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US gov't drops price of journals from $17k to $0, adds XML to Federal Register!

Cory Doctorow at 9:54 pm Sun, Oct 4, 2009

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Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,
Well, this is just very cool. I throw a few stones over the wall to official DC, but this time I want to send some roses in the front door.

The Government Printing Office and the Office of the Federal Register just announced they're making all the "Official Journals of Government" available for free in bulk. Previous price was $17,000/year per product.

But wait, there's more. They've upgraded the Federal Register to XML. And, believe it or not, GPO has been using Ed Felten's shop at Princeton (coming Monday morning) and Public.Resource.Org (our re-design page from Point.B Studio) as alpha testers to see what we can do with the XML, and we're both definitely happy customers.

It was fun working with the GPO and Federal Register teams. This is a clueful product, the price is just right, and it is an important first step in making America's operating system open source.

Government Printing Office (Thanks, Carl!)
Previously:
  • Public Resource demands the source code to America's operating ...
  • Carl Malamud, rogue archivist, in Wired - Boing Boing
  • Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can't publish them ...
  • Begging states to try to enforce ridiculous assertion that the law ...
  • Carl Malamud's "10 Government Hacks" - Boing Boing
  • Reinventing TiVo. Carl Malamud wants - Boing Boing

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • querent

    surprising and uplifting.

    nice work everyone.

  • Anonymous

    That’s amazingly cool. I almost thought it was some sort of April Fool’s joke at first!

  • carlmorris

    Well done USA!

    Kind Regards,

    From the land where the publicly-owned postage service send threatening legal letters to helpful people who are trying to innovate with post (zip) code data.

  • muteboy

    This is great. I’m hoping they make the Code of Federal Regulations easier to parse as well. Using ‘wget’ and then doing some crazy text manipulation worked OK, but I’d rather not go through that again.

  • inkadinka12

    This is fantastic news. Carl is a national treasure — I can’t believe he hasn’t received a MacArthur genius award (yet)!