7 Tales of Bureaucracy
that print edition. We were threatening their revenue stream.
Now, to be totally fair, the policy in question had been put in place in the mid 1940s and nobody had ever questioned that policy. The takedown notice was the action of a bureaucrat just doing what they'd been doing for 70 years.
Once you have a takedown notice, particularly from a body as eminent as the lawyer for the Oregon legislature, you are in legal peril. You have a right to think they're going to sue you, because that's what the takedown notice says.
If you're in legal peril, you can go to a judge and ask for what's called declaratory relief, asking the court to rule on the issue. So, we hired a lawyer and put together a draft declaratory relief request and posted it on the net.
The thing about a state sending you a takedown notice for putting the law on the Internet is that this is not one of the subtle legal issues that you have to carefully explain to people. Everybody gets this—you can walk into any bar and explain what's going on and everybody will instantly get the issue and say "that's really stupid."
And that's my rule 9 for radicals—look for over-reaching, something that is clearly nuts. Not being able to publish state statutes certainly qualified on that count.
A few days after we threatened to sue, we got a notice saying the Oregon Legislature had scheduled hearings on this issue and would we be prepared to testify? Of course! If they were willing to talk, we certainly were.
