. Needless to say Oregon's copyright claim on the code itself was a surprise (understatement).
As requested in the letter, I called Oregon's Sean Brennan the same Friday and Sean explained their position, reinforced the copyright claims in Dexter Johnson's letter and said he would get us some licensing information (which is $30,000 for 2 years). He also said that Oregon had been talking with other states about how to raise licensing revenue for their codes. That was somewhat disturbing, as we want states to open up their public laws and regulations.
After the call with Sean, I talked with and sent a copy of the letter to Carl Malamud, who being a former Oregon fire fighter, has a special affection for the state of Oregon. Carl checked out the site, and wrote some letters to Dexter Johnson seeking clarification of their copyright claims.
Thursday, we (Carl Malamud, Nolo's Stephen Elias and I) had a pleasant and constructive conversation with Dexter Johnson and his team. The Oregon folks are going to think through some different options. If Oregon comes up with a solution that promotes free and open access to the laws, then we will likely avoid litigation. If not, then we will likely have to ask the courts to determine whether state governments can prohibit others from downloading, reproducing or distributing the laws. I hope that given Oregon's public interest focus, the State will adopt an approach that promotes open access to laws instead of one that maximizes licensing fees. We should know more next week.
Some prominent legal bloggers have commented on Oregon's copyright claims. See Professor Tim Armstrong's post "Can States Copyright Their Statutes?" on Info/Law and William Patry's post "Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna" on the The Patry Copyright Blog and Sam Bayard's post "Oregon Claims Copyright in Its Statutes -- Well, Sort Of" on the Citizen Media Law Project Blog. We agree that public policy demands that state laws remain in the public domain. To otherwise permit the State of Oregon or any other governmental body to restrict access to the laws that govern all of us would make a mockery of the legal doctrine that all persons have presumed knowledge of the law. Fortunately, many courts have rightfully declined to recognize such copyright claims asserted by states and municipalities.
Peace,
Tim
:: Sugaree, Grateful Dead Download Series, Vol. 10 by Grateful Dead
* For those interested, we are working with folks from Public.Resource.Org, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, AltLaw, EFF, Creative Commons, Stanford & Cal, FastCase, as well as many other law schools, commercial organizations, courts, and government agencies on compiling a large archive of law that will be continuously updated and freely shared. Part of that is just getting the raw law, which includes cases, codes, and regulations. As we (quickly) move forward though, we will also have shared annotations and shared publishing tools. We will then want to have copies of the law along with secondary materials on thousands of servers. In addition to providing free access to all at many online locations, we want to provide the opportunity for each government institution, court, law school, nonprofit, company, and blogger to have their very own copy of the full corpus, as well as an easy way to keep it updated. It won't be easy, but it is doable. And it helps that we are working with folks from the government. Hopefully, we will soon be able to work with and include the State of Oregon. :)
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US Legislative Histories Sold to Thomson-West by the GAO???
Hi Friends,
As public domain information hero Carl Malamud is working on getting case law online and into the public domain (we have helped a bit :). Carl, donors, and the Public.Resource.org team have done a lot and... more to come...
But in addition to case law, Carl has also been working to get other public legal documents online and into the public domain. These documents include the legislative histories of the laws. So this was interesting... it looks like Thomson-West has signed an exclusive agreement with the GAO to have these legislative histories on WestLaw.
From Carl note (and originally posted on Boing Boing...
The law librarians at GAO have compiled complete federal legislative histories from 1915 on. These are the definitive dossiers that track a bill through the hearing process and into law. If you want to divine the intent of Congress, this is where you go.
GAO cut a contract with Thomson West to have these documents scanned.
Thomson West claims they have exclusive access to these public documents and even go so far as to boast that you should purchase this exclusive "product" from West because the GAO law librarians (public employees!) have done all the work for you!
If you're interesting in tracking this issue, I've created a Scribd group that has all the documents we've obtained so far. Next step: we asked for a copy of every document scanned under the FOIA laws!"
Well I am sure the US Government will give copies over to Carl to put up for free, and then back to the GAO itself to host and Brewster and the Internet Archive and Google and Cornell and the other law schools put online and into the public domain for free.
Peace,
Tim
:: The More Things Change, Heartbreak Station by Cinderella
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JDSupra Free User Generated Legal Document, Forms & Brief Library Open to All
Hi Friends,
JDSupra has officially launched and opened its site to the public today. The JDSupra site allows legal professionals to upload legal documents, memos, forms, filings and briefs and share them with the legal community. On the marketing front, lawyers and law firms can have their own detailed profile page that promotes their practice.
Many great organizations and firms have already started contributing documents, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Morrison & Foerster (my former lawyers at my previous company :) and many many others.
Justia is in the process of doing a major data upload of the higher quality research quality briefs and filings we have aggregated from Pacer for our featured case tracking service in Justia News). We are encouraging all of the law firms we work with to participate and share with JDSupra's law library.
By working together we can help build a great new legal research library. This is a very nice start of a new free research service! So check JDSupra out and share. It will only be getting better and better as more people participate!
Peace,
Tim
:: Blue Sky, Eat a Peach by The Allman Brothers Band
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The Public Library of Law - the Largest Free US Case Law Database on the Internet from FastCase
Hi Friends,
The team at FastCase have announced the largest free online US case law database at The Public Library of Law at plol.org. The site is GREAT! The database of cases includes all of the Supreme Court cases and US Court of Appeals cases since 1950 (the same data FastCase recently presented to the Legal Commons project) AND US state case law since 1997 for all 50 states in nice standardized searchable, and usable html format for all states (not the random state by state format many other sites have collected the data in).
In addition to the case law, the The Public Library of Law also has online or links to the codes and statutes, constitutions and regulations of the Federal Government and all 50 US state governments.
The Public Library of Law is a beautiful site that works! Congrats FastCase!!!
Peace,
Tim
:: Shower the People, In the Pocket by James Taylor
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Legal Commons - Free US Court of Appeals & US Supreme Court Case Law by way of Public.Resource.org and the Creative Commons!
Hi Friends,
Here comes the Legal Commons.
Carl Malamud and the team at Public.Resource.org with Larry Lessig and the Creative Commons gang got the FastCase deal done and the case law online. The cases include all of the Federal Court of Appeals decisions since 1950, and all of the US Supreme Court decisions.
You can obtain a copy of all of the cases at Public.Resource.org case archive. Public.Resource.org has tar balls for easy downloading of the complete data sets. There is still some fixing of the cases going on, and the community will be working to get the internal page numbering for the cases (among other features). We did an initial conversion of the Federal Court of Appeals cases on Justia with some cross linking to other cases etc.... We and many others will be fixing these up, as well as sending changes and issues to Public.Resource.org where the master copy will be provided for free to all.
Carl is inviting developers to work together to provide stronger and more transparent "operating system" for all.
Developers and interested members of the public are invited to join our open discussion group which will evaluate the format of this public domain data. These cases and codes are America’s operating system and for the first time Americans can use them with freedom.
The cases will also be up on AltLaw and PreCYdent soon (if not already) and... many many other places :)
Ed Walters CEO of FastCase worked with Carl to really make this happen. The Legal Commons financial support for these datasets came from donars including David Boies, the Elbaz Family Foundation, John Gilmore and the Omidyar Network.
When did Carl start focusing on free law?... Not too bad.
Now on to the state cases, codes and regs (year by year), some legislation updates, annotations and presto free legal stuff for everyone everywhere. LegalCommons.
Public.Resource.org announcement
Creative Commons Blog Post (Mike Linksvayer)
Peace,
Tim
:: American Girl, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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Free Case Law from PreCYdent.com
Hi Friends,
More free case law has come online. PreCYdent has added 300,000 Federal cases to their database at http://www.PreCYdent.com. They have built in some nice community tools for commenting and rating the cases. And they have a new search engine that is focused on the link structure of cases. Bob Ambrogi's initial take was that it is pretty good. They are calling their site a "true Alpha" and they are taking comments from all interested parties to improve it. I will test it out over the weekend before the Superbowl :).
It will all be and continue to be free. PreCYdent will support the company with advertising sales.
There is also a nice interview with PreCYdent's Thomas A. Smith on the Law Librarian Blog.
In the interview Tom said that PreCYdent has all of the US Supreme Court cases and US Court of Appeals cases back to the 1950s and that they plan to soon have state cases going back 10 years or more from all 50 states, and ultimately all state and federal cases back to the beginning, as well as statutory and administrative materials.
The PreCYdent site is really nice. Check it out! Congrats to the PreCYdent team!!!
Peace,
Tim
Source: Sophisticated Search for Public Domain Law from Bob Ambrogi's LawSites Blog.
:: Going to California, Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin
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U.S. Supreme Court Photos
I found this photo of the U.S. Supreme Court on flickr, the photo-sharing website owned by Yahoo!. Sure, there are a lot of photos on flickr. However, this photo was uploaded by the Library of Congress. Is this the federal government's entrée into social networking? What next? Barack, Hillary, John, Mitt and Mike "friending" us on Facebook? ;-) In all seriousness, this is a great step towards increasing the accessibility of our government resources. I find it so much easier to find photos on flickr than using the boolean search on the Library of Congress website. And, if you look very closely, you'll only see 48 stars on the U.S. flag.
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FCC Announces Accepted Applications for 700 MHz Band Auction
FCC 700 MHz Band Auction
Auction ID: 73
Accepted Applications
(Sorted by Applicant)
Date of Report: 12/18/2007 01:13 PM ET
The following applicants have an Initial filing phase status of "Accepted."
| FRN | Name | Bidding Credit Revenue Range |
| 0002805596 | Adams Telcom, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0014061097 | Aeronet Wireless Broadband Corp. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0000021188 | AlasConnect, Inc. | |
| 0016161788 | Aristotle Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0016927360 | AWS Spectrum, LLC | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017118837 | Bayou Internet, Inc. | |
| 0002477636 | BEK Communications Cooperative | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0003764727 | Bend Cable Communications, LLC | |
| 0003766201 | Blanca Telephone Company | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017147406 | Blue Sky Cell, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0010698868 | Bluegrass Wireless LLC | |
| 0017194473 | Bresnan Communications, Inc. | |
| 0017181199 | Broadband Wireless Unlimited, LLC | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0008394215 | Budget Phone | |
| 0015024631 | Cavalier Wireless, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001649508 | Central Texas Telephone Investments, LP | |
| 0002532497 | Chariton Valley Communication Corporation, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0003707775 | Chester Telephone Company | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017191172 | Clearcom, Inc. | |
| 0017146051 | COLI Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001711837 | Command Connect, LLC | |
| 0017171950 | Cricket Licensee 2007, LLC | |
| 0001700616 | Cross Telephone Company, LLC | |
| 0003777919 | CTC Telcom, Inc. | |
| 0017166422 | Data-Max Wireless LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017118084 | Delmarva Broadband LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001858760 | Ellijay Telephone Company | |
| 0001754738 | Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0004338489 | Farmers Telephone Company, Inc. | |
| 0014955017 | Fidelity Communications Company | |
| 0002480085 | Forum Communications Company | |
| 0004600268 | FTC Management Group, Inc. | |
| 0002388262 | Glenwood Telephone Membership, Corporation | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002333839 | Golden Belt Telephone Association, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017171182 | Google Airwaves Inc. | |
| 0017184268 | Grain Spectrum LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017176173 | Great American Broadband, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0016191827 | GreenFly LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002331601 | H & B Communications, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001886944 | Horry Telephone Cooperative, Inc. | |
| 0009639923 | Inland Cellular Telephone Company | |
| 0001523125 | IT&E Overseas, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017169087 | KeyOn Spectrum Holdings, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017164583 | Kinex Networking Solutions, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002212314 | Kingdom Telephone Company | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0003548443 | Kurian, Thomas K | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0004334702 | Lackawaxen Long Distance Company, Inc. | |
| 0017166240 | Landover PCS Holdings, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002576791 | MAC Wireless, LLC | |
| 0015031065 | Manti Telephone Company | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0004344776 | Medicine Park Telephone Company, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0014993794 | Midwest AWS Limited Partnership | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017195561 | Miller, David | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0011146479 | Mt. Vernnon.Net Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0014999585 | MTN3B Consortium | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0002886984 | Mulberry Cooperative Telephone Company, Inc | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0008209629 | N.E. Colorado Wireless Technologies, Inc. | |
| 0012841458 | Neptuno Media | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0004337044 | Northeast Missouri Rural Telephone Company | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002388882 | Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0014990436 | Northern Iowa Communications Partners, LLC | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0001704246 | Panhandle Telecommunication Systems, Inc. | |
| 0002644953 | Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. | |
| 0017036799 | PBP Bidco LLC | |
| 0005746508 | PCS Partners, L.P. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001887140 | Piedmont Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0003740040 | Polar Communications Mutual Aid Corporation | |
| 0007024607 | Public Service Wireless Services, Inc. | |
| 0003742384 | Red River Rural Telephone Association, Inc. | |
| 0001886464 | Sandhill Communications, LLC | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0001551241 | Siskiyou Telephone Company | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017182528 | Small Ventures USA, L.P. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017183237 | Spectrum Acquisitions, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0001960962 | Star Telephone Membership Corporation | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0002901817 | Swayzee Telephone Co. Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0003744406 | TCT West, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017057787 | Terra World Communications, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0005097381 | The Chillicothe Telephone Company | |
| 0005069323 | The Tri-County Telephone Association, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002337509 | The World Company | |
| 0015467749 | Towerstream Corporation | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0010907244 | Tri-Valley Communications, LLC | |
| 0017182742 | Triad 700, LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0016655912 | USA Choice Internet Services Company LLC | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0001685718 | Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0014045504 | Van Buren Wireless, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0017176207 | Vavasi NexGen Inc. | |
| 0005209374 | Vermont Telephone Company, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0007028723 | Vulcan Spectrum LLC | |
| 0003936994 | Washington County Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002722049 | West Wisconsin Telcom Cooperative, Inc. | 15,000,000 - 40,000,000 |
| 0017195678 | Wi2 | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0002624856 | Wireless Communications Venture | |
| 0017164179 | Worldcall Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0003801362 | WUE, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
| 0016099210 | Xpressweb Internet Services, Inc. | 0 - 15,000,000 |
Of course, Google Airwaves, Inc. is the one bidder that is attracting all the attention. A number of other companies are interested as well.
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Free Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 and all US Supreme Court decisions since 1754 Coming Soon
Hi Friends,
Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.org have gotten together with Ed Walters CEO of FastCase and are happy to announce that they will be putting online an archive of US Appeal Court decisions since 1950 and all of the US Supreme Court cases since 1754. Here is their announcement.
Announcement
1.8 million pages of federal case law to become freely available.
WASHINGTON, D.C. / SEBASTOPOL, CA—November 14, 2007—Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.
“The U.S. judiciary has allowed their entire work product to be locked up behind a cash register,” said Carl Malamud, CEO of Public.Resource.Org. “Law is the operating system of our society and today's agreement means anybody can read the source for a substantial amount of case law that was previously unavailable.”
Fastcase, the leading developer of next-generation American legal research, has agreed to provide Public.Resource.Org with 1.8 million pages of federal case law. This is a marked departure for the online legal research industry, which traditionally has charged expensive subscription fees to access this information.
“For eight years, Fastcase has been ahead of the market curve, working to democratize access to the law,” said Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase, Inc. “At the same time, we have been advancing the science of search, combining the precision of traditional legal research with the simplicity of Web-based searches.”
Fastcase has reversed the traditional subscription model for lawyers, contracting directly with 11 state bar associations to make the national law library free for lawyers in their states. “Through this agreement with Public.Resource.Org, we are proud to expand our efforts beyond lawyers, and to make more of the law available to the general public at no cost,” Walters said.
The agreement calls for definitive paperwork approved by both parties within 30 days with Public.Resource.Org making developer snapshots of the archive available in early 2008. Public.Resource.Org is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this transaction. The cases will be marked with a new Creative Commons mark—CC-Ø—that signals that there are no copyrights or other related rights attached to the content.
This transaction represents a one-time purchase of a copy of data. This corpus will be integrated into the ongoing public services from organizations such as AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, thus providing continuity of coverage into the future. Further announcements will be forthcoming on the availability of other case law, including Federal District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions.
Public.Resource.Org intends to perform an initial transformation on the federal case law archive obtained from Fastcase using open source “star” mapping software, which will allow the insertion of markers that will approximate page breaks based on user-furnished parameters such as page size, margins, and fonts. “Wiki” technology will be used to allow the public to move around these “star” markers, as well as add summaries, classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation purposes, and ratings or “diggs” on opinions.
Media Contacts
| Lisa Miller | Carl Malamud |
| Fleishman-Hillard/Fastcase, Inc. | Public.Resource.Org |
| +1.202.857.2209 | +1.707.827.7290 |
| lisa.miller@fleishman.com | carl at media dot org |
About Fastcase
Fastcase is the leading American provider of next-generation legal research, making the law accessible to more people by providing the national law library at a fraction of the cost of traditional companies. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy legal professionals sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling users to re-sort results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 275,000 paid subscribers from around the world. It is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.fastcase.com.
About Public.Resource.Org
Public.Resource.Org was founded in 2007 to spearhead the creation of public works projects for the Internet. A 501(c)(3) registered public charity, Public.Resource.Org has worked across all three branches of the U.S. government to enhance the public domain.
Beautiful!!!! Thanks Ed, FastCase, Carl & Public.Resource.org!!!!
Peace,
Tim