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27 July 2015Copyright

US state of Georgia sues activist for re-publishing annotated laws

The US state of Georgia has sued a political activist for copyright infringement after he allegedly uploaded and distributed copies of its annotated laws online.

In a lawsuit filed last Tuesday, July 21, at the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the state claimed that copies of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA) uploaded by Carl Malamud infringe its copyright.

The OCGA is the compendium of all laws in the US state of Georgia. The state, which owns the copyright to all the works, has a deal with publisher LexisNexis to produce them. LexisNexis has not been named as a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Although Georgia’s legal code is available to the public, the state charges for the OCGA.

In 2013, Malamud allegedly started producing and distributing his own copies of the OCGA, both online and through USB pens, which he sent to various institutions.

Malamud scanned the works and made copies available on the websites publicresource.org, law.resource.org and bulk.resource.org, according to the complaint.

He has previously attracted support for his actions. A crowdfunding campaign set up in 2014 raised just over $3,000—the amount Malamud said was necessary to finance the project.

Malamud has also raised money for similar campaigns in other states including Washington, DC, Idaho and Mississippi.

In January 2014, Malamud spoke at a US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee hearing, where he argued that Congress should amend copyright law to state that “edicts of government have no copyright because such court opinions, statutes, regulations, and other pronouncements of general applicability belong to the people”.

In its complaint, the state of Georgia argued that Malamud profits from his scheme through the website yeswescan.org, which asks for donations from supporters, as well as through the crowdfunding campaign.

“Defendant is employing a deliberate strategy of copying and posting large document archives such as the OCGA in order to force the state of Georgia to provide the OCGA in an electronic format acceptable to defendant. Malamud has indicated that this type of strategy has been a successful form of ‘terrorism’ that he has employed in the past to force government entities to publish documents on Malamud’s terms,” the complaint said.

It added: “Consistent with its strategy of terrorism, defendant freely admits to the copying and distribution of massive numbers of plaintiff’s copyrighted annotations.”

Malamud told WIPR: “As copyright is asserted by the state for the OCGA and because it is the only official and definitive statement in the codified statutes of the state, we believe that the OCGA falls under longstanding public policy in the US that the law has no copyright.”

Ross Dannenberg, shareholder at law firm Banner & Witcoff, said that "laws, including annotated versions, must be available to be widely disseminated".

But he said there is an important distinction between "state" and "private publishers" whereby if the state provides annotations they should be in the public domain, but if private parties do then the works should be protected under US copyright law.

Anthony Askew, partner at law firm Meunier Carlin & Curfman and representing the state of Georgia, had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication but we will update the story should he get in touch.

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25 June 2019   The US Supreme Court is to decide whether states can hold copyright protection on annotated codes of law, in the case Georgia v Public.Resource.Org.