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Rogue archivist terrorizes legislature

The LA Times has the story here:

Government officials have threatened “rogue archivist” Carl Malamud with legal action many times for his efforts to make public government documents widely available for free, but the state of Georgia has set a new standard for fighting this ridiculous battle: It’s suing Malamud for infringing its copyright of state laws by — horrors — publishing them online.

The state’s lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, accuses Malamud of piracy — and worse, of “a form of ‘terrorism.'” His offense: Through his website, public.resource.org, he provides members of the public access to a searchable and downloadable scan of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated — that is, the entire body of state law. The state wants a court order forcing Malamud to stop.

Malamud is the man who got the State of Oregon to waive copyright claims on its laws, liberated the SEC’s EDGAR database, and has an guerrilla army of RECAP users sniping away at the federal court’s PACER database. For example, you can get most of the docs regarding Jane Doe’s lawsuit against Dana Altman et al here.

But I’ll forever be in Carl’s debt for taking the heat off me when I posted my “free and illegal” pdf copy of the Oregon DOJ’s Public Record’s Manual on my UO server, despite the copyright warnings from then AG John Kroger. Carl drove up from CA to Salem, bought his own copy, ground off the binding with a belt-sander, put the pages through a sheet fed scanner, posted it at public.resource.org, and then sent Kroger this letter:

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A few months later Kroger caved, and the Oregon DOJ now posts the manual online, at http://www.doj.state.or.us/public_records/pages/index.aspx. Reporters tell me it’s a very helpful resource for getting public records, and one of the reasons the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists gave me their “First Freedom” award and royally pissed of then SOJC Dean Tim Gleason. Fun times.

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