Making laws free: man, to state: copyright this!(Citings) (Brief article)

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine

IN CALIFORNIA the law is copyrighted. That means it's illegal for citizens to copy or distribute the law of the land among themselves. An official digital copy of the California Code costs $1,556; a printed copy is $2,315. According to the California Office of Administrative Law, the state generates about $880,000 annually by selling its own laws to its own people.

So Carl Malamud, a longtime crusader for openness and transparency in government, decided to take the law into his own hands--literally. He digitally scanned 33,000 pages and posted the entire California Code of Regulations, all 150 pounds of it, at his website public.resource. org.

Malamud, a pioneer in Internet radio and other online arenas, has made a hobby out of goading government agencies into becoming more Internet-friendly. In 1994 he chivvied the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into posting corporate filings online, leading to a boom in...