"Stuart Yeates" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
In the USA copyright can be enforced even on laws:
http://www.constructionweblinks.com/Resources/Industry_Reports__Newsletters/May_17_2004/supreme.html
I'm assuming that the legislation in question included the codes (literally
the text of the codes) rather than simply refer them.
IMHO that ruling was just simply wrong. Laws by their nature must be freely
available and editable. Therefore public domain or something similar must be
applied to them. A state government (or even the federal government) cannot
just publish a work copyrighted by somebody else without permission. That is
copyright infringment. I would argue that the introducer of the bill should
have been sued by the holder of the rights to the codes. But The holder
waited far too long, and the law was published, and so now it has implicity
granted the right to the government to publish the work into the public
domain.
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