In the mid 80s my dad wrote a book named "Circa 1957," which was a semi-autobiographical story about my dads life and coming of age in the late 1950s. He was including lyrics to the popular songs of the time. Everyone gave him permission with no issues or money except one. Chuck Berry. It took dad a while to track down a contact number, but he did. He called the number, expecting an agent or secretary. Instead, a woman answered the phonelike you would at at your house . He asked to asked to speak to whoever was in charge of requests like his, and she said, "Hold on," put the phone down and yelled something my dad couldn't make out. A minute or so later a man comes on the line and my dad explains what he wants. The guy told my dad, sure, you can use the lyrics to Maybelline, for $25K! Of course my dad didn't have $25K laying around in 1985 and said as much and thanked the man. Then he asked, "if you don't mind, who am I speaking to?" The voice on the other end of the phone replied "Mr. Berry" and it dawned on my dad that he was talking to Chuck Berry on his home telephone. They talked for a few minutes and Mr. Berry explained to my dad that people had been using his music for decades without paying him and while he appreciated my dad asking, he wasn't going to give permission for free. My dad respected that and didn't use any of Chuck Berry's lyrics. Though Chuck Berry and the song were mentioned in the book.
Very cool. My kids don't believe that it used to be possible to just pick up a phone and call famous people. Meanwhile I barely believe they can send messages to famous people casually on their phones 24x7. My daughters would melt if they met a famous person. My Dad always said, if you get a chance to have a story by meeting someone DO IT. You can tell it the rest of your life, and you need new stories. My grandmother met 5 Presidents. My father met Juan Manuel Fangio. My brother met Little Richard. I met pretty much all of the great 49ers teams from the 1980s back before athletes were so isolated.
Chuck Berry - like any musician - had good reason to try to hold onto his rights. I remember when he came to Melbourne Australia, there was a long delay in the theatre before he appeared. Turns out it was due to him insisting on being paid in cash before setting foot on stage. On the bright side, he hated Australia so much that he wrote "Back in the USA" when he got home - and without that, we wouldn't have the Beatles "Back in the USSR".
@@Scoots1994 I have met a number of "famous" people and some not so famous. From President's wives, to Governors, senator, congress, mayors, Bands, Artist, radio/news hosts, journalists. So many that I have lost count over the years. I just tossed a flyer from circa 2003 when I met Sammy Mayfield a semi famous Jazz singer. He signed it as well yet it means nothing to anyone else other than a memory that I no longer need to keep.
I ran into this issue back in 2005, as an apartment dweller. There was a proposed standard for fire safety, restricting propane tank size for gas grills, on a balcony - it was basically going to restrict any tank over 1 gallon in size - I had a 5 gallon tank, and wanted to clarify what the rules actually said. The ONLY way I could find to acquire that info was a subscription to something like Lexus Nexus. I finally emailed my local fire inspector, and they quickly replied with….”Yeah, we won’t be enforcing that….ever.”
as a model rocketry hobbyist, I've found myself having to "steal" copies of the laws on storage of black-powder and other highly flammable/explosive substances to figure out how to safely and legally store model rocket engines, because NFPA standards were incorporated by reference in State and Local law. It's totally stupid, and this case is a welcome relief.
A lot of local codes will just reference the national electrical code, nat plumbing code, ect. Then you need to go to the publisher, and buy a $30 book. What a scam they have going on.
As an Industrial Electrician and Maintenance Technician since 1999, I can tell you the NFPA does nothing for free. It's long been the notion that the reason the NFPA and the NEC come up with new rules is because they're financially motivated by companies that make products for their industry.
Regarding the NEC. That is true . . . and it is not. It is true that manufacturers often are represented in the committees that develop the code sections. However so are Fire Marshals, consulting design firms, etc. It is a balancing act. We have a saying that every code section was "written in blood" (someone injured or killed). In the last few decades it has become more pro-active to get protections in place before that happens. It is in that area that manufacturers try to stick their foot in. That being said states and jurisdictions often "except" any sections that they do not feel are appropriate. Some states have set back AFCI requirements, GFCI requirements, etc in the past.Another example is ASHRAE energy code standards. A LOT of states pushed back on the controlled receptacle part for almost a decade before accepting it.
@@BigrignohioThank you for your informative comment. Is it still true that the code section are "written in blood" or is there now personnel moving from regulatory agencies to companies after codes are adopted? Is code generation a method to reduce competition?
But you can cut and paste a code reference legally, according to this decision. You may need to pay for your personal access to the code reference but copying parts of it is fair use. The NFPA/NEC costs are outrageous, perhaps in part because of free sharing of information. BTW I'm electrical engineer, industrial as well.
@@DKNguyen3.1415 I don't know, did they? If they did, why? was it for financial gain or because they felt there were unsafe practices they could provide assistance with? Either way why does it matter? The practical matter is those documents won't exist without license fees, because that's what pays for their development in the current process. Which tends to depoliticize technical safety expertise. Should people have free access to law and law incorporated references? Yes. But this is not a simple issue and I suspect there will be some not so great consequences. Standards organizations are most often non-profits who relies on volunteer work done by technical experts in their field. That goes away, the manpower involved in these standards is staggering even with volunteers and licensing is effectively a user tax, however if the government has to pay to develop these standards everyone's taxes will go up. Very few people want to volunteer for a government bureaucracy.
What makes this issue more dicey than it seems is that it doesn't cover what's printed in law books, but rather standards detailed elsewhere, which are merely *referenced* in the law ("incorporation by reference"). Personally, I think any text incorporated into a law should be published with that law. That would avoid any ambiguity, missing information, or this copyright fight. I understand it might become impractical if too much external text involved.
@@dwaynepenner2788 lol. "Everyone's taxes will go up." You could pay for everything you describe multiple times over for the price of that jet some pilot ejected out of and lost earlier this week.
This is good. As a retired engineer, I sometimes had to pay for copies of standards that had been incorporated into laws, such as building codes and the NFPA standards.
I agree and I don't; I am not a fan of hiding legally required technical information behind a pay wall, but let me ask you this: as a engineer how confident would you feel signing for work that was done without them? Because that is a likely outcome of this ruling.
This is great news. It always pissed me off that I could not read part of the city electrical code without buying a very expensive copy of the 1000 page NEC.
I once said to my local Supreme Court, "If I cannot see the law, why should I follow it"? Their Law Library was (somehow) not open to the Public. Only Law Society Members were allowed in.
Remember when Lexis/Nexus and Westlaw were claiming copyright on their page numbers, so you couldn't cite decisions without paying (including in briefs to a court)?
Secret laws need to be made totally unenforceable. Electrical code laws are already copyrighted. Inspector: "this isn't to code, so you can't move into your own home" Me: "Can I have a copy of the code so I can fix it?" Inspector: "no, it's copyrighted; NFPA 70 can be purchased for $265, and we'll change it next year so get it done fast"
The goverment STOLE the NFPA's work. They could do all the studies and write the standards themselves. Nope they just look in this book. Now you can't get paid for your labor? Also, anyone that can't invest in 265 for industry standards should not be around any industry at all.
By law, the county or city which issues the permit, is required to provide upon request the ENTIRE code when the city has adopted. Some allow you to bring a flash-drive, others will require that you pay a nominal fee to provide you with a drive with a copy of the codes. You can even demand that they print it out on paper, you'll just have to pay for the cost of the copies. But electrical codes, once adopted by ANY public body in the US, become PUBLIC DOMAIN. And just like the city is required to produce ANY public document you wish to peruse, so does the building department. Here's the way to do it. You present to the custodian of records, or that persons representative (the person at the counter) with a FOIA request. That's it.
Yes, the municipal CODES are almost always available online, as part of making government accessible to the people. BUT, the industry STANDARDS that are often incorporated into the codes by reference, are generally NOT free. They are developed and published by private organizations, and they have to be able to ar least recover the costs involved in developing, updating, and publishing standards documents.
I would argue that copyrighting public information places a barrier to the purpose of it being public, thus placing an unreasonable burden on the public to have access and be compliant with the laws. An hypothetical could be you get fined for illegal dumping of your lawn clippings at the edge of your property, but the ordinance is behind a paywall of $1, and no one can tell you about it unless you pay that fee, and you could even be fined again for informing ppl about the law, or even that there's a fee to know the law because that's copyrighted too.
I do believe this topic has been determined that laws or government documents cannot be copyrighted. There are businesses that do publish the laws of carious states and the federal gov’t and got into a case about copyright. I think the judge said that the law cannot be copyrighted, but the notes and other materials in the these books can.
They are also technical documents developed by NGOs independent from the government that may not be able to financially survive without that income. Then the government will have to pay to develop them themselves.
@@dwaynepenner2788 Government collusion with private entities to enduce them to develop arcane rules that can then be made as complex as possible, thus requiring tons of documentation that can then be hidden from the public, primarily for _rent-taking_ purposes that can be *monetized* for the self-same government and private entities ... Reminds me of _something..._ I can't wuite remember *_what._* Whatever it is, I know it doesn't smell too nice. TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT. TOO MUCH UNRESTRICTED REGULATION. TOO MUCH COLLUSION WITH SPECIAL INTERESTS. It's just B.S.
I’m convinced courts just make up what is “clearly established law” in the qualified immunity realm because qualified immunity is one of the most unclear examples of law ever. I swear some of these court of appeals opinions sound like memes.
@@nateo200 Basically there needs to be precedence for it to be "clearly established", but courts have perverted that standard to the point that the precedence needs to be virtually identical for it to be considered analogous.
@ScottRoofwalker: It's not just LEOS. Public officials, politicians, judges, etc.. also have qualified immunity. That's why that law will never go away. There should be more discussion on who benefits from qualified immunity rather than just always focusing on the police.
Good ruling. If groups such as ASTM don't like it then they should simply withdraw all their efforts to have their standards incorporated into law. Lawmakers should be very clear up front - any standard incorporated into a law or regulation becomes open to the public.
Yeah…and that will happen almost certainly. They no longer have the resources to develop said standards (and they take a surprising amount of money … the contributors are highly expert in their fields) because their licensing supplemented that. So the governments will wind up giving grants or writing contracts to develop them in the first place. The way it is the government is essentially stealing IP by incorporating them into law. Now I believe the should be availible with no addition charge once part of law, but now there is a disincentive to develop these standards.
This. The organizations are free to develop standards and copyright them, but if they want governments to adopts their standards as actual laws then they have to release those standards into the wild. There's absolutely no moral authority to prosecute somebody for violating a law if that law isn't freely available to them.
And these standards will stop being written if the compensation is denied as it just has been. Laws and standards cost money to create. And this ruling just shifted that cost.
Having served on national and international organizations involving standards in the electronics industry I would beg to differ. First off, there are a number of organizations that serve their industry, not the organizations' pockets. More importantly, many fund their operations with efforts to help companies comply with the standards, not simply sell them a copy of the standards. If ASTM doesn't want their standards incorporated into laws and regulations under this ruling, there are a number of other groups that would be happy to step up to the plate.@@philiguana
Another defense that I think they could have made is that it’s the right of everyone in the US to know US law if they want to, since it’s kind of hard to follow a law you aren’t allowed to be aware of
Oh you think so? Your taxes are going up as a result of this ruling. Essentially the government has been outsourcing technical expertise for free by allowing the standard developers (non government entities) to charge for access. Now the standards organizations can't. Do think they are going to keep writing them and pay the expenses out of their pockets without compensation. Right. IBR is a sound process because it de-politicizes technical, often safety related best practices, but at the end of the day it is a product that has up front costs. These (most often not for profit) organizations have just had their source of recouping development costs denied, why the hell should they keep doing their work. So the government is either going to hire it's own technical experts or give these organizations grants to keep running. Either way the government now has a finical interest (conflict) in these previously non-political technical documents. Sounds good doesn't it?
@@dwaynepenner2788 Code development was never "outsourced for free". Everyone involved in these industries, whether installers, manufacturers, designers, or students had to pay NFPA a hefty fee for what can be effectively distributed to everyone for free via PDF, as an involuntary tax forced upon them by an entity that is not the government but acts as if it is.
@@DMahalko and what did the government pay to use or create those standards? Nothing…outsourced for free. It cost the government nothing. If the government didn’t outsource it, it would would be paying its own employees or contractors to do it.
@@dwaynepenner2788 The 'why the hell' of it is that they are writing the law, and writing the law gives them a lot of power, even if they don't get to sell the law. They are effectively setting their position as representative of the industry as a whole in stone. By writing the law now, they also will write the law in the future. This is why companies pay lobbyists. You bet your ass that industry giants would write the law for free.
Around thirty years ago, the California legislative publishing division wanted to continue their monopoly of controlling the publication of California laws so they could charge every county and city and attorney and police department in the state for the lastest version of the law instead of publishing the laws on line for everybody’s easy access. Thank goodness they lost that battle,
The government shouldn't have copyright or trademark protection as the government doesn't actually own anything bought, written, or designed because the taxpayers fund literally everything the government does.
the government hasn't bought, nor does it own these standards. They are created by independent organizations. The government is incorporating them by referencing them in law with no compensation to the creators. So while citizens should have access to the law, creators should also be paid for their work, or they will stop creating. Then what? Either the government finds money for that technical expertise (which comes with all sorts of risks including politizing technical safety) or the laws that reference these documents become useless.
@@fluxuous6907 if those standards aren’t produced by standards organizations the government will have to write their own. Which means contracts or more employees. You will pay for that. Either way you pay to know the law.
All of the building codes are written by organizations who copyright the documents. Then the various government agencies adopt said model codes. This has been a hot button issue for some time now.
Yes. But they are MEANT to be copied in these instances. The problem comes when they DON'T adopt those codes and practices. I am an expert in the NFPA-211. It IS INTENDED for local governing agencies to adopt and implement.
Yet a normal person who is renting, or selling a home, can't check to see if the construction is up to code without spending hundreds, or thousands, of dollars.
Once the code is adopted, the incorporated by referenced material should be published, by the government. It should be available to the general public, for free, at least electronically. At Costco of printing if you want a hard copy.
A few relevant notes: - Standards writing groups flourished like Spring weeds when Congress (circa 1978) passed a law encouraging federal agencies to use industry standards in their regulations; - Standards organizations based their business model on selling copies at absurd prices. A brief three page standard is typically padded with fluff then sold for hundreds if dollars per copy; - Standards organizations typically rely upon unpaid volunteers - then use that structure to assert immunity to any liability (see Hydrolevel vs. ASME); - After SBBC vs Veeck was resolved against the Standards organizations, the organizations began to incorporate “by reference” in an attempt to continue to claim copyright protection; - Other Appellate courts have held differently. This one is sure to be appealed as well. Having participated in writing standards I can speak of these issues from personal experience.
Anything produced by the government is inherently in the Public Domain. That is the only possible interpretation of a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
@@dwaynepenner2788, if they are stated in a government document, that's all that matters. The original company can sue the government for copyright infringement, and then we can debate the ramifications of that if they win, but that's about it.
@@Vamooso not comfortable with that either, but also wary of the consequences of not letting the authors recover their costs to develop the standards. Their is a significant tension and nuance here.
@@dwaynepenner2788 but they deliberately write them FOR the government. That IS the purpose of them. Then they lobby to have them enacted as laws. Then if you want to know the law, you have to pay. That is the entire business model. If they have a problem with the requirement that the standards be freely available, then they can take the cities and counties and states to court over it. Force them to stop incorporating their copyrighted works into the law by reference. But that's the whole point, they ASKED them to make laws that referenced their standards.
Imo any and all law books and those containing things like building codes and other regulations should be immediately be in the public domain. Also every public library should be strongly encourage to have a set of these in their collection, updated every 5 to 10 years as needed.
I agree, with the caveat that if you want to OWN a printed and/or bound version, you should pay reasonable publishing (printing, bookbinding, shipping) costs. edit: If you print it at home on your own printer, you pay for paper and toner/ink.
@@wolphin732 If you mean printing something at home, yes. It can get expensive for an individual to try and print an entire book, because individuals don't often own the most efficient printing, collating, and binding machines. - I once toured a very local small-batch printer/binder business. They had some very pricy and often old machines somehow cross-bred with computers. The person I was talking to said that they could print up to a 32-page stapled pamphlet at about the same price per unit no matter the run size, but for a full book the run size really influenced the price.
How could any normal person know all the laws of one state, let alone federal law. Ignorance should be a given, at this point, government is out of control.
Defendant "Your honor I didnt know robbing banks was illegal". Judge "Why didnt you use common sence, or if in doubt do the miniumal research". "Since you were ignorant of the law, your not quilty" Like Steve said not even lawyers know all the law but there are many ways to find it. I agree, Ignorance by certain groups should be a given
Love it. Ive pushed numerous cities on this, when they refuse to provide copies of the documents of rules they wanted us to follow. Almost all of them provided copies of all relevant and necessary documents.
Wow I went to the site and the register of copywrites wanted over $85,000.00 for the copyright database. Geeze. I'm glad the court realized this was a bad idea. NFPA loves to make standards which is good but to charge for everything is ridiculous.
I used to work for a company that designed a program on the computer that allowed a person to search for case law and regulations. It was sold to law firms and even judges. We received a lot of complaints from the private company that printed the law books. I think there was a ruling in court that stated the books are copyright and any photo copy is also copyright. However, the text can be scanned in and put in a format that is different, such as the font chosen, the page breaks and so forth. This caused a problem if a certain portion referred to a specific page number. That is so much like the churches that would execute someone who had a copy of the Bible, as they felt the average person cannot understand the Bible. (Of course not, it was written in Latin which no one speaks) Translators were executed. They had the control of people, so the church leaders can say doing that is a sin because WE say so.
Stopping the spread of false translations stop heresies from spreading. Imagine if your stupidity applied to the interpretaion of law itself. I just make up case law and present it as if it's authoritative.
Sorry but your last part is wrong and comes from a very common misunderstanding that has turned into an erroneous myth. There were multiple translations of the Bible in multiple languages long before the Gutenberg Bible in fact German itself even had multiple translations. The Latin Bible itself was a translation and it's name the Vulgate came from the fact that when the Bible was made Latin was the common language vulgar meaning common in Latin. The issue with translations of the Bible were only an issue in particular places for specific reasons. For example in English there were multiple translations of various books but no translate of the entire Bible. The problem there was the Lollards which the Church had fought against and some of the more reserved members of the church hierarchy there were worried about an improper translation leading to the revival of the Lollards or other groups. Point being nobody would get condemned for translation or having a translation of the Bible. Before the printing press disseminating copies were not easy and often time not necessary. In specific places their were attempts to translate the Bible but the process took a long time as it often was done as a group and agreement had to be made on translation before it could be accepted the Douay Rheims as an example took a years just for the first half to be complete. The second half was halted as England would become protestant and starting persecuting Catholics so it was until much later that the second half was finished in France. In other places there were worry about improper translation and so a translation did not occur until later times. When it comes to the major languages of Europe however there were like I said translations Spanish, French and German all had Bible translations and other languages like English had partial translations. Many of these translations going back to the middle ages and this is not bringing up things like translations and explanations of stuff like the Divine Office which used the Psalms and other parts of the Bible in readings and which had commonly used translations in many languages. Now when the protestant reformation began both sides began to condemn Bibles that were viewed as heretical. If you were in Catholic lands you would be condemned for having a protestant Bible but as states started to convert to protestantism the reverse also happened.
@@Beck-tr7dd William Tyndale was in fact hanged and burned at the stake for his translation. He was NOT the only one. Hebrew and Greek were the original texts. During Tynsdale's time many people were burned at the stake with a Bible around their necks. No myth, fact. A large number of people smuggled copies by him and in dark basements made copies. Some were also executed or thrown into prison. Attempting to destroy the Bible began in the Roman Empire.
@@justnotg00d They think protestants were "persecuting" Catholics by dismantling their superstitious usury schemes, he's obviously very full of the holy spirit.
@@justnotg00d It is a lot more complicated. In fact, you have to look country by country and time by time. In England, translations of the Bible were illegal. in France during and after Catharism, even owning a bible was illegal. In Hungary or Croatia on the other hand, it was perfectly legal. In Catalonia, translations were o.k., as one of the first translators was the brother of a saint of the Catholic Church. And in countries not adhering to the Catholic Church, it was never an issue at all.
Laws, rules, regulations, etc. and so on should be published by the government and freely available in electronic PDF form. Period. And at nominal cost for paper versions. But I can see where industry standards associations/professional bodies spend a lot of money making and maintaining the standards - and need to recover these expenses.
Nice! I really HATE trying to search a state/govt law for various regulations and the law says "follow NFPA" or other organizations standard... then have to buy. Grrr...
I have tried to buy those standards before. They are extremely expensive. Like 100 dollars for a digital copy. Probably if they sold them for 5 dollars nobody would have ever gotten so pissed off about it. On the other hand, the standards companies do good work (in my opinion). Hopefully they will figure out a viable business model so they can continue to do good work without "locking down" their standards.
It seems to be the bare standards that become part of laws should be freely available. Background information, reasoning, application considerations, etc. should not be part of the laws themselves, and could therefore be copyrighted and sold separately by these standards organizations to add value and support themselves.
I run into this issue all of the time. I want to review the current Fire Code or International building Code, both of which are adopted in whole or in part by nearly all States, but I can't because of "copyright" of the codes of which we MUST follow.
I would be interested to see if they argued that: if by making the standard the law the government has extinguished the underlying copyright and taken the property.
Ancient legal thinkers said that a law must be "properly promulgated" to be a Just law. Modern legal thinkers: ignorance is no excuse, no matter how many millions of pages the laws are.
they're even written in code. "federal code of regulations" "United States Code Service" Ohio Revised Code" etc... thus it's implied they need to be decoded to be understood.
@@98f5 Careful there; provided this isn't a Poe attempt at sarcasm, it borders on an Equivocation Fallacy. Among other things, "code" can mean as simple as just "the system of rules shared by the participants in an act of communication, making possible the transmission and interpretation of messages." Any language, such as _English_ (hint hint, wink wink) is a _code._ We're communicating in "code" right now, at this very moment. And that code is, in turn, being transmitted by means of systems that operate on computer code, a different contextual definition of "code". And the transmission of this information is regulated by "codes" set by governing agencies; a third contextual meaning. Any decent dictionary will have an enumerated list of contextual definitions of various words listing various different definitions by which that word may be used. And using one contextual meaning *as if* it were _Equivalent_ to another; and basing a logical argument upon the different meaning hoping to sneak it in by way of, functionally, a completely different term that happens to appear and be spelled the same, is an Equivocation Fallacy.
Herostratus burned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. When questioned, he said he did it to be famous, so that his name would be remembered. So a law was passed that the name of Herostratus was to be forgotten and never mentioned. And to make sure that everyone knew that, the law was carved on marble tablets and publicly displayed...
Several years ago, I had a similar discussion with a state employee regarding "NFPA 70," the National Electrical Code (NEC). This is the benchmark for safe electrical design and the standard by which electrical home inspections are done. The 2023 online version of the book cost $145.50. Although this is a slow changing document, it is revised ever year. How am I to know if a house I want to buy is up to code? How do I know a contractor is doing a proper job? How do I know if my design for a widget meets code? I applaud the courts ruling.
No No.. The government was lazy referenced copywrited works. These standards bodies don't write any laws, they can lobby... End of the day the government just stole their work.
I understand your point but there is another side to the issue. These codes and standards are not a bad thing. They promote necessary requirements for the safety of all. So, if they are to be come free, then how does all this effort of developing the standards happen. For example, the Automotive Lift Insititute develops standards for the manufacture and use of automotive lifts. This is a good and necessary endeavor it results in a safe product for your auto mechanic to work under. Now if the ALI is required to give it out free, then how is an organization like this to survive? It isn't all that clear to me the ruling is really all that correct.
How does the supreme court fail to apply the presumption that every citizen knows the law to police under qualified immunity? That seems like a conflict - why is everyone except the police presumed to know the law? Shouldn't the police be held to a higher standard?
Unless the publishers had exclusive language outling how , when , where and at what speed and in what fashion the book could be thrown - where licensure would be required for responsible use and ownership of tne book .
It sure would be nice if there were a chart or something that could show how many times lower courts actually get stuff right. Because there's a whole lot of stuff that they seem to be getting wrong. I'd like to believe that they get only a small portion wrong, but with the state of things today - that's just about impossible to believe.
Going a little beyond this issue, it's ridiculous that an industry can self-regulate like this by essentially writing part of (or in reality, much of) the legislation that regulates it. You know it's going to preference the industry ahead of the consumer.
you have a point in principle, but these standards are well known to be extremely protective of the consumer at great cost (including in buying them!) to engineers who have to abide by them. These are the rules thst separate consumer goods in the US from those in countries like China, and they are why people think of US goods as often being "too dummy proof". When other countries, other than the EU, want to make something to the highest, gold standard they go to the ones in this case. For a long time these organizations have been using the best available engineering science to make these rules. Now why have they been so good and incorruptible? I would say mostly luck, and perhaps they are being corrupted and we haven't noticed yet. But it will certainly make it more difficult to make money if they can't charge for the work they put into making these rules. And if they start doing a poor job or needing to make side deals with those companies they're regulating (or more so than they already do), then who will the government go to for really well formed rules in a field where you need to actually hire smart engineers do the science to generate safety standards? Maybe they start doing like they do for every other type of law, spend 5 years paying themselves or their lawyer friends a fortune to jerk each other off, then just copy paste "think tank" corporate made up garbage into laws. There's a reason they started charging for the digital copies - before computers and the internet it wasn't possible to just make copies for free, so they published the rules and every engineering firm bought them because sending your engineers to the library to copy them down is more expensive. But I do think, like all academic related publishing, scum sucking leeches infested the industry in the name of "online publishing" and have turned monopolizing and extorting large corporations, government, libraries, etc. for published material rather than the old model of making income through higher volume and making publications available at near cost (inc. engineer time). This has crushed the ability of smaller companies or individuals to have access to these standards, hence the demand for the defendant in this case. I AGREE with the EFF to be clear, they are an amazing organization (go donate!). We cannot have "secret" laws. But people should also understand why there is nuance here. Now there is now a mismatch of incentives where the ultimate form of successfully developing the best safety and engineering practices by these companies, presumably their highest goal, will be 'rewarded' with complete commodification and therefore wiping out their highest source of income. Tbh I wonder how this will work when we use similar developed standards made in the EU. They have a large set of competing standards and the two often reference each other, but if you make something for each market you have to certify compliance with those markets separately (which beyond needing to buy the rules has to be done through actual testing by approved labs and is extremely expensive - that's why Chinese electronics are rarely UL certified (UL listed is not the same as certified, basically meaningless)). Will we have the rights to copy and distribute EU regulations once they are turned into law here? Will the government have to pay the EU for use of its copyright in laws that use those standards? I think there's still plenty of room for these companies to make money to continue doing what they do - examples: they are the originators after all so they are very advantageously positioned to make educational and training classes. They can still publish the full sets of guidelines even when they are not required by law but insurance company requirements or when someone just wants well designed best practices for a design. Engineers are still obligated to follow "state of the art" practices or be guilty of negligence when a product harms someone, and while that doesn't explicitly make these references law it does mean an engineer needs them to CYA. I think this entire situation was due to monopolization and exploitation of publishing and the people behind that across countless sectors should be imprisoned for life (I would honestly wish for worse..) for how much damage they have done with their disgusting leech practices. F'ing barely human trash.
It's a long known practice known as Regulatory Capture. Always slimy and monopolistic, but often beginning as quite benign looking. You should check out the psychology industry as a particularly bad offender.
As someone who spent decades manufacturing to ASTM, NFPA, UL, etc standards, I think you might be surprised how effective self-regulation can be at protecting consumers. These standards are set to protect companies from creating liabilities. In other words, these organizations make their money developing & publishing standards that protect other industries from creating (consumer et al) hazards.
I think you are mistaken by saying this is a self-regulated industry. Standards are typically developed by committee or working groups of people employed in a relevant field. They are typically large groups (often over 100) and are not employed by the standard creator and are largely volunteers (although they may be given honorariums and expenses), or sponsored by their regular employer. The standards organizations are typically non-profits who see the value in this work to promote safety and generally improve the reputation of whatever industry they are in. If these experts are engineers or some other professional, those roles are often self regulated, but that is not the same as saying the standards organization is self-regulated. They are actually unregulated as a organization. They only reason their work is referenced in law is because it is recognized for it's technical prowess.
Back when I was a normal human building physical product, I had this sort of situation in putting the law including parts of 2 of those standards in information to potential customers and information after building some of these issues came up. That was.before I ever wanted to know what the appeals court does or that I would ever stand in front of and talk with one. I was just too logical using similar ideas as you about "It's the law, for crying out loud." I suppose they did not want an obvious precedent about disseminating the law that was not readily available elsewhere. My final comment to whoever they were was: 'I am writing the law and giving it to people. If you don't like it, due.' I never heard from them again. I later became someone who could legally attempt to give good legal advice. Interesting case here. It also relates to obtained municipal code. You cannot copyright the law, I said. So do you it seems
I remember there was another case like this in Alabama or Georgia about 10 years ago where a publishing company was trying to copyright its compilations and notations on the law and these were so widely cited that it became the de facto legal book for people in the state was paying for these to be published. I guess the state didn’t want to give up the copyright but the courts forced the issue
Not quite. It was Georgia, and the thing with that case is that the annotations were bought and paid for by the government, which meant that the government of Georgia owned them. Except that governments can't have copyrights under US law. Anything a government does is in the public domain automatically. The case turned on whether the annotations were a work for hire or were part of the law. The court ruled that they were part of the law and thus public domain. It's very similar to the case in the video, and I suspect that if SCOTUS looked at it, they would say that by being incorporated by reference into the law they became public domain. (This would be a bit stronger a protection than the DC Circuit recognized.) This would be a "taking" (i.e. eminent domain), and thus the government might owe the standards body some money for essentially seizing the standards, but nobody else would owe anything.
Whether the whole "three chapters" copying would be a problem would really depend on the type of book. If it was a law textbook, yeah the copying is probably costing you money. If you have written a fiction book however, copying three chapters for use in the class could actually help in the long run. If the school was buying the books, you would sell enough to supply one year and that's it. If they copied and the book was engaging, you might convert a percentage of the students into customers each year as they buy the book to finish the story. If it was more profitable would depend on how many students went on to buy and how long the school used the chapters in class.
@@JonathanMandrakeoh no, the law isn't copyrighted...yet, the law has seized my intellectual property without compensation... Just so you know that's supposed to be a ridiculous reversal and not totally serious.
I imagine that this scenario would be similar to someone taking photographs of others in public. Those photographs can be distributed without consequence generally speaking. But you could potentially face a lawsuit if you attempted to sell them without permission of the subject in the photograph. I assume this would be the response, that because the state is not profiting from the law they created, you wouldn't have a case because you didn't lose anything from the state doing so.
I agree the online version is terrible. I'm also unhappy that they no longer sell PDF versions. It makes it so much more difficult to learn and teach the law. NEC is law BTW for those who weren't aware. It's adopted as law by jurisdictions and OSHA has adopted it as well. Edited to add: Apparently the NFPA is self-funded per their website. I don't know if it's true or not but it's their claim.
My country simply has a statement within the copyright law that says that laws are not copyright protected. Basically solves the whole issue without even needing a trail. If they want to sue somebody it probably should be the state for depriving their property rights by incorporting the standard word by word (assuming they didn't consent to it).
I can show you many local codes that just say things like "Must conform to NEC standards", or similar. So yes, to get a copy of the local code is free online, but you still need to buy a copy of the NEC, at a huge cost annually.
All States or Provinces should have all their laws posted online for all to see. This goes to all government entities, be it Cities, Counties, Parishes, or any other thing they may be called. It should all be put online.
In my working career, I had to refer to many US and international standards documents. I also conducted quality management system audits of companies and organizations. If a company said that they conformed to a specific standard, they had better have a copy of the *current* version on site.
Other people have brought up examples of copyrighted standards and I'd like to mention another one. SAE standards. If you want to keep your car California compliant, there are so many SAE standards you need to read as to what kind of decibel meter to use, at what distance, at what settings, etc.
It would seem reasonable that if the lawmakers rely on someone's IP to draw up their laws, they should pay a license fee to the IP owner, either that, or do their own research, and draw up and maintain their own standards on their own dime
This is an excellent ruling and I wish other countries would follow. I work in an industry where we have dozens of standards referenced in leglisation. A signifcsnt amount of money is spent every year to have access to these leglisatied, mandatory standards
This is awesome news! I am dealing with this exact thing right now. The Texas administrative code dealing with septic tanks references an ASTM Standard. And so in order to even know what that standard said I had to buy it from ASTM.
Woah…this is big in my industry. There are thousands spend on subscriptions. It will also affect the bottom line of these organizations substantially, the unintended consequences might be pretty dramatic
As an electrician the NFPA 70 &70E are the NEC or national electric code. The books are absurdly expensive and the basis of the work we do. This is updated every 3 years in accordance with federal law thus it should be part of the commons.
Being incorporated into law enhances the value of these works to the creators, and I’m sure they encourage it. So I think they don’t have a leg to stand on.
I thought I read something about some proposed legislation to make PACER available free of charge because court records are public (Unless they were sealed by court order).
Love it! Just like the building code, if you can't access it, how can you be held accountable to it!?! This, like most information, should be readily available.
You are entitled to know the law. Better than most social media platforms. I have been banned from advertising on Facebook for a reason I am not allowed to know and what makes it even stranger is that I have never advertised on Facebook or ever used the Marketplace area of FB.
As a former employee if a Federal regulatory agency that routinely incorporated by reference (IBR) such standards I had to deal with this issue. We IBR state pollution control regs into Federal regulations which state regulations IBR various industry standards for testing materials for toxic constituents or to define “Product A” as opposed to “Product B” to set emission standards for “A” distinct from standards for “B.” In the 2010s our public docket a copy of which was posted electronically on-line could not contain an electronic copy of copyright material on-line. A note would say to view go to the regional office or the agency docket center in Washington, DC. Guess agency practices will change if, IF, this ruling survives SCOTUS review. (BTW: I ceased this line of work in 2019 & so perhaps my experience is now dated.)
This is kind of a big deal. Those not involved in engineering type professions may undersell it, but standards incorporated into law is *all over* in engineering of all fields. It would be interesting if Michigan incorportated one of Steve's books into the law - would that be a way of getting around copyright and stiffing Steve on his royalties?
I have found that copyrighting laws are extremely annoying. What I've been hit with is that in many cases building codes and electrical codes are copyrighted. The problem with "fair use" is that 100% of the books are the "law". So, one wants to remodel one's own home, one is told that it must conform to the "code"... and the "code" is copyrighted. And this can impact a LOT OF PEOPLE. Same with other codes and standards. To get around this, some states like Oregon have written their own codes, often with large sections similar to the international code books. Other states like Missouri just point to the code books as being the law. And, of course, they update the regularly, so if you purchased the LAW in 2000, by 2020, they'd be out of date, and you'd have to go out and purchase a new copy.
I'm electrician in Massachusetts, I recently purchase this code cycle of electrical code book with mass amendments $188.00. and every three years theirs a new version of the book is put out. that were expected to purchase.
This is a tougher one than most people initially think. My question is can the government just take anything they want and incorporate it into the law? Why can’t they sue the govt for copyright infringement? That might be a tough claim if they were drafting these standards specifically for the govt to use. I don’t know the specifics enough, but seems to me that the govt should pay them a fixed fee and be done with it.
Ignores the fact that the statutes have relatively little to do with the actual Law...which, under our system of cses called casuistry, is actually the cumulative effect of the cases, decisions & precedents. The actual wording of laws is often "reinterpreted" by appellate courts until it bears little resemblance to what the legislature wrote.
OSHA is famous for including standards by not actually including them. They just say, "per industry standards." The problem is, you should not be required to buy documentation from a third party if a governmental agency is using that standard as part of their work. This is basically forcing companies to buy books (which come out every couple of years), to know how they are going to be judged. And pay every couple of years, as the standards change all the time. NFPA 70e has been a moving target since it came out. They continually change the "rules".
Good video! lol @ Interpretative dance! As a Xerox employee, (something like 30+ years) thank you for using our brand in a genericization. (New word for me, I had to look it up!) It strengthens the brand. Something that would make it even better is if you actually have a Xerox device in your office or home. :) And if you do, thank you.
The code is really put together by companies, volunteers and experts in that field who want to be in the committee. I don't believe anyone is being paid (time and expenses). Organization like NFPA is a non-profit organization. They really don't have enough experts to know it all. Their main purpose it to provide the framework for document organization and ways to vote code changes/acceptance. Notice the organization is basically the same for these codes Personally, I believe such documents should be public records. It gives the small business and individual working alone access to the information.
Can you believe being expected to write that law for free? Cause that is what is happening. They IBR system is both good and bad…it puts subject matter expertise into the hands of experts but now it expects them to work for free. I think those standard should be publicly available, but mark my words the standard’s organizations won’t keep developing the standard law without some kind of compensation for the costs they take to develop.
@@dwaynepenner2788It's funny, because the ruling of the court says that even though the lawsuit was filed about 10 years ago, the standard-setting orgs have not been able to put forth any evidence as to actual losses suffered, beyond saying that it will impact their earnings.
@@manojbhaskaran1997 funny, because this is the first ruling to overturn the pay for use model so I wouldn’t imagine they hadn’t lost any money…they have been charging for the last 10 years.
You said that in jest... but oddly enough, in my high school law class, there literally were two people who did their final project in interpretive dance. I'm not even joking. It was a very interesting class in general, but the laws we covered annoyed me enough that I never wanted to have to deal with that level of BS on a regular basis for work. That was sort of the point though of the class, to bring up complicated stuff where there wasn't really a "proper" interpretation to be had, or where you couldn't actually make a law that would make everyone happy, so that we could understand how the laws were created and why they sometimes sucked. I honestly value it as a class to this day, one of the few actually useful ones I had in high school, but it guaranteed I would never be a lawyer.
I consider the standards manuals made by a lot of trade associations, that are indexed and sectioned off to make it easier to comply with government standards, to be a genuine value added service. BUT and a VERY BIG ONE. Many of the trade associations charge EXTORTIONATE PRICES for those books. Given the rules they are compiling are in the public domain, I have no problem with chapter amounts (on specific topics) of the books being cut and pasted. A whole section, no, but the chapter covered in the class...yes.
In Europe, everone knows that once you submit your technical documents to standards bodies, it WILL become available to everyone as a public resource. Because it has to be. If regulations depend on the letter of those standards they MUST be available as a resource (or the regulation would be unenforceable)
I teach a class on underground storage tanks in the state of New Mexico. I needed a copy of the laws created in New Mexico for the Environment Department. In order to obtain a copy of New Mexico laws, I had to download the laws paragraph by paragraph. The laws are published in hard copy form by a private company who claims that the law itself is copywrited. I downloaded the entire applicable laws, formatted them into a book, and I was rejected because the agency did not want the regulated community to have access to the laws. In the underground storage tank program in Wyoming contains no less than 52 standards published by the Petroleum Equipment Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, the International Code Council, National Association of Corrosion Engineer, and a number of other codes. Our legislature passed a law back around 2002 and required that every state agency had to provide free access to the public for any standard used by reference. To comply with that law, I bought a copy of every standard and had them put into the state library so that anyone, statewide could simply check them out. It cost about $2500 just to buy them. Wyoming provides on line access to all the statutes and every regulation promulgated by any agency.
In the UK (and presume originally the US) Legislation was only written on parchment / vellum , and kept in roll form (Hence Master of The Rolls being effective head of the keeping of legislation- including its legal interpretation. Although the Govt allowed (free?) copying, the institutions that created the books kept copyright in their writing/typing up. Moreover with say Halisbury's Laws of England there is the raw law "as it stood" but also follows through with later legisitative changes (which a modifying act may only change part of the original law hence the total law becomes less clear from a first reading of the later statute ) and furthermore has the interpretation of the statute - either its own, or court decided case law. Again for case law as judgements tended to be verbally given ( though written up by the bench afterward ) court reports were privately published with respect to the dictum/s created, and given England's "civil" law which did not rely of itself on a written legislation again gave a cost to acquire access to the law, including only allowing legal professionals to argue in court for persons other than individuals representing themselves
I wonder when a company will argue that one of their standards getting incorporated into law is a taking by the government, and they need to either be compensated, or prohibited from incorporating it into law.
I use and reference these standards and am glad they're now available. ASTM: "Another Stupid Test Method". Seems these organizations have gone overboard with their "service" to the industry.
In Georgia, the body of the state law (with annotations) is copyrighted. The law with the annotations is the law that's enforced. You can buy it for $27,000. This was years ago. Since the state maintains that ignorance of the law is not an excuse, how is one supposed to know what the law is if you cannot afford the $27,000 to buy it? SCOTUS needs to jump all over this one if this hasn't been resolved yet.
Anyone else think we have waaaaaay too many laws and they should be given an expiration date? If it is a good law then it will be renewed. It would also keep our legislators busy renewing laws rather than creating laws which if you think about it, every law restricts someone in some way.
1 on, 2 off. For every law a legislative entity wants to add, 1 chosen law must be deleted, and one random law must be reviewed for deletion. If the random law needs to stay, it is subjected to the 1 on, 2 off, all over again. Instead of wasting our time on dealing with too many laws, we should be spending our time deciding which laws and how many we really need.
That was originally one of Trumps running issues until the whole cult of personality took over. He made some strides, that are now mostly reversed. Like him or not, he was right about that issue.
That'll work, in combination with a single-subject bill constitutional requirement. otherwise they'll have the bureaucrats write up a omnibus bill for all expiring laws, and the lazy legislators will simply rubber-stamp-pass a re-authorization as their last act (after the election!) of every session.
If code laws are not available to be accessed by the general public for free, then how the fk can they be allowed to place restrictions or fines on people for not adhering to them. Even a 3rd party fully publishing them should be allowed, thus enabling people to stick within those fixed guidelines. Charging exorbitant fees to see codes/laws, (or any fees) should negate any legality to said codes/laws
It is about time. As an example the electrical code gets updated every couple of years, so to stay up to date you need to buy the new version every couple of years. I always thought that since this electrical code was the law it should be freely available . I won't get into how the code gets changed to the benefit of those who supply electrical products that are involved with the writing of updates to the code.
I'm a computer geek, software engineer, and overall interested in "stuff". I recently wanted to understand the format of data and control commands in CDs and DVDs, for my own private purposes. I could not find the standards publicly available, and the consortium that wrote the standards charged thousands of dollars to MEMBERS, and 10s of thousands of dollars to non-members for access. Needless to say, I quickly abandoned that educational experience.
same if you wanted to make a USB cable, bluetooth adapter, or most computer "standards", and these are not laws so they would not be covered by this ruling.
I agree that standards incorporated into the law by reference should be available for free to the public, but I think that governments should be required to provide financial compensation to the organizations that develop and maintain those standards. If those organizations are not compensated for their work, how will they remain viable? And if they can't remain viable, who will develop and maintain those standards going forward?
Go further... shouldn't those organizations not compensate the writers of the portions of the standards they publish? In most cases, they do not give anything to those people, they are 'volunteers'. Likely much of the money goes to execs and lobbying to have the code used as part of the law.
If I was an attorney and wanted to be creative I would argue that incorporating the standard it into law diminished the standards value and was a taking without just compensation to the property owners.
@@dwaynepenner2788 There's no way they wouldn't have. Their entire business model is, after all, to get the standards they write to be required by law, so that people will be forced to come to them for hard copies of the full standard. Without the mandate of law, they're just providing an unofficial set of suggestions to the industry.
Once incorporated into law there should be zero restrictions in publishing whether for non commercial use or not. If the XYZ organization gets their standards incorporated into law and then charges $200 for a copy of their standards but the ABC publishing company can sell a copy of the standards for $25… that’s good by my thinking. Greater public good and more knowledge of the law.
Would the standard that’s been incorporated be the printed one on the day the rule was adopted, or would future changes by that organization then automatically be incorporated and legally enforceable? Many lately have become more critical of administrative rule making as an inappropriate delegation of legislative authority to the executive branch, but at least in this case that’s still a governmental branch If a rule references a private organization standard, and any unilateral changes that private organization makes are enforceable by law, wouldn’t that now be an unconstitutional grant of legislative authority?
The standards organizations should go after the government, if anything. They could argue that it's the equivalent of Eminent Domain, so the government should have to compensate them for taking their copyright. Of course, the government might stop implementing their standards in the future, which would make them less relevant, so they don't want to do that.
