Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

"Happy mutants may remember a post on August 8 about why standards bodies explain why access to standards should be copyrighted and paywalled. The piece explained the perspectives of Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) in their suit against Public.Resource.Org. — Read the rest

Public Resource is being sued for publishing building standards that the public is legally required to follow. These standards were developed by private-sector industry bodies who make millions off of access fees charged to the public. In other words, a large block of American law is privately owned, secret, and accessible only for a fee. — Read the rest

Dave from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Remember that time an air-conditioning association tried to bully Carl Malamud into taking down safety standards from Public.Resource.Org, claiming they owned the copyright to a public law? Well, Carl and EFF fought back–and won. — Read the rest

Remember when rogue archivist Carl Malamud asked the IRS for data on $1.5 trillion worth of data from nonprofit organizations? Well, it turns out that the IRS has totally failed to redact it properly, and left in the Social Security Numbers for thousands of people. — Read the rest

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

One of the most important books in the U.S. legal profession is known as the Bluebook®: A Uniform System of Legal Citation®. The Bluebook® has all the rules about how you talk about law: the proper way to cite sources and format footnotes in legal briefs, law journal articles, and any other legal document.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

On November 1, Public.Resource.Org released a new service which put 6,461,326 US nonprofit tax returns on the net for bulk download, developers, and search engines to access. We offered to give the working system to the government, and also sent them a few suggestions on ways they could better meet their mission and save themselves a boatload of money.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Public.Resource.Org has always been a strong supporter of British-American cooperation. In order to further what Winston Churchill so aptly dubbed our “Special Relationship,” I'm happy to announce two hands across the sea.

If you would like to be a citizen of the United Kingdom, you need to study a book called Life in the UK.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "105 law professors and law librarians have endorsed a call to change U.S. Copyright law to exclude edicts of government. Edicts are "the law" and include all pronouncements of government that are binding on citizens and residents, including statutes, regulations, court opinions, and legally-mandated codes. — Read the rest

One agency of the federal government has issued a takedown notice to another agency of the federal government, which in turn demanded that we remove a film from the Internet.

Today, 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

From rogue archivist Carl Malamud (who recently liberated a massive trove of expensive standards and regulations that you were legally obliged to comply with, but couldn't see without paying out large sums of money):

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal judge today to protect the free speech rights of an online archive of laws and legal standards after a wrongheaded copyright claim forced the removal of a document detailing important technical standards required by the federal government and several states.

Aaron Swartz spent many years trying to get the FBI to cough up its file on him. Now that Aaron is dead, that file is automatically declassified, so FireDogLake's DSWright decided to request it, and has posted it, with a summary:

Exceptions aside, the records reveal that the FBI investigated Swartz for his role in the accessing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) documents.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes,

Assemblyman Brian Nestande of California has introduced Assembly Bill 292, which would open source the California Code of Regulations (including the Building Codes). The summary reads:

"This bill would provide that the full text of the California Code of Regulations shall bear an open access creative commons attribution license, allowing any individual, at no cost, to use, distribute, and create derivative works based on the material for either commercial or noncommercial purposes."

Timothy B Lee has a gripping and thorough account of the work to tear down the PACER paywall, which requires that Americans pay $0.10 per page to access court files, which are necessary to understanding and interpreting the law. Aaron Swartz was investigated by the FBI for his part in extracting millions of these public domain documents from behind their paywall and making them public, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. — Read the rest

At a memorial for Aaron Swartz in San Francisco tonight at Internet Archive (live video stream here), Carl Malamud spoke about the late activist and developer.

Aaron was part of an army of citizens that believes democracy only works when the citizenry are informed, when we know about our rights—and our obligations.

Carl Malamud sez, "If you are in the Bay Area, please come to the Internet Archive Thursday evening for a memorial honoring Aaron Swartz. The program will be streamed on the net."

Brewster Kahle, Carl Malamud, and Aaron Swartz's other radical archivist friends have put together an open repository for peoples' electronic Aaron Swartz files. Brewster writes,

"The Web team of the Internet Archive have been archiving all the aaronsw sites they are finding. — Read the rest

Here are our top posts of 2012. Now you can enjoy them all over again!

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Public.Resource.Org today released 10,062 public safety documents covering 24 countries and 6 regions, including the European Union. The release is documented in a README file and accompanied by 12 tables of supporting documentation.

Some of these standards were obtained directly from the web sites of national standards bodies, such as Ecuador and Thailand which make their standards freely available.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

If you want access to all the tax filings of US nonprofit corporations, the IRS will sell you sets of DVDs for $2580 per year of data. We acquired all of these filings from 2002 to the present, a set of DVDs weighing 98.7 pounds.