Congress Wants To Let Private Companies Own The Law
Congress Wants To Let Private Companies Own The Law
It sounds absolutely batty that there is a strong, bipartisan push to lock up aspects of our law behind copyright. But it’s happening. Even worse, the push is on to include this effort to lock up t…
The Pro Codes Act has been submitted as an amendment to the "must pass" National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It allows copyrighted standards to be incorporated by reference into the law, preventing people from accessing or sharing these standards except through the systems the standards development organizations have that "makes all portions of the standard so incorporated publicly accessible online at no monetary cost and in a format that includes a searchable table of contents and index, or equivalent aids to facilitate the location of specific content. " Note that that does not include searchable text, the ability to access it without a login, or any ability to host it elsewhere (such as alongside the laws that incorporate it).
The NDAA bill:
https://rules.house.gov/bill/118/hr-8070
The amendment:
https://amendments-rules.house.gov/amendments/ISSA_180_xml240531155108634.pdf
It'll be pirated within a day. This will be an improvement over the current model, which is worse than college textbooks.
So this is something that I already have to deal with at the state and local level, in the form of building and fire codes. Most such codes are developed by standards organizations. Is it a little bullshit that these organizations are able to maintain copyright control over parts of the law? Yes, but also organizations like the International Code Council and the National Fire Protection Association generally do a very good job developing these documents, and the current state of affairs is such that these organizations and other like ANSI and ISO are de-facto part of the fabric of law in the specialized areas they write standards and tests for. Requiring their publications to be freely and publicly available will actually be an improvement on the current state of affairs, where much of their work is locked behind paywalls.