Appeals court upholds right to post public laws online
Excellent ruling. The next question in my mind is whether incorporating private standards into legislation without compensation violates the the takings clause of the constitution.It is well established that this clause applies to intangible property such as copyright. Furthermore I disagree with some aspects of the courts assessment regarding the purpose and impact to revenue. On the first point, there is a large overlap between people who need to know the legal requirements for building and those who want to know best practices - the later is nearly a subset of the former, especially once these best practices become the law. Furthermore, the distribution of incorporated standards has historically been a legal gray area at best. Just because there was little evidence of lost revenue in the past doesn't mean there won't be significant lost revenue after it becomes unambiguously legal.