[1] In the UK, the right of the government to prevent printing of the law was established by at least 1820, and formalized by the Copyright Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo.
A definition of an edict of government is given by the United States Copyright Office:[2] Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public policy.
"If either statutes or decisions could be made private property, it would be in the power of an individual to shut out the light by which we guide our actions."
(Wheaton v. Peters, 33 US (8 Pet) 591, 668 (1834)) This doctrine was developed in a number of cases through the nineteenth century, particularly with regards to the opinions of State courts.
The act of that emperor who caused his enactments to be written in small letters, on small tablets, and then posted the latter at such height that none could read the letters, and at the same time insisted upon the rule of obedience, outraging as it did the relations of governor and governed under his own system of government, has never been deemed consistent with or possible under ours.The Supreme Court confirmed such opinions in Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888), concerning reports of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and in Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888), concerning reports of the Supreme Court of Illinois.
Similar cases have disbarred the pretended copyright of State constitutions and statutes: Davidson v. Wheelock, 27 F. 61 (C.C.D.Minn.
Following negative media attention, the state issued a special waiver promising not to enforce the copyright against Justia or Public.Resource.org, but did not change its policies regarding the accessibility of its laws to others.
Copyright Office summarized the public policy grounds as follows: such material as the laws and governmental rules and decisions must be freely available to the public and made known as widely as possible; hence there must be no restriction on the reproduction and dissemination of such documents.An interesting situation arises when a governing body adopts copyrighted works to serve as legal standards.
[6] West settled with the state after the law was changed in 1990 to allow access to the legislative database for a very large fee.
Its publisher, the Harvard Law Review, has asserted it to be a copyrighted work due to its inclusion of "carefully curated examples, explanations and other textual materials".
New York University professor Christopher Jon Sprigman is a notable critic of this position; he has argued that the Bluebook was effectively public domain as an edict of government due to its adoption.
5. c. 46), which instituted the system of Crown copyright for work "prepared or published by or under the direction or control of His Majesty or any Government department".