Man who filmed fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery is arrested for murder, 3rd arrest in Georgia investigation
William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. charged with Felony Murder & Criminal Attempt to Commit False Imprisonment.
The Supreme Court just heard the State of Georgia's argument for copyrighting the law and charging for access to it
For years, rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) has been scanning and posting proprietary elements of the law, such as standard annotations or building and safety codes developed by outside parties and then incorporated into legislation, on the theory that if you are expected to follow the law, you must be able to read, write and share that law. Read the rest
Everyone's investigating Google for antitrust violations...except California and Alabama
The attorneys general from 48 states, DC, and Puerto Rico are collaborating on a joint antitrust investigation of Google's dominance in the ad- and search-markets, but two AGs are sitting this one out: California's Xavier Becerra and Alabama's Steve Marshall. Read the rest
Judge orders the State of Georgia to be prepared for pen-and-paper balloting by March 2020
Few states have voting machines that are simultaneously more obviously defective and more ardently defended by the state government than Georgia, where 16-year-old touchscreen systems are prone to reporting ballots cast by 243% of the eligible voters and where gross irregularities in election administration sends voters to the wrong polling places or sends co-habitating husbands and wives to polls in different cities to cast their votes. Read the rest
Medical examiner quits after declaring that bloody, stabbed corpse had died of "natural causes"
Shannon Byers was an investigator with the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Medical Examiner's office, until this week, when she resigned after news got out that a body whose death she had declared to be of "natural causes" had been found in a bloody murder-scene with a stab wound to the neck. Read the rest
The New York Times on Carl Malamud and his tireless battle to make the law free for all to read
For years, we've covered the efforts of rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) to make the law free for all to read, from liberating paywalled court records from PACER to risking fines and even prison to make standards that have been incorporated into regulation available, to his longrunning fight with the State of Georgia to make the state's annotated legal code public, which may be headed for the Supreme Court. Read the rest
Lawyers and law students' signatures needed for Supreme Court amicus brief in favor of publishing the law
Attentive reader will note that rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) published the laws of Georgia -- including the paywalled annotations to the state laws -- in 2015, prompting the state to sue him and literally call him a terrorist; Malamud countersued in 2015 and won a huge victory in 2018, when the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the law could not be copyrighted. Read the rest
After 150 years, Runaway Negro Creek finally has a new name
The US Board on Geographic Names has officially renamed Runaway Negro Creek on Savannah, Georgia's Skidaway Island. It's now called Freedom Creek. Last year, State Sen. Lester Jackson sponsored the resolution to get rid of the offensive name. According to WJCL, the creek was originally "named after slaves that escaped after the Civil War."
Candidate/election-runner Brian Kemp's hacking accusation is a new, absurd low
Brian Kemp is the Secretary of State for Georgia, where is he also running for governor, meaning that he is overseeing his own election -- and in that capacity, he has purged thousands of Black voters from the rolls (the total purge runs to the millions) and distinguished himself as one of the last holdouts for replacing his state's worst-of-breed insecure voting machines with ones that produce a paper audit trail that can be consulted if they are suspected of malfunction. Read the rest
Old dentists' office walls are full of thousands of "buried teeth"
For at least the third time, construction workers in Georgia have opened up the walls of a former dentist's office only to discover thousands of teeth in the wall cavity. Read the rest
Public domain scores a huge appeals court victory: the law cannot be copyrighted (UPDATED)
For years we have chronicled the tireless fight of rogue archivist Carl Malamud (previously) whose Public.Resource.org has devoted itself to publishing the world's laws, for free, where anyone can see and share them. Read the rest
Georgia Senator, asked about voter suppression, mugs constituent for his phone
US Senator David Purdue (R-GA/@sendavidperdue), a grown-ass human being elected to high office in the most powerful nation in the land, was asked a question about Brian Kemp, who is both a (monumentally unhinged) candidate for governor of Georgia and Georgia's Secretary of State, in charge of overseeing the election in which he is standing. Read the rest
Against all evidence, city of Savannah claims googly eyes glued to Revolutionary War statue are "not funny"
An extremely funny prankster glued googly eyes to the statue of Revolutionary War commander Nathaniel Greene; the City of Savannah took to its Facebook page to insist that this was "not funny" but rather "vandalism" and saying that the police had been involved. Read the rest
Voting rights groups sue Georgia & Brian Kemp to reinstate 53,000 blocked registrations, 70% are Black
Voting rights advocacy groups are suing the state of Georgia to reinstate 53,000 blocked voter registrations, 70% of which are from African American voters, saying the current policy violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act and The National Voter Registration Act. Read the rest
Georgia purged 10% of its voters: here's a way to check if you're one of them!
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (previously) embarked on an aggressive voter suppression campaign in 2017, purging 10% of the voter roll, some 591,000 Georgian voters. Read the rest
Georgia Republican introduces legislation to kill PACER, the outrageous paywall around the US justice system
PACER (previously) is a paywall that charges you every time you look up the US's public domain Federal court records; for years, activists have railed against its existence, liberating key documents from it and putting them online for free, calling on Congress to eliminate it altogether. Read the rest
State of Georgia goes to court to defend voting machines that recorded 243% voter turnouts
A federal lawsuit brought by voting security activists against the State of Georgia has revealed breathtaking defects in the state's notoriously terrible voting machines -- and, coincidentally, the machines in question were wiped and repeatedly degaussed by the state before they could be forensically examined as evidence of their unsuitability for continued use. Read the rest
