Legal Research

Article about Carl Malamud's Crusade for Open Law

Thanks to Greg Lambert for passing on this CNet article about open-law activist, Carl Malamud.

He's devoted his life to liberating laws, regulations, court cases, and the other myriad detritus that governments produce daily, but often lock up in proprietary databases or allow for-profit companies to sell for princely sums....

Malamud's solution typically has been to create a proof-of-concept Web site, with the hopes of embarrassing government entities into building that infrastructure themselves. In the 1990s, his activism was responsible for persuading the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office to make their data available for free on the Internet. Now, on his public.resource.org Web site, he's resumed posting hundreds of thousands of pages of government documents--all of which are, or at least should be, in the public domain....

"I believe access to knowledge is a human right," Malamud said. "When I see people putting barriers around useful information, I find that offensive."

Malamud even created a lego animation to make his point.

Some of Malamud's recent acquisitions include the CFR and state safety and building codes.

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).