Two previous postings on this blog reported on the efforts of the organization Public_Resource.Org to make federal court cases publicly available on their web site : Landmark Online Public Release of Federal Cases, Activist Carl Malamud Challenges Westlaw With Online Project .
Most recently Public-Resource.Org has made critical state and municipal public safety codes from all over the country, available on their website. These are privately published codes for such areas as fire, plumbing and elevator codes. (See: article, "Surfin' Safari" by Robert Ambrogi, Nov. 2008, Law Technology News p.46 )
These codes are "incorporated by reference" into state and federal laws and regulations (not reproduced in the official source but made a part of it by making a reference to it). So while not republished by the government, they do become part of the law that the public is subject to and can have enforced against them. Many of these codes are only sold commercially by the issuing bodies for comparatively high prices. The publishers claim copyright on the standards that prevents free publication and use by others
The folks at Public.Resource.org have purchased these codes for close to $20,000, so they could post the content online. Copyright infringement claims are probably just around the corner for these activities An informative and entertaining video with Carl Malamud about the issue involved in making such safety code content publicly available is on YouTube. There is also an amusing illustrated slide show on the same issues that can be accessed on FLICKR.
From the slide show, it appears that Malamud & Co. are relying on a 2002 federal appellate court decision in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc., Mr. Veeck had purchased the building codes of two Texas towns which he then posted to his non-commercial website, RegionalWeb" The court Reversed the district court's judgment against Peter Veeck, and Remanded with instructions to dismiss SBCCI's claims. The appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied certiorari in 2003. See the article : Not All Laws Are Free: The Importance of the Veeck Case, Searcher Vol. 10 No. 2 — February 2002 , for a good analysis of the issues involved.


