Let’s say you’re a volunteer firefighter and you want to buy a copy of the California fire code and copy it for your fellow volunteers.
By doing so, you’re breaking the law, according to the state; each of them would have to buy it separately from a national fire safety organization, for a couple of hundred dollars a shot.
[...]
When Malamud asked the Office of Administrative Law to provide an up-to-date electronic version of almost the entire Code of Regulations, it responded that it didn’t have such a version in its possession.
The office said it could provide Malamud with a paper copy of the code’s 38 volumes, at 20 cents a page. There are 29,000 pages. If he required a digital version, the office would scan its own paper copy into a digital file for a much higher, albeit unspecified, price, payable in advance.
> The office said it could provide Malamud with a paper copy of the code’s 38 volumes, at 20 cents a page. There are 29,000 pages. If he required a digital version, the office would scan its own paper copy into a digital file for a much higher, albeit unspecified, price, payable in advance.
TBF that one requesting information would bear the costs of that request does make sense, for instance FOIA requesters may get charged the costs of searching, collecting, and copying the records they're asking for. One could debate the price of 20c a page, but if they are bound books to be copied page by page, the price is if anything low: at 10s a page it's 2 weeks, full time, for an employee.
If it's a bunch of binder and there's a copy machine which can be fed piles of loose pages then it's bullshit. Such an administration would have access to relatively large-scale copier, the CPP of which can't be above 10c, and likely is below 5c.
> TBF that one requesting information would bear the costs of that request does make sense, for instance FOIA requesters may get charged the costs of searching, collecting, and copying the records they're asking for.
After paying the $5800 requested, would it then be legal to scan and distribute the lot online for free? If not, then the "bear the costs of that request" claim would not be legitimate. I don't know the answer, but I think this is central to the issue.
The requestor should not bear the burden for scanning in the documents. The state needs a digital copy no matter what. They should bear the cost of obtaining that. The requester should bear the burden of making a copy of the digital document. 29000 pages--even at 2MB/page--would require < 64GB of storage. So, about 15USD for a thumb drive.
Or put the document on the website where it belongs, and eat the cost of storage and data transfer just like you do with all your other state-run websites.
> The requestor should not bear the burden for scanning in the documents.
There’s no mention of scanning here, only copying.
Furthermore even if they did scan it and kept the digital data around, if they only did it because of the request and would not otherwise that’s still a cost of fulfilling the request.
> The state needs a digital copy no matter what.
That obviously is not the case since they do not have one.
Yeah, I am a bit baffled by the size, how complex is fire fighting really?
And should all the complexity reside in a single document? Like do the home smoke alarm stuff and airplane ballet stuff belong to the same document? (Just guessing at content here)
All of US federal regulations are "one document" (the CFR). To navigate a body of law, you use the table of context or index to find the section you need, and follow the cross-references if necessary, like any reference text.
I think you're thinking of the Federal government -- states are treated differently under the U.S. copyright system and often do hold copyright in their original works. (The Regents of the University of California will be a familiar copyright holder for many people here...)
Let’s say you’re a volunteer firefighter and you want to buy a copy of the California fire code and copy it for your fellow volunteers.
By doing so, you’re breaking the law, according to the state; each of them would have to buy it separately from a national fire safety organization, for a couple of hundred dollars a shot.
[...]
When Malamud asked the Office of Administrative Law to provide an up-to-date electronic version of almost the entire Code of Regulations, it responded that it didn’t have such a version in its possession.
The office said it could provide Malamud with a paper copy of the code’s 38 volumes, at 20 cents a page. There are 29,000 pages. If he required a digital version, the office would scan its own paper copy into a digital file for a much higher, albeit unspecified, price, payable in advance.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-03-18/state-laws...