Weirdness...

[alexpgp]

Via boingboing.net comes the story of how the State of Oregon has sent cease-and-desist letters (see here) to folks who have decided to mirror Oregon Revised Statutes (known colloquially as "the law") on other web sites.

The position of the Oregon Legislative Counsel is that, by already having a web site, their public access obligations have been fulfilled. However, there are over half a million HTML errors at the site, which futher does not meet Section 508 accessibility requirements and has no metadata. In related news, the state isn't sending cease-and-desist letters to Thomson West, which has also made a copy of the statues.

Restricting access to the text of the law of a jurisdiction seems a bit beyond the pale to me, and all too widespread. I seem to recall there are government regulations out there - mostly in the area of engineering requirements - that actually require payment of a fee to access such regulations.

And so the road seems opulently paved with good intentions.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Somebody there seems to have way too much free time on their hands. Time to fire half the lawyers.