Supreme Court Says Georgia's 'Official Code' Is Public Domain -- Including Annotations
from the mostly-good-news dept
The long saga of Georgia locking up its laws under copyright is (hopefully) officially over, with a Supreme Court ruling that says pretty explicitly that the law must be in the public domain. If you don't recall, this case started years ago. The state of Georgia has a somewhat odd way of publishing its official code. Every new law is published, by state edict, in the "Official Code of Georgia Annotated" or the OGCA. Every new law explicitly says that it will be published in the OCGA. The tricky copyright issue came from the "Annotated" part of that. Annotations are (mostly) summaries of judicial interpretations of the law, and the state of Georgia outsourced the annotating to the private company LexisNexis. LexisNexis would write the annotations, for which it received a copyright, and then assign the copyright to the Georgia government. While Georgia put up a free version of the unannotated law, to get the annotated version -- which, again, is the "official" law of the state -- you either had to pay or to register with a website that included significant (and highly questionable) restrictions. In response, Carl Malamud, who has devoted much of his life's work to making sure that the laws of the world are freely accessible to those who are ruled by those laws, posted a free copy of the OGCA to the web.
In response, Georgia first demanded he take it down, then it sued him for copyright infringement. The state initially won in the district court, but then was overturned on appeal, with the 11th Circuit saying that you can't copyright the law. Both sides appealed to the Supreme Court -- with Georgia wanting to continue locking up the law, and with Malamud wanting a precedent that applied beyond just the 11th Circuit. For what it's worth, even after the appeals court ruled in Malamud's favor, the state bent over backwards to try to block Carl Malamud from getting a copy of the OGCA. Yes, they didn't want him to get a copy of the state's official law, which is as crazy as it sounds.
Earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled mostly in favor of Carl Malamud and free access to our laws, though there is a bit of weirdness in the overall ruling. The key part is the most important though. You just can't copyright the law.
The question in this case is whether that protection extends to the annotations contained in Georgia’s official annotated code.
We hold that it does not.
The key reasoning here, according to the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, is that authorship by a legislative body means that it's authored by the government (even if the actual writing is then done by a third party):
Over a century ago, we recognized a limitation on copyright protection for certain government work product, rooted in the Copyright Act’s “authorship” requirement. Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties.
We have previously applied that doctrine to hold that non-binding, explanatory legal materials are not copyright-able when created by judges who possess the authority to make and interpret the law. See Banks v. Manchester, 128 U. S. 244 (1888). We now recognize that the same logic applies to non-binding, explanatory legal materials created by a legislative body vested with the authority to make law. Because Georgia’s annotations are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties, the government edicts doctrine puts them outside the reach of copyright protection.
While I'm glad about the end result, using this reasoning seems odd to me. Focusing on the authorship, rather than the fact that this is part of the law, seems like the wrong path. After all, Section 105 of the Copyright Act says that works created by the federal government are not subject to copyright, but that copyright is allowed for works created by a third party and then assigned to the government (which was the case here). The appeals court decision focused on the fact that "the law" has to be in the public domain. But the Supreme Court decided, instead, to go for a more narrow focus on "authorship."
From there, it twists itself into a bit of a knot to argue that the annotations, despite being done by LexisNexis, were actually authored by the Georgia legislature. It does make clear that works created by legislatures cannot be subject to copyright, which is nice -- but wasn't much in dispute, frankly:
We hold that the annotations in Georgia’s Official Code are ineligible for copyright protection, though for reasons distinct from those relied on by the Court of Appeals. A careful examination of our government edicts precedents reveals a straightforward rule based on the identity of the author. Under the government edicts doctrine, judges—and, we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered the “authors” of the works they produce in the course of their official duties as judges and legislators. That rule applies regardless of whether a given material carries the force of law. And it applies to the annotations here because they are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its official duties.
There still is some good language about how the public must be able to access the law:
The animating principle behind this rule is that no one can own the law. “Every citizen is presumed to know the law,” and “it needs no argument to show . . . that all should have free access” to its contents.
But then insists that the mechanism of this is to focus on authorship, rather than on whether or not something is the law. That has the potential to be a problem down the road as others may try to twist this to make it clear that others do the authorship and then assign the copyright to the law.
Our cases give effect to that principle in the copyright context through construction of the statutory term “author.”... Rather than attempting to catalog the materials that constitute “the law,” the doctrine bars the officials responsible for creating the law from being considered the “author[s]” of “whatever work they perform in their capacity” as lawmakers. Ibid. (emphasis added). Because these officials are generally empowered to make and interpret law, their “whole work” is deemed part of the “authentic exposition and interpretation of the law” and must be “free for publication to all.”
If judges, acting as judges, cannot be “authors” because of their authority to make and interpret the law, it follows that legislators, acting as legislators, cannot be either.Courts have thus long understood the government edicts doctrine to apply to legislative materials.
Right, but again, this wasn't exactly the central issue in this case. It's about whether or not the private authorship of the annotations can still get copyright. To be fair, there had been some questions about whether or not Section 105 of the Copyright Act (regarding the copyrightability of government works) only applied to the Federal government or also state governments, and this ruling has at least settled that uncertainty by saying in no uncertain terms that it also applies to state governments.
But here, the ruling focuses more on authorship and the majority opinion basically says that based on how the OGCA is created, the legislature is the author, rather than LexisNexis:
As we have explained, the annotations were prepared in the first instance by a private company (Lexis) pursuant to a work-for-hire agreement with Georgia’s Code Revision Commission. The Copyright Act therefore deems the Commission the sole “author” of the work. 17 U. S. C. §201(b). Although Lexis expends considerable effort preparing the annotations, for purposes of copyright that labor redounds to the Commission as the statutory author.
Indeed, the ruling seems to spend more time highlighting that the Code Revision Commission is a part of the legislature, than it does on the fact that LexisNexis wrote the original annotations. This has me wondering if this may effectively obliterate copyright on works created at the behest of governments from third party contractors (which had always been something of a loophole in the law). Under this ruling, it sure sounds like many works that we previously believed the government held a copyright on, because they were developed/created by an outside contractor at the behest of the government, now can be declared in the public domain as well.
Another interesting tidbit in the ruling regards how much deference should be given to the Copyright Office's view of things. Here, the Supreme Court more or less says "well, not so much," by noting that things like the Copyright Office's "Compendium" of practices is a "non-binding administrative manual." That's certainly useful for situations in which the Copyright Office goes weird, but also is less useful when the Copyright Office gets things right (like with regards to whether or not a monkey taking a selfie gets copyright).
The majority opinion also brushes off Georgia's claim that without copyright here it'll never get private companies like LexisNexis to help it write annotations:
Georgia also appeals to the overall purpose of the Copyright Act to promote the creation and dissemination of creative works. Georgia submits that, without copyright protection, Georgia and many other States will be unable to induce private parties like Lexis to assist in preparing affordable annotated codes for widespread distribution. That appeal to copyright policy, however, is addressed to the wrong forum. As Georgia acknowledges, “[I]t is generally for Congress, not the courts, to decide how best to pursue the Copyright Clause’s objectives.”
Even outside of it being the wrong forum, this argument is silly. There are tons of companies that create things for the US government based on getting paid to do so without any need for a separate monopoly right.
Oh, and that reminds me, Chief Justice Roberts opens his decision by reminding people that copyright is a monopoly right:
The Copyright Act grants potent, decades-long monopoly protection for “original works of authorship.”
That's nice to see since bringing up the "m" word seems to make a lot of copyright maximalists lose their minds.
As the majority ruling builds to its conclusion, it's nice to see Chief Justice Roberts call out a perfect example of why the annotated version of the law should be accessible to all (though amusingly, to make his point, he has to point out that the OGCA will cost you $412 to check his citation -- at least it did when he wrote it):
Georgia minimizes the OCGA annotations as non-binding and non-authoritative, but that description undersells their practical significance. Imagine a Georgia citizen interested in learning his legal rights and duties. If he reads the economy-class version of the Georgia Code available online, he will see laws requiring political candidates to pay hefty qualification fees (with no indigency exception), criminalizing broad categories of consensual sexual conduct,and exempting certain key evidence in criminal trials from standard evidentiary limitations—with no hint that important aspects of those laws have been held unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. See OCGA §§21–2–131, 16–6–2, 16–6–18, 16–15–9 (available at www.legis.ga.gov). Meanwhile, first-class readers with access to the annotations will be assured that these laws are, in crucial respects, unenforceable relics that the legislature has not bothered to narrow or repeal. See §§21–2–131, 16–6–2, 16–6–18, 16–15–9 (available at https://store.lexisnexis.com/products/official-code-of-georgia-annotated-skuSKU6647 for $412.00).
If everything short of statutes and opinions were copyrightable, then States would be free to offer a whole range of premium legal works for those who can afford the extra benefit. A State could monetize its entire suite of legislative history. With today’s digital tools, States might even launch a subscription or pay-per-law service.
There's also this bit of support for the law being freely available, and the fact that betting on fair use is a "roll the dice" situation (!!!).
If Georgia were correct, then unless a State took the affirmative step of transferring its copyrights to the public domain, all of its judges’ and legislators’ non-binding legal works would be copyrighted. And citizens, attorneys, nonprofits, and private research companies would have to cease all copying, distribution, and display of those works or risk severe and potentially criminal penalties.... Some affected parties might be willing to roll the dice with a potential fair use defense. But that defense, designed to accommodate First Amendment concerns, is notoriously fact sensitive and often cannot be resolved without a trial.... The less bold among us would have to think twice before using official legal works that illuminate the law we are all presumed to know and understand.
That section admitting that the requirement of a trial to resolve fair use being naturally suppressing of free speech is... kind of amazing in its own right, and I imagine it may show up in other cases at some point.
There are two dissents -- one from Justice Thomas (which Justice Alito joins, and Justice Breyer mostly joins) and one from Justice Ginsburg. Thomas's dissent is... just weird. He basically says the law can't be copyrighted, but obviously annotations can be -- which by itself is perhaps an understandable argument, but most of Thomas' dissent focuses on his new favorite focus: whether or not the Supreme Court should be taking earlier precedents and building on them:
In my view, the majority’s uncritical extrapolation of precedent is inconsistent with the judicial role. An unwillingness to examine the root of a precedent has led to the sprouting of many noxious weeds that distort the meaning of the Constitution and statutes alike. Although we have not been asked to revisit these precedents, it behooves us to explore the origin of and justification for them, especially when we are asked to apply their rule for the first time in over 130 years.
I mean, okay. But under that prism, shouldn't we be going back to a copyright that actually lasted for a limited time and only applied to maps, books, and charts? Copyright has changed quite a bit from the time of the Constitution.
The Ginsburg dissent was to be expected, as she has always been the most copyright-maximalist Supreme Court Justice around, and never misses a chance to push for worse copyright law and locking up knowledge. It is a bit surprising that Breyer also joined in her dissent -- since he, historically, has been on the right side of many copyright cases. That dissent argues that the annotations are separate from the law and deserve a copyright. She argues that while it's okay to say that judge's annotations cannot get copyright, that's because it's their job to interpret the laws. A legislature has a role in creating the laws -- but not interpreting them, and thus (in her mind) official annotations are not within their direct responsibility:
One might ask: If a judge’s annotations are not copyright-able, why are those created by legislators? The answer lies in the difference between the role of a judge and the role of a legislator. “[T]o the judiciary” we assign “the duty of interpreting and applying” the law, Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923), and sometimes making the applicable law, see Friendly, In Praise of Erie—and of the New Federal Common Law, 39 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 383 (1964). See also Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803) (“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”). In contrast, the role of the legislature encompasses the process of “making laws”—not construing statutes after their enactment.
And thus because it serves a different purpose (and is not binding) she says the annotations deserve copyright:
Because summarizing judicial decisions and commentary bearing on enacted statutes, in contrast to, for example, drafting a committee report to accompany proposed legislation, is not done in a legislator’s law-shaping capacity, I would hold the OCGA annotations copyrightable and therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
In the end, the result is good, but the ruling is a bit messy, and not quite as nice as it could have been. But the key result: the laws of Georgia, including the annotations in the official code, should be available for anyone to read. And that's a very good thing.
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Filed Under: annotations, carl malamud, copyright, georgia, laws, official code of georgia annotated, ogca, public domain, state laws, supreme court
Companies: lexisnexis, public.resource.org
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No copyright in the annotations, either? What incentive does Georgia have left to bother writing laws at all?
(/sarc, I hope obviously.)
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Would of been interesting...
To goto court and contest tha law, as it had never been Published outside of the State officials.
The law library in Portland Or. is at the court house(try parking in that area, no dont even try) and its a small room with a librarian. And SOLID rows of book. You have to pay to copy, you cant borrow or buy..
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*Every* person knows the law????
Is this an explicit acknowledgment that police officers should know the law or that they are not citizens?
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Hmmm, I foresee bad consequences.
My initial read is that any work that previously had the copyright assigned to the government might now be argued to be in the public domain, even if they were originally written in a way that conformed to a license such as the GPL. That's going to be messy.
Plus this does not fix the problem with copyrighted works being incorporated by reference and having the force of law. The obvious case is building codes, but there are more obscure cases such as privately drawn maps used in zoning.
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Re: Would of been interesting...
There's usually a parking garage with space in that area. Not sure what it's like right now though.
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Re:
Maybe the court is setting up an act of self preservation. They need to have more things to decide in the future. Being clear and all encompassing is not in their best interest.
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Re: *Every* person knows the law????
“Every citizen is presumed to know the law”
This can be presumed, however it remains impossible.
When there are secret courts conducting secret trials of those who have been accused of violating secret laws, I really do not see how it is possible. Osmosis perhaps? Telepathic powers? I see it just more of the same everyday bullshit.
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Re:
So, what's the bad consequence?
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Weird way to get to the right outcome, but I’ll take it. Now: How long until Techdirt posts a copy of the OCGA? 😁
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Interesting
So it comes down to the fact that the legislature paid LexisNexis to do the work. So if, say, the MPAA were to draft a law just because they wanted to, and that law then got adopted by the legislature (even if the MPAA paid the legislators to do so), it could be copyrighted...?
Not that that could ever happen, of course.
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Re:
Well, it's public domain, so why don't you do that yourself? ;-)
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forget the OCGA
I want copies of the SAE/IEEE/SME books that are incorporated,by reference, in the various state laws. For example, in building regulations.
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Re: Copies of OCGA
You know that it's all at https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Official+Code+of+Georgia+Annotated%22 right?
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Re: Incorporation by reference
There's a separate ongoing case about that anyway.
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Re: Re:
One of the important limitations on the judiciary branch of the government is that judges only decide issues that are brought before them. Otherwise, they would be writing laws, not interpreting them: they would be free to abuse their power almost without limit (the euphemism for this is "judicial activism".)
What they can do (and did here) is to lay down principles by which the law is applied. Here, they focus on one principle (which they felt had been neglected), which is adequate to deal with the question in hand. And remember, this principle does not exclude OTHER ways of showing that government documents are in the public domain.
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Truly, the apocalypse has come
Now companies hired to write annotations/collections will have to actually do some work every so often if they want to stay in business, rather than just camp out and charge tolls for people trying to access the law.
While it's beyond stupid that it took the freakin US Supreme Court to rule on this, and even then some of them came out on the insane side, at least it has been ruled on and the ruling did come to the right conclusion, even if via a twisty route.
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Re: forget the OCGA
Anything in particular? Malamud's already posted a lot of ASME and IEEE stuff (not all up to date though): Public Safety Codes Incorporated By Law (raw directory listing). I recommend ASME A17.1 (2004): Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators (32MB PDF).
I'd love to see more Canadian stuff up there personally, like the Canadian Electrical Code which is basically unobtainable.
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Re: Interesting
Once it becomes a law you site the law not the draft. So no you can't copyright a law thankfully.
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Re: Re: Re:
Well, judicial activism isn't a new thing, even for the Supreme Court. Qualified immunity comes to mind, but there are probably other examples.
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That sound you hear is John Smith and Michael Slonecker angrily grinding their teeth in self-righteous protest.
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Pay per law service?
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Re: Pay per law service?
Sigh...joke ruined by premature enter key.
"With today’s digital tools, States might even launch a subscription or pay-per-law service. "
Isn't that what the lobbyists already have?
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Re: Re: Incorporation by reference
By which I mean, https://www.eff.org/cases/publicresource-freeingthelaw
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Re:
"What incentive does Georgia have left to bother writing laws at all?"
You'd think the sarcasm was obvious...
...and yet if this had been the discussion about a song or a book then Bobmail/Blue/Jhon would have ben around saying exactly that.
Worse, their argument would have meant that without copyright Georgia's first governor wouldn't have incentive to produce any new works anymore. And that would be abominable.
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Re:
Regarding building codes: If they carry the weight of law, then writer is by definition a legislator is he not? I did not see the word "legislator" qualified to mean elected official. The wording of the decision:
"we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered the 'authors' "
A legislator does not neccessarily have to be an enactor. Citizens and corporations can write laws, though the electorate are the only group of persons who can put them in the hopper.
The lack of qualification is important. The annotations are not the only part copyrighted. The attributes of the compendium (layout, format etc.) comprise a portion of the composition. In this fashion the compilers themselves are legislators by the nature of the fact that the decision attached to their work, even though they did not write the textual content. The copyright applies to the "fixed" composition, not the words.
Using the transitive property: If this annotated work isn't copyrightable because the authors are legislators, then the authors of the is annotated work (not the authors of the annotations, but the authors of the BOOK) are legislators.
They are not enactors by nature of the fact that they are not elected, but they are legislators.
Authors of the UBC are not enactors, but are legislators in exactly the same fashion. Certainly as much as the compendium authors of the annoted works. Notably, this probably applies to big chunks of the ISO Standards as well.
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Re:
And make it easier to track the money in the system.
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Re: *Every* person knows the law????
That is an assumption that Should be disproved.
As I dont think there are many Lawyers/judges, that can/want to, know all the laws that abound.
I would wish that our legislators get off their buts and consider going over the past laws, and clean most of them up.
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Re: Re:
I'd say no, because they don't carry the weight of law—until the actual legislators say that they do. Building codes could be a gray area, because they know and intend those to become law. But legislators could incorporate anything by reference. Would J.K. Rowling be a legislator if some judge (aka. common-law legistator) incorporated a term defined by her into a ruling? Either way, the amount necessary to understand the ruling/law should be considered in the public domain (if not a moot point because it's already fair use).
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Re: Re: Interesting
As others have noted, citing "the law" doesn't mean much when the law says little more than "you must follow the National Electrical Code". I don't care whether such a statement puts the NEC into the public domain or just makes it fair use to copy/quote all parts with legal meaning, but nobody should be applying copyright to stop it.
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UBC / ASTM
what impact does this have on the states and municipalities that have adopted the Uniform Building Code or ASTM standards "by reference." That is, the citizens have to follow these standards, but only have access to them if they pay ... a lot.
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The ``Authorship'' Route
I think it works. It gets us where we need to be, pretty easily in this case but it can also work in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Intl, Inc., 293 F.3d 791 (US 5th Cir. 2002). While there was much discussion as to whether there should be public access to the law, the en-banc 5th Circuit rejected limitations on authorship. Id @797.
The court went on to discuss how, in earlier building code case the ultimate rationale was citizen authorship. Through their officials, citizens enact model codes into law. That enactment is the expression of the public will. Id @799.
Public access to the law should not ``degenerate'' into access ``as long as [entity] chooses not to file suit''. Id @800.
Veeck purchased a cd-rom and put the code on-line for public access. He may do that: a person publishing the law may use any copy that he may find. Id @800.
I find the public authorship doctrine to be a fairly workable way to reach non-copyrighability of law. There are other paths, discussed in Veeck, but public authorship seems a fairly reasonable route to get there.
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Re: Re: Re:
If the UBC is regulation, then it is law is it not? Or is this another one of those "heads I win, tails you loose" situations where the state can throw you in jail or fine you for not complying, but you have no civil recourse because the judge says: "nuh uh! not a law not a law infinity! lalalalla I can't hear you!" kind of things.
It would seem that SCOTUS has yet again decided to be so obtuse in its decision as to insure that they can claim to be on the side of the Constitution, but rely on the fact that the states can continue to ignore their decision.
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Masnick misunderstands law
Masnick tries to make the word "Official" in the title of Georgia's Official Annotated Code do more work than it can do. The Georgia codes themselves have always been devoid of copyright protection, as they should be.
But a book of annotated codes is very different from a book of codes because the annotations contain opinions, summaries, and interpretations of legal cases that are no more "official" than the sources they draw upon. As the Supreme Court notes: "Georgia and JUSTICE GINSBURG emphasize that the annotations do not purport to provide authoritative explanationsof the law and largely summarize other materials, such as judicial decisions and law review articles."
Works of this nature are copyright protected regardless of who pays for them to be created. Hence, the 4 dissenting justices (Thomas, Alito, Ginsburg, and Breyer) are right and the majority is wrong. The authorship standard is the only possible leg the majorty opinion has to stand on.
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Re:
Probably not a good argument, though. Things created, as we see in this case, as works for hire by government may have government in place of an author. No copyright inheres in such works. That is a result that falls out of finding government authorship of the law.
On the other hand, people who write things outside of government contracts often have copyrights. They could then sell those copyrights to the government.
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Re: Masnick misunderstands law
In some states, you wouild probably be correct. However, in Georgia, the legislature has paid for the annotations and adopted them as part of the official code. Being the official code, paid for by the state and created under legislative direction, those annotations are legally deemed the work of the legislature.
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Re: The ``Authorship'' Route
I don't know if the result would have followed under the theory that it was part of the law. The text at issue are annotations to the code and do not carry any official weight in terms of law. While there is persuasive authority, the "official" annotations from LexisNexis are no more binding on the courts or citizens than annotations posted on some legal blog.
If the annotations are not part of the law, then they would fall outside the "law must be public domain" rule, and PRO would be in trouble.
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Re: Interesting
That's not how it sounds to me. Where do you see money being the defining consideration?
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Re: Masnick misunderstands law
Stay classy, Dick. Only a copyright fanatic would argue "Nobody would follow the law if people couldn't pay for it"...
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