Easy money

Do you run a "standards" organization?  By that I mean, are you in charge of a group that writes or creates standards for a particular industry?  You know, the kind of standards that say, for example, that you have to have an electrical outlet every six feet in your house.  Well, if you write a standard and then the legislature makes it law, who does it belong to, you or the public?

Several standards writing organizations are suing to keep a company called Public.Resource.org from posting standards they wrote on the internet, claiming that its a copyright violation, even though all the standards in question are now laws.

That's right.  You have to know the standard in order to build or renovate your house and you probably want to know the standard before you buy a house to make sure it's up to code, but they argue that you can only get it from them.

Like the title says, easy money.  I'm going to go into the law writing business, and then every time the legislature adopts a law I've proposed, I'll start collecting a small fee from anyone who wants to read that law.

Fortunately the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a better idea.  Help out with the defense.  I don't agree with everything they do but they nailed it on this one.