It's almost like they don't want people to know the law. Georgia has copyrighted its laws, and a court recently held that copyright to be valid. That means Georgians who want to know the laws under which they are governed must pay a fee in order to access them.
How does Georgia's legal code not fall into the public domain? The Court held that the annotations in the published version make it copyrightable material. But as Amy Swearer explains, the court is overlooking some key facts:
Unlike other annotated legal publications registered by the Copyright Office, these annotations comprise Georgia's only official legal code. This is not a supplementary text authored by a private entity, but the sole publication authorized by the state Legislature for promulgation of its laws.
The agreement between Georgia and LexisNexis explicitly "requires the official code to include not only the statutory provisions, but also annotations … and other materials." Furthermore, Georgia—not LexisNexis—maintains the ultimate right of editorial control over the code, and the entire code becomes state property upon publication.
The state Legislature, in OCGA § 1-1-1, describes the code as including annotations, analyses, and other materials. In that same section, it decrees that the full body of the code is "published by authority of the state … and may be cited as the 'Official Code of Georgia Annotated.'"
The free unannotated code even utilizes a disclaimer, stating that the Official Code of Georgia Annotated is the authoritative version that takes precedence over any discrepancies in the free version. […]
It's with good reason that Georgia only recognizes the Official Code of Georgia Annotated as its official law: The unannotated code is an unreliable reference. The unannotated code often provides severely limited—and sometimes blatantly incorrect—information regarding what is or is not legal.
Only the full annotated code explains that certain statutes (like the crime of sodomy) are unconstitutional and unenforceable, and provides the dates of enforcement for recently enacted or amended statutes.
Only the full code references official interpretations that state courts have treated as authoritative on issues (Moore v. Ray), and that sometimes drastically affect which actions will be deemed illegal for purposes of prosecution.
For example, the unannotated code does not, in contrast to the official annotated code, inform a person that the Attorney General's Office considers the unauthorized anchoring of boats in a state park to be criminal trespass, or that the prohibition on carrying a firearm at a public gathering does not apply to shopping malls.
Because the entirety of the official code constitutes "law" both in purpose and in practice, it cannot be copyrighted by the government. Since its 1834 holding in Wheaton v. Peters, the Supreme Court has made clear that allowing governments to copyright laws is "absurd." [The Daily Signal]
Net neutrality takes choices away from consumers. Thomas Hazlett explains:
In a public radio debate not long ago, Tom Wheeler — who led the FCC from 2013 until early this year — argued for net neutrality regulations to protect subscribers from anti-competitive actions by their Internet Service Providers (ISPs). He asserted that the rules would protect internet start-ups of the future, singling out AOL as his historical example.
It was a stunning misdirection.
In the 1990s, America Online was a pioneer in dial-up service, aggressively marketing subscriptions in easy-to-use formats. While Silicon Valley techies mocked it as your grandma's internet, AOL distributed some 250 million sign-up disks in 1996 alone, virtually creating the mass market in computer networks.
Yet AOL's foray only became possible when regulators in the 1980s peeled back "Title II" mandates, the very regulations that Wheeler's FCC imposed on broadband providers in 2015. The FCC noted in a 1999 paper that the newly "unregulated status of Internet Service Providers" gave AOL its opportunity — otherwise "the tens of millions of Americans today who enjoy unlimited use of the Internet for around $20 a month, and who invest, shop, learn and otherwise benefit from home Internet access, might never have experienced this extraordinary tool."
But wait — there's more. AOL offered a curated service featuring proprietary content. This "walled garden" attracted the ire of network neutrality champions, who sought to block it by law. Yet AOL's experiment started small and grew huge, discovering progressively better ways to serve consumers. Wheeler's chosen example of innovation demonstrates how dangerous it is to impose one particular platform, freezing business models in place. [New York Daily News]
The good news on abortion continues. Michael J. New:
According to the CDC, both the number of abortions and the abortion rate declined by about 2 percent between 2013 and 2014. The decline was fairly consistent, as 30 of the 46 states reporting abortion data in both years saw their abortion numbers decline. […]
Unsurprisingly, most of the media coverage gives much of the credit for the abortion-rate decrease to increased contraception use. There is some evidence that there has been a short-term decline in the incidence of unintended pregnancies, but another key factor behind the 50 percent abortion-rate decline since 1980 is the fact that a smaller percentage of unintended pregnancies result in an abortion.
Statistics from the Guttmacher Institute are instructive on this point. In 1981, the research group found that 54 percent of unintended pregnancies resulted in an abortion. That number declined during the 1990s and fell to 42 percent by 2011. [National Review]
A new ugly wrinkle on civil asset forfeiture abuse. Wyoming law enforcement officers have been using pre-printed waivers to pressure motorists into forfeiting cash found in their vehicles. Those who sign the waivers give up the right to formal forfeiture proceedings.
But the Institute for Justice and Vox have shined a light on the practice, and in the process helped a Wisconsin man recover his life savings of $91,800. German Lopez reports:
Phil Parhamovich is getting his $91,800 in cash back — just hours after Vox broke the story of how the Wyoming Highway Patrol seized the money without charging him for a serious crime. […]
Parhamovich was stopped in March this year while traveling on the I-80 in Wyoming during a concert tour with his band, the Dirt Brothers. Parhamovich, who has no criminal record, was not accused of or charged with a serious crime; he only got a $25 ticket for improperly wearing his seat belt and a warning for "lane use."
But Wyoming Highway Patrol officers found and eventually seized the $91,800 in cash, as it was hidden in a speaker cabinet — by getting Parhamovich, under what he claims was duress, to sign away his interest in the money through a waiver. According to Parhamovich, police pushed him to sign the waiver after he said the money was not his, following aggressive questioning that he said made him fear that carrying that much cash is illegal. (It is not.)
Parhamovich intends to use the money as a down payment to buy a music studio in Madison, Wisconsin, called Smart Studios, where Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins recorded songs. Without the cash, Parhamovich was worried that the deal for the studio could fall through after a nine-month lease expired. But now he's able to move forward with closing the deal.
Parhamovich and Anya Bidwell, one of his attorneys with the Institute for Justice, showed up at a Friday court hearing not quite sure what to expect. They were met by legislators from Wyoming, who had read Vox's story and reached out to the Institute for Justice to see what they could do to help. According to Bidwell and one of the state legislators who was present, the judge agreed that if Parhamovich was willing to testify that the money was his, he would order the state to give the money back. When Parhamovich agreed to that, the judge ruled in his favor. [Vox]
The Senate tax bill gives the biggest breaks to the middle class. From Chris Edwards, who continues to debunk press accounts holding that the Senate tax bill is only about helping the rich:
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