Even a meer law student like your author knows that the law must be accessible. Not doing so would probably go against “The Rule of Law” (depending on who you ask what the Rule of Law is of course). But an interesting situation is currently developing in America which may set some unwarranted precedent.
It’s no foreign concept that codes and regulations are put in place in a number of different industries for various policy reasons. The problem is, these codes and regulations are adopted by the local government from the standards set by various non-governmental organisations. The codes from the Government is often not fully replicated from the standards set, which presumably dwell more on specific detail than is necessary for a piece of legislation. Thus the non-governmental organisations can make money by selling these standards.
Just early last month, a case was settled and Malamund’s and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association which set a precedent allowing Malamund’s website to publish only some of the older standards online. Some of the other standard developers, still not satisfied with the results, decided to bring another action in copyright against Malamund, probably in an attempt to get the rest of the standards taken off of the web as well. To make things even more complicated, the plaintiffs in the upcoming case all have their standards available on their websites for free.
The whole question of whether standards can be considered as “law”, and if it is whether or not you can copyright it is pretty interesting. I would strongly recommend taking a minute to read the blog post by Lydia Depillis on the Washington Post covering the Malamund situation (link at the bottom).
Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/07/should-legal-codes-be-copyrighted-lets-sue-to-find-out/
