10 Rules for Radicals
Rules Committee wrote back to the Senate saying that while they had privacy rules in place, they were obviously not going far enough and they would change their rules. And, a few months later, they changed their rules.
Here is my seventh rule for radicals, which is to get standing. One can criticize government all one wants, and they'll often ignore you. But, if there is something clearly wrong and against the law and you can document that malfeasance and wrongdoing, they have to talk to you. If you have standing, you can insist.
—Bureaucracy № 6—
There is a related rule, and that is rule 8, which is to try to get the bureaucrats to threaten you. Remember how the law has a special place when it comes to copyright? While a state government might be able to assert copyright over some things, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that nobody can copyright the law. This means no copyright on court opinions, but it also means no copyright on state statutes.
So, you can imagine our surprise when the Oregon Legislative Counsel, the lawyers for the legislature of Oregon, sent a takedown notice to Public.Resource.Org and to Justia, a company that has been instrumental in putting free law on-line. The state said that by making tarballs of the 2007 Oregon Revised Statutes available for anonymous FTP, we had violated their copyright.
Why would the Oregon legislature insist on copyright? Money! They sold a print edition and they made money on
