-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
The US ministry of justice ceded publication rights in federal laws to West
Publishing...
>>>
This happy little myth is crap.
There is an argument floating around the freedom movement that the "law" is
copyrighted, which is
utterly crazy. The "Law" is owned by the public and cannot be copyrighted.
Back in 1834, two reporters
for the U.S. Supreme Court got involved in a legal battle over the cases of
the Supreme Court. In
Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591, 668, 33 U.S. 591 (1834), the Supreme Court
declared that "no reporter ...
can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this court".
Decisions of the courts belong to
the public and nobody can copyright those decisions.
West Publishing Company, one of the largest publishers of legal materials,
knows that it cannot
copyright cases. It places in its electronic versions of the cases the
following caveat:
"Copyright (c) West Group 1998 No claim to original U.S. Govt. works
952 F.Supp. 647, McCann v. Greenway, (W.D.Mo. 1997)
"Copyright (c) West Group 1998 No claim to original U.S. Govt. works
974 F.Supp. 1411, Sadlier v. Payne, (D.Utah 1997)"
But what about statutes? This is addressed in 17 U.S.C. §105: "Subject
matter of copyright: United
States Government works:"
"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the
United States Government,
but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding
copyrights transferred
to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
Those arguing that the "law is copyrighted" are utterly wrong. But this
argument is an important part of
the argument for those who promote the grand theory that "we are still
subjects of the British crown"
under the apparent contention that the "King" (or Queen Elizabeth) still
today "owns" the law.
As shown above, public documents belong to the public and cannot be
copyrighted. When any court
decides any case, anyone may go obtain a copy of that decision. I can get
any decision, you can and West
Publishing can. I may, you may and West does publish those cases. I could
start my own company
publishing these cases and making them available to whoever would buy them.
However, I doubt that I
would stay in business long against West. It has hundreds of people employed
by it who get these cases,
read them, and make little "headnotes" about various legal points in the
cases. It publishes these cases in
nicely bound books. It takes the "headnotes" it generates for these cases
and puts them into a legal
encyclopedias which group all "headnotes" of all cases in specific
categories. Using West, studying and
finding "law" has been made a lot easier.
West also has a competitor, Lawyers Co-op. The federal government publishes
acts of Congress in a
set of books called the Statutes at Large ("Stat."). In large university
libraries, you can find the Statutes at
Large. However, the feds also publish the United States Code, which is
simply stated the Statutes at Large
organized in a more methodical fashion via titles. You can find the "true
blue" (but it is really red in color)
U.S. Code in many libraries. However, since the Code is a public document,
anybody can copy it. Here,
West and Lawyers Co-op are fierce competitors, with one publishing USCA and
the other USCS. Both
contain accurate reprints of the various uncopyrightable sections and titles
of the official U.S. Code.
However, West employs hundreds of people who read and categorize cases. West
puts summaries of
many cases at the end of sections of the U.S. Code, so when you engage in
legal research, cases regarding
a specific statute are there at your fingertips. Lawyers Co-op does the same
thing. All of this other writing
in these versions of the Code was created by these companies and this is the
material which is copyrighted
in these books.
I never use the official U.S. Code and neither does anyone else. It just
sits up there on the top shelf in
our local law library gathering dust. The reason nobody uses the official
version is because of the absence
of the handy research materials like case summaries and other references. If
I have a conspiracy case, I
pull USCS, turn to Title 18, U.S.C., § 371, and start reading the very
refined annotations at the end of the
section which quickly point you to the relevant cases. It wasn't always this
way, however. Years ago, the
states officially published their own legal materials, cases and codes and
West was the competitor. As time
passed, West acquired dominant market share because its books were superior.
Legislatures would
appropriate funds for official case books, which were often large, expensive
books with large print. West
published smaller books with smaller print and its publications were
obviously cheaper. Why would
anyone buy from the state its publication of the cases when (for probably
the same price) you could buy
from West its regional reporter containing cases not only from your state
but also several others? In short,
free enterprise beat the socks off the government. Today, many states just
let West do all the publishing
of cases. Of course, anyone could compete against West.
But West is not fearful of copyright infringement from the public at large.
I violate the copyright laws
every time I go to the law library and so does everyone else. The law
schools are perhaps the biggest
violators and law students copy away at copyrighted materials. West does not
care, in fact it wants
everyone using its products. It fears, however, another competitor like
Lexis. Lexis back in the early 80s
started putting cases on computer, but it used West's page numbers from its
case volumes. West sued and
won for infringement, the court holding that the only thing West could
copyright were its own page
numbers from its books as well as the headnotes it wrote for the cases. As a
result, West and Lexis
formed a partnership and now cases are on CD. Formerly to buy all of West's
Supreme Court Reporter, it
would have cost you several thousands of bux. Now, two discs with all
Supreme Court cases can be
bought for a couple hundred bux. Private enterprise has thus run circles
around government.
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