Carl Malamud is — and remains — one of my original internet heroes. The internet’s original information access warrior, Malamud is responsible for the availability of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) EDGAR database, the US federal register, US patent database, US Court of Appeals rulings, and the federal court archive Public Access to Electronic Court Records (PACER) being freely accessible on the net. (PACER still charges per-page for access, but plugins for Firefox and Chrome are available to gain free access.)
Believing incontrovertibly that public information should be publicly available, Malamud has been rubbing the right people the wrong way for more than two decades. Accordingly, Malamud is currently being sued by a handful of Standards Development Organizations who insist in maintaining copyright on their building, infrastructure, and product safety codes that become law by being “incorporated by reference.” Malamud is fond of quoting US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer: “If a law isn’t public, it isn’t a law.”
Malamud is also being sued by the state of Georgia for publishing the Official Code of Georgia Annotated on his website. Georgia uses its laws as a profit center, selling access through LexisNexis, and refers to Malamud’s act as “a form of terrorism.”
Steven Levy writing for Backchannel has published a typically outstanding Levy-esque profile of Malamud, featuring an overview of Malamud’s recent efforts to get the American Bar Association (ABA) to vote his way on regulatory standards at their annual meeting. “If nothing else, Malamud is determined to make the barristers understand that the publication of these standards is a core American value, and allowing anything but totally free and open publication would leave a dark constitutional stain on the shag rug of liberty,” writes Levy.
The ABA — like, well, like the bunch of lawyers it is — proposes a compromise whereby the public would be granted access without charge to the material, but only after clearing copyright authorization and even then, in a limited, read-only format. “To Malamud, if the standard is part of the law, there can be no copyright,” writes Levy. “Period.”
Malamud seemingly had to lead each ABA delegate, individually, by the hand to get them to see his outlandishly simple argument.
Levy cites another of my original internet heroes, Brewster Kahle, on whether or not Malamud will ever reach his goal: “There will always be more to be done. Achieving a goal is overrated. Moby Dick is a testament to what happens when you achieve your goal. He wants public access to the public domain. That’s a principle, not a goal.”
Malamud ultimately failed in his effort to get the ABA to abandon its read-only, copyright-cleared, public-access “compromise.” Levy reports he took it in stride and immediately began to prepare for the 12 September hearing with the Standards Development Organizations at the US District Court in DC.