The Supreme Court held today that copyright protection does not extend to the law – in this case, to the annotations in Georgia State’s annotated code. Justice Roberts explained that the animating principle behind this rule is that no one can own the law. “Every citizen is presumed to know the law,” and “it needs no argument to show . . . that all should have free access to its contents.”

This is a victory for our friends at Public.Resource.Org, the public domain, and the public at large.
Free access to the law is core to the ability of our citizenry to fully participate in our democratic society. The Internet Archive has worked with Public Resource for 6 years to make the law fully searchable and downloadable to the public for free. We applaud this outcome and hope that more legal works will come to be available to the public in the coming days and weeks. We are glad this fight is over.

Working the Public.Resource.org, the Internet Archive provides free access to laws from many states at https://archive.org/details/govla w

6 thoughts on “The Law is Ruled to be a Public Resource”

ron April 28, 2020 at 1:12 am

I’m going to concoct a Petition for redress of grievance. 1st amendment . for delivery/service to the agents for Donald John trump the alleged President of The United States of America as named in the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union our lawful Chief Executive. I’ll hand carry it with whomever wants to go with me to the DOJ % Seth Uram agent.
Your input is requested. Meet on Skype at Federal District Court Clearing House
11:03 AM
All power resides in the people; they created the several states; which created the Congress of the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union; which created the Constitution; which created the United States the service organization for the 19 enumerated responsibilities in the Constitution.

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Ron D Henderson April 30, 2020 at 4:22 pm

Excellent. To use a vehicle responsibility one should know everything about it and its performance. To be responsible citizens we should know our laws. So many times policies and laws seem hidden away and only for the experts.