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What Nigeria Can Teach Oregon

By Senior Copyright Counsel, Google Inc.

The State of Oregon apparently continues to press its groundless efforts to assert, directly or otherwise, claims in its statutes. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica had an update on May 13th, in which he wrote: "Justia and public.resource.org have since retained counsel to deal with the issue, and their lawyer has already made clear to Oregon that his clients will be posting the entirety of the disputed material by June 2."

Yesterday I came across an article by Emeka Maduewesi in This Day (which presents "African Views on Global News") entitled: "Copyright: Who Owns the Rights to the Laws of Nigeria"? Mr. Maduewesi, a Nigerian who is admitted to practice in both Nigeria and California (he is employed by Townsend and Towsend in San Francisco) reviews the Nigerian copyright act, which doesn't directly address the question. (There is an exception for reproducing copyrighted works that are part of public records, and a provision of the evidence law that seems less helpful to me than to him). He concludes, nevertheless, that:

"Nigerian courts should be hostile to any claim that will infringe on the rights of the citizens to have unfettered access to the laws governing them. In a democratic society, works prepared by government employees -- executive, legislators and judges -- acting within the scope of their employment would be for hire. For this reason, any copyright belongs to the people who elected or paid them to do the work."

Oregon just reported the results of a wonderful democratic activity yesterday, and had the largest rally of the Presidential campaign, 75,000 people. The people get it; now it is up to the government to get it too.

Full post as published by The Patry Copyright Blog on May 21, 2008 (boomark / email).