[Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today

stef s at ctrlc.hu
Thu Apr 3 14:44:43 UTC 2014


On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 10:30:55AM -0400, James McKinney wrote:
> Hmm, that’s strange, I thought there was a self-sustainable alternative that is compatible with ethical licensing, that does not require a monopoly or selling services exclusive to lobby groups, and that maintains free access for all… Oh, right, the Free Access to Law Movement! Wow, look at that! Since the Legal Information Institute was founded in 1992 at Cornell, these have sprung up all over the world: http://www.fatlm.org/ In Canada, CanLII is great.

i presume these are publicly funded? or departments in universities it seems,
whatever the funding schemes (like research grants etc) in the various
countries? can you elaborate on their sources, that makes these departments
self-sustainable?

> > If you're not entering the data into the public domain
> 
> Not all countries have a legal concept of “public domain.” You cannot assign works to the public domain in Canada, and you can’t remove someone else’s copyright, just like that. All laws in Canada have copyright protection, automatically, with no option to waive copyright. It would require a change to a federal statute to change that. In Canada, we find other ways of making data available for free to the public - without entering data into public domain, because that’s impossible / doesn’t even make sense in Canadian law.

i am aware of the results of the us-based overzealous intellectual
monopolization campaign, yes. luckily the openlaws project is a EU one, and
thus not restrained by canadian constraints, and indeed by setting strong
signals over here in europe we can positively influence global policy-making
and perhaps slowly reverse the corruption. ;)

-- 
otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt



More information about the open-legislation mailing list