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No One Can Own The Law—So Why Is Congress Advancing A Bill To Extend Copyright To It? from the don’t-lock-up-the-law dept
Last week, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to advance the Protecting and Enhancing Public Access to Codes Act, or the Pro Codes Act (H.R. 1631), to the full House. The bill would extend copyright protection to codes (such as building codes) that are developed by standards development organizations (SDOs) and incorporated by reference into local, state, and federal laws, as long as the SDOs make the codes “available to the public free of charge online in a manner that does not substantially disrupt the ability of those organizations to earn revenue.”
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NHTSA references several SAE standards in their regulations, but they don’t update the references very often, if ever. Many of the referenced standards date back to versions from the '70s and '80s. Back around 2012 I contacted SAE to find out if they provided a package of standards incorporated by reference in NHTSA regulations. I was told they don’t provide such a package, and they couldn’t even sell me the individual standards I needed because they were “out of date”. My only option through SAE was to buy the latest version.
Shortly afterwards Public.Resource.Org posted the standards, and I copied them. But I thought they had lost their court case.
We have the NFPA 70, aka the National Electric Code, which is free to access as long as you sign up for an NFPA account and allow their email spam. A physical copy of the book is about $50, not terrible.
California has their Title 24 Part 3 (California Electric Code) readily available online for free, no account needed. Want a printed copy? $200, loose leaf. Granted, loose leaf let’s you swap the pages as they’re updated in the interim years (the code cycle is every 3 years), but $200 is ridiculous.
The reason I bring this up is inspections. An inspector is not going to sit there while you Google a particular code to prove them wrong, especially when half the results are from forums of people debating the code. But an inspector will sometimes change their tune when you grab the official code book, flip to the relevant code (thank the maker for reference tabs), and point it out along with conditions and exceptions. I’ve had inspectors reconsider a field ruling explicitly because I had my code book with me (and was able to efficiently navigate to the relevant section). Problem here is that since the code is updated every 3 years, the CA code lags the NEC by 2 years, and our jurisdiction uses the most recent publication, this cycle gets expensive quickly. While it’s a seemingly trivial amount when your business is off and running, it’s yet another expense that makes starting a business tricky.
