Reading an article posted online in The Press Democrat, it would seem that not all Californians are crazed denizens of an alternate universe where common sense is prohibited and personal liberty is an affront to society at large. Indeed, it would seem that there are not only rational people living in California but they are in fact doing so by choice.
Carl Malamud is a Sebastopol, California, resident who has this silly notion that state governments, in fact all level of government, have no legitimate right to claim copyright to the laws they pass.
"We exercise our copyright to benefit the people of California," said Linda Brown, deputy director of the Office of Administrative Law, which manages the state's laws. "We are obtaining compensation for the people of California."
Really? The state government of California is the people of California. It is not some autonomous institution that the people have been blessed with. Whether elected representatives or employees of agencies constituted through the actions of elected representatives the government is an extension of the people, working on behalf of and for the benefit of the people.
One can obtain a digital copy of the California Code for a bargain price of only $1,556. A printed copy runs at $2,315. That's right - any citizen wishing to know and understand the laws they are obligated to live under must pay for that privilege. Laws conceived, created, and enacted by elected citizens whose salaries are paid by tax dollars extracted from those very same citizens. Citizens should then pay for the privilege of accessing the laws they have enacted? Would you stand for having to deposit a dollar every time you wanted to access your home or automobile, or turn on the television set you paid for to watch the ball game? Me neither.
Or, they can go to Carl Malamud's web site, public.resource.org, and review all 33,000 pages of the California Code for . . . free! The PDF files are even available for download.
Malamud has apparently done this before. In 1994 he was behind an effort that ultimately led to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission posting public corporate filings on the internet, making them freely and reasonably accessible to all. Earlier this year he convinced the State of Oregon that the laws of Oregon belong to the people of Oregon, and the copyright assertion by that state has since been dropped. Once he injects a bit of common sense into the California bureaucracy, Carl Malamud intends to go on and do the same for the remainder of the states and the Federal government as well.
A quick trip to the web site (I will definitely be going back) shows entries from at least 47 states. Though hardly exhaustive for each state, it is still a remarkable compilation of the laws of this land. I've done time in California (lived there as a requirement of my employment, not as a guest of the State thank you very much), and feel entitled to know the laws I was subject to. Just to thumb my nose at Sacramento I will certainly be downloading a copy of the California Code of Regulations.
Then I might just send an email to The Governator and Linda Brown (or try staff@oal.ca.gov) confessing my "crime". Why not do the same, especially if you live in California at the moment? Let them come and get us all for taking possession of what is ours in the first place! Crashing the email servers would be fun, too.
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