Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "Namaste! Public.Resource.Org respectfully submitted a Petition to the Honorable Ministry of the Government India charged with oversight over the Bureau of Indian Standards. In addition to hardcopy, we have placed the petition on our site and on the Internet Archive. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has announced that they are removing the archives for 5 important courts from their infamous PACER system. PACER is the ten-cent-per-page access to U.S. District and Appeals courts dockets and opinions."

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "Due to inaction by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Congress, Public.Resource.Org has been forced to terminate access to 7,634,050 filings of nonprofit organizations. The problem is that we have been fixing the database, providing better access mechanisms and finding and redacting huge numbers of Social Security Numbers. — Read the rest

Carl Malamud sez, "This 1966 military film on good style in sending Morse Code is a real hoot. 38k views on YouTube and another 3.6k on the Internet Archive. This video was made possible by a crowd-sourcing appeal on Boing Boing in 2009 (and in the case of this particular DVD, a donation by Mary Neff … thanks Mary!)" — Read the rest

Carl Malamud writes, "On May 16, Boing Boing brought us the story of five years of intimidation on the Uniform System of Citaiton required in the United States, a system otherwise known as The Bluebook.

Based on your story, a stern keep off the grass warning was dispatched from the ever-growing Bluebook Legal Task Force at the eminent white shoe firm of Ropes & Gray."

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "For five years, Professor Frank Bennett, a distinguished legal scholar at Nagoya University School of Law, has been trying to add Bluebook Support to Zotero, the open source citation tool used all over the world.

Professor Bennett asked Harvard Law Review for permission. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce the launch of the 2014 Official Summer of Code!

We've selected 3 states — Georgia, Idaho, and Mississippi — and are raising funds
to have the Official Legal Codes sent down to the Internet Archive to be scanned and made
available to all. — Read the rest

One year ago today

Municipal codes of DC, free for all — liberated without permission: I was lucky enough to get another one of rogue archivist Carl Malamud's boxes of awesome. It's a copy of the municipal codes of DC, which are laws that you're required to follow, but aren't allowed to see without paying. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "I just finished ripping 30 DVDs from the IRS. This is the monthly feed of nonprofit tax returns. I now have 7,442,564 of these returns spinning on the net. I've had it.

This year, the IRS upped the cost of this feed to $2910. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "Ralph Nader argues that the law must be free in a piece in the Huffington Post. Great piece, I wasn't expecting it, so it was a treat to see it pop up (my mother is going to be impressed by this one!)."

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a 3-hour hearing on revisions to the U.S. Copyright Act. I was surprised and gratified by the number of Members of Congress who stood up and forcefully endorsed the principle that the law belongs to the people. — Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation continues to publish its excellent series of Copyright Week posts (here's yesterday's installment). Today, Corynne McSherry describes the fight over copyrighted laws. Not copyright laws — laws about copyright — but, rather, laws that are copyrighted, and that can't be read without paying hefty fees. — Read the rest

The work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on adding DRM to HTML5 is one of the most disturbing developments in the recent history of technology. The W3C's mailing lists have been full of controversy about this ever since the decision was announced. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "Something pretty rare happened last week. City officials of Chicago got together with hackers from around the country to unveil a vastly better new online version of the Chicago City Code. Public.Resource.Org worked with the City to make bulk data available, the folks at the OpenGov Foundation turned that into the popular States Decoded format that folks are using in DC, Virginia, San Francisco, and other locations around the country. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud has been fighting to publish the building and safety codes that have been incorporated into the law, but which you have to pay to see. He's published thousands and thousands of pages' worth of safety codes, and is being sued by some of the standards bodies. — Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a challenge with the patent office against the notorious "podcasting" patent of patent troll Personal Audio, which has been shaking down podcasters for money for a vague "invention." Podcasting fans raised over $75,000 to fund the challenge.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud is publishing the world's safety codes. Some governments disapprove. He writes, "Upon receipt of a Certified Letter of Takedown from the Special Assistant Attorney General of Mississippi, Public.Resource.Org prepared a 67-page response, enclosed a Trodart Professional-Grade Self-Inking Rubber Stamp inscribed with a revolutionary saying ('If it isn't public, it isn't a law.'), — Read the rest

We've written often about Carl Malamud, the rogue archivist who has devoted his life to making the world's laws, standards, and publicly owned information into free, accessible, beautiful online documents. Now, I'm pleased to help him launch an ambitious, vital Kickstarter project aimed at raising at least $100,000 to turn the world's public safety codes into thoroughly linked, high-quality HTML documents (presently, many of the 28,040 public safety codes that Carl and public.resource.org — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes,

For the first time, a full standards bureau is now available on the Internet for people to examine. This archive is published for the people of India and the people of the world who wish to see the technical specifications for public safety that govern our modern society.

The NSA's state surveillance programs are anti-democratic and unconstitutional. They could be the most serious attacks on free speech we've ever seen.

On Sunday, U.K. intelligence officers held Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda for nine hours at Heathrow Airport, confiscating his laptop, phone and documents and even forcing him to reveal his passwords to online accounts. — Read the rest