You Gotta Fight for the Right to Publish

Opening Statements

September 2008 Issue
By Arin Greenwood

Photo by iStockPhoto.com

When Tim Stanley began putting Oregon’s statutes up on his website Justia.com, he probably should have been prepared for a little push-back. After all, he and some of his counterparts at sites like Public.Resource.org and Avvo.com have locked horns with state governments across the country over the right to post public information online.

Most of the time, they’ve won. But this time Oregon’s Legislative Counsel Committee fired back with a cease-and-desist letter, claiming the state owns copyrights to the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of the statutes, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the tables, index and more.

Stanley of Palo Alto, Calif., enlisted Internet innovator Carl Malamud in the fight. He runs Public.Resource.org out of Sebastopol, Calif., and has successfully taken on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and C-SPAN on access issues.

The two questioned Oregon’s claim, arguing that public policy should weigh in favor of permitting Justia’s publication of Oregon statutes for free. Oregon made a counteroffer: For $15,000 a year, Justia Inc. (which provides search technology to ABAJournal.com) could license the state’s statutes. Stanley, who didn’t want a “patchwork of terms” for access among the various states, rejected the offer.

Lawyer-search site Avvo is engaged in a parallel struggle with several states over access to lawyer records. Avvo is trying to establish a rating system for lawyers based partially on data from public records that state agencies or courts maintain, but at least two states refused to provide the information. After petitioning the Supreme Court of New Jersey, Avvo obtained the records. But so far the company has been stymied in Illinois, says Avvo general counsel Josh King.

But for Stanley and Malamud, persistence is paying dividends; Oregon finally relented and decided to let Justia publish the state’s statutes—free.

The pair are working on agreements to publish the codes of all 50 states. As of mid-July, they’d posted 40. Though Oregon was the first state to send a C&D letter, Stanley and Malamud are expecting others. And the real losers, the legal publishers—with a $5 billion industry at risk—have yet to react.

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Posted by C - Sep 20, 2008 07:44 am CST

I don’t see this as a big threat to publishers. I just looked at my state code on Justia and it’s the bare code, same as you could already get free from the state’s own website. But I get features from both our print version and from the commercial databases that aren’t available in the free ones. Indexing, searching, annoation, easier access to previous versions, hyperlinking…plus I’m just enough of a Luddite to sometimes prefer a print copy just because.

Of course that isn’t to object to what Justia’s doing. The more and easier access, the better!
Posted by RFM - Sep 21, 2008 11:46 am CST

I would agree with C. The printed and online publishers usually offer services/resources in addition to the bare legal text, which makes their purchase justifiable. The addtional resorces attached to them are also readily distinguished from what justia seems to be doing.
What I’m confused about is what the issue between justia and state legislatures is all about. I’m not sure where justia would have any advantage over the state’s official site, especially if the state is updating changes in a timely manner. I would think, unless justia and other free services, are guaranteeing accuracy, I would first look to the state’s official site for an accurate and up to date publication. Then again, I could be ignorant to the accuracy of the state’s official site.
The public records I would like to see more freely accessible online are the circuit court docket entries. Here in Illinois, some counties make them readily available. Other counties still charge a small fortune for print outs and they are not available online. The cost of battling it out with the latter is a bit prohibitive for solo practitioners.

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