Bill in Congress Would Bar Americans From Reciting Our Own Laws
Last week, 14 organizations
wrote to leaders of the House Judiciary Committee to oppose dangerous legislation titled the “
PRO Codes Act.” The new bill provides that any “original work of authorship” that is “
adopted or incorporated by reference, in full or in part, into any Federal,
State, or municipal law or regulation” would have copyright protection as long as the “owner of the copyright” provides these provisions of law “at no monetary cost for viewing by the public in electronic form on a publicly accessible website.”
Meaning: an individual or group that drafted or published text that was
later incorporated into a law could use copyright law to block people from reciting or distributing the text of that law, so long as they offered that text on a website somewhere. As
Carl Malamud, president of the non-profit Public.Resource.Org,
explained on Twitter, “This bill would allow private parties to literally
OWN parts of the law and set the terms on which you may read and speak it.”
Last week, 14 organizations wrote to leaders of the House Judiciary Committee to oppose dangerous legislation titled the "PRO Codes Act." The new bill
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