Legal Research

Legislative History ? For a Fee

By Simon Fodden

We’ve blogged a couple of times about Carl Malmud’s efforts to provide free access to U.S. cases and other important documents (see: Case Law Just Wants To Be Free and Carl Malmud Publishes Cases). Now Boing Boing reports that Malmud’s efforts to gain access to U.S. federal legislative histories has run into a block in the form of Thomson West. Complied by law librarians at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the histories have been scanned by Thomson West pursuant to a deal they made with the GAO; and now Thomson West claims an exclusive right to the documents.

Malmud has set up a Scribd site where he’s posted the various documents that comprise the public aspects of the matter.

It may be that Malmud is being alarmist, but even at this stage it’s a cautionary tale for any government agency that wants to leverage its records with the help of private enterprise (whether they are “not evil” or… not).

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).