No. Decisions written by judges are common law, and the decisions are public domain. Annotations are not. The annotations are writte by employees of the LexisNexis corporation. I'm pretty sure the employees of a corporation are not authorized to write state law.

That is completely not true. Perhaps for you, but I have changed my ideas about many, many things in my life. I want to know things that are true, not simply win arguments.

But I guess there's no point telling you that? You don't believe me and I haven't changed your mind?

Then we can stop right there, because they're not. They're written by employees of the LexisNexis corporation. Pretty sure the Georgia legal code is written by the Georgia legislature and signed by the Governor.

States have always been able to hold copyrights. Wouldn't be new. Disturbing? Yes. New? No.

Or you could enlighten us.

Those things are other case decisions, which are not copyrightable. But the annotations, linking the decisions to the cases in concise and useful ways is copyrightable. See my other replies in this thread. Malamud is wrong.

And another thing: if Malamud thinks annotations are super-important for a free society and understanding the law...great! Your organization should dedicate itself to compiling and publishing annotated state laws. The codes are public domain. The decisions are public domain. Slog through them and pick out relevant bits of decisions and link them to laws in a useful way. Make an open source platform to do it, like a "Wikipedia for laws" where anybody can annotate their state's laws.

But right now you can't just republish somebody else's annotations because they're about something that is public domain. Linus and Stallman agreed that software should be free. Did they go hack Microsoft and commercial Unix vendors and publish their code for free? No. They went and wrote and published their own damn free software.

Go write your own damn annotations.

Other note: I said the author updated the article. He updated it to link to the state of Georgia website, which he says links directly to the annotated code, calling it the "official code of Georgia." He did not follow his own link. The link goes to the unannotated code, hosted by LexisNexis, which identifies itself as "LexisNexis, author of the annotated code." But yeah, following Georgia's link gets you to the unannotated code, which is the official Georgia code.

Yeah yeah, I'm a "copyright is evil and information wants to be anthropomphized" guy, but while copyright exists, I think Georgia is right. This is not the law. The annotations are links to cases where that law was applied. Judges would follow those links and cite the previous decisions, as applicable, never the annotation.

In other states annotations are published and sold by a third party, like WestLaw. The difference here is Georgia owns the annotations itself and sells them to lawyers. If it's no longer worthwhile to do so, what will happen is Georgia will stop commissioning LexisNexis to produce the annotated code, LexisNexis will do it itself and sell copies to both lawyers and the state of Georgia, which will purchase them for judges and prosecutors. Malamud will definitely not win publishing annotations copyrighted by LexisNexis, and now instead of the annotations being revenue neutral (or profitable), the profits will all go to LexisNexis. So, meh.

They're not. The annotations are essentially links to case decisions, and the judge would cite those case decisions, not the annotation. No judge ever cites an annotation.

Note to editors: the article has been updated to strike out part of the that you have quoted in TFS. You should probably update that as well.

So, the annotations are not part of the law. They are comments about the manner in which the law was applied in certain cases, no?

Devil's Advocate...while yes, you can't copyright the law, are you saying you can't copyright things written about the law? How about textbooks used by law schools?

I would find sports in general much more exciting if drug use were mandatory. Imagine how entertaining football would be if one team were pumped full of PCP and the other was tripping balls on bath salts?

The GP said this:

I was not talking about the subject of the article, but the hypothetical test of the 25 year old and 45 year old with the same resumes. If they have the same resumes, they have the same work experience. A 45 year old with the same work experience as a 25 year old has...something going on they need to explain.

Well, the threats were made publicly over twitter. Brianna screen shotted them and tweeted them. Is there any claim that "no, there are other, privately delivered threats that are of a different nature than these?"

So, we've seen the threats. "I, anonymous person on the internet likely several states away from you am going to drop everything, drive to your house and commit murder because I hate feminist opinions on video games!"

Really? Because that happens? People do that?

There is a difference between protected free speech (even though vile and repugnant as this) and a "true threat," which is actually a crime. There is no hard and fast formula for what a true threat is, and it varies by jurisdiction. It's a "preponderance of circumstances" kind of thing. Lots of little boxes you can check off that, taken together, can add up to a true threat.

Are the speaker and the victim acquainted in any way? I'll take a threat from a jilted ex or a business partner far more seriously than a random stranger.

How serious is the nature of their dispute? Personal grievances, like a messy divorce, or political power issues, like threats against a politician or judge I'll take more seriously than those against a random person with no power or authority over a general and nebulous issue like "gender politics in video games."

Does the threatener have any ability to carry out the threat? In what proximity to the victim are they? While we don't know the location of the threatener, given that the vast majority of people on the internet are nowhere near you, it's unlikely the threatener had any ability to carry out the threat.

Does the threatener have any kind of history of violence? I'd take a threat from ISIS over depictions of Muhammad seriously, or threats by skinheads against federal judges trying a racially sensitive case. People in or associated with their groups have actually done these things in the past. But gamers? They do nothing. I mean, literally, they do nothing. They sit on the couch and mash buttons and do nothing constructive or destructive at all. They are inert masses. But they sure do talk! If .00001% of the threats of rape and murder communicated over XBox Live were carried out, the streets would be ankle deep in blood.

So, here you've got a random stranger, unknown to Wu, not personally jilted but politically motivated, who is likely states away from her and completely unable to act, publicly announcing that they are going to commit rape and murder over gender politics in video games, as a representative of a group of people who say 12 horrific things to strangers every day before breakfast and never actually do a damn thing.

On what planet would any reasonable person take that seriously?

In investigating, you also have to ask "cui bono?" Who benefits? Making such a threat advances exactly whose agenda? The FBI is doing nothing because they believe in all likelihood she made the thing up herself, creating a throwaway twitter account that did nothing but spew a single scripted set of death threats. But they can't prove it was her so they're not going to prosecute her for making a false claim, but can't say "we think it was her" and embarrass somebody, discouraging actual victims from reporting crimes, without proof. They'll find "the real threatener" right about the time O.J. finds "the real killers." Why would she do that? Well, she has a history of histrionics on a transgender forum, so she's not exactly the most stable of people, and sure has benefited monetarily from the attention.

And absolutely no one, not a single person, is coming to hurt her.

If when the entire facade completely collapses (they always do eventually...I've seen this same kind of manufactured persona and outrage in another industry), will you recant your position?

For something to be a true threat, an objectively reasonable person would need to believe the threat would seriously be carried out.

No objectively reasonable person can possibly believe a death threat from an anonymous stranger on the Internet in any discussion about video games is genuine.

Has she ever said that? That no, it wasn't the publicly visible threats that did it, but private ones that have not been disclosed, and are of a different nature?

If so, perhaps there is more than meets the eye.

But as is, I don't see how anyone could conclude these are true threats.

The things said to Brianna are horrid and despicable. No human should ever say those things to another.

However, for it to actually be a crime, there has to be a "true threat." The nature of a true threat is inexact, and varies by jurisdiction. But a general test is that it must make an objectively reasonable person fear for their physical safety.

It's an objective test, not a subjective test. So it does not matter if the person receiving the threat perceived it to be genuine, or was afraid. To do so would make the standard that of an "eggshell observer," and speech would be beholden to the most timidly sensitive of us. "Would a reasonable person believe this threat is genuine?"

I do not see how any reasonable person can genuinely believe that, because of your opinions on gender issues in video games, an anonymous person you don't know so strongly disagrees with you that they're going to drive to your house and commit amongst the most heinous crimes there are against you, which carries with it sentences that range from life imprisonment to death depending on your state. Can a reasonable person possibly believe such a thing would happen?

No. Clearly not. It's somebody who's saying nasty hurtful things at you, either because they 1) actually hate you and your ideas or 2) is an asshole trolling you because you react. The things they're saying are awful, and offensive, and nobody should say them. But only a complete fool could possibly believe they are genuine threats. Laugh at them, block them, ignore them. But to tell me you take them seriously...you're either a completely naive fool or you're lying for attention. And in the meantime, you're just feeding the trolls. They will never stop doing this while it gets a rise out of you.