I downloaded your HTML extract and found one problem: it did not follow many of the links to subsidiary pages such as "Title Note" and "Article Note". For an example, see 15-10-26. which has the following Title Note:

CROSS REFERENCES. --Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, 35-6A-1 et seq. Establishment of county law libraries, 36-15-1 et seq. Court-martial jurisdiction, 38-2-370 et seq. Designation of courts which possess jurisdiction over traffic offenses, and procedure in such courts, 40-13-1 et seq. Indictment and punishment of judge of probate court for malpractice, partiality, conduct unbecoming office, and other offenses, 45-11-4.

LAW REVIEWS. --For article, "The Majority That Wasn't: Stare Decisis, Majority Rule, and the Mischief of Quorum Requirements," see 58 Emory L. J. 831 (2009).

RESEARCH REFERENCES

Am. Jur. Trials. --Judicial Technology in the Courts, 44 Am. Jur. Trials 1.

According to the US Supreme Court, these notes are part of the official code and thus not protected by copyright. Citizens are held accountable to the interpretations given in these notes, and Georgia has made them part of the "official" code, and thus they must be available to all citizens.

Can you update your code to extract these notes as well? Thanks!

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Requiring a license before allowing citizens to read or speak the law would be a violation of deeply-held principles in our system that the laws apply equally to all.This principle was strongly set out by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall when they stated “the Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right.” Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834). The Supreme Court specifically extended that principle to state law, such as the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, in Banks v. Manchester (128 U.S. 244, 1888) , where it stated that “the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all, whether it is a declaration of unwritten law, or an interpretation of a constitution or a statute."

Good work! I'll download it and check formatting, and host the file as well for public access.

Clearly, though, this is of far less utility than having the government host the file itself. Further, I just read that only the Annotated code is considered official for quotation in actual court cases. I'm trying to find out exactly what that means.

As with firearms, the problem isn't that we need more laws. We need enforcement of existing laws. LEOs inexplicably refuse to intervene when rogue droners recklessly operate the toy they carelessly use to endanger others.

The rules for hobbyists are not lax: line of sight and below 400', not over populated areas or structures. That pretty much means in a mile-square or smaller open field.

I don't know about the laws in Japan, but the U.S. now has enough in the way of FAA rules to prosecute illegal drone operators. But it isn't doing it. I've read many stories of idiots and their flying lawnmowers (and I say that as a drone builder myself) ignoring common sense safety measures by flying their drones in cities, over crowds, and even at (!) airports. Japan has the right idea in fining violators thousands of dollars, but why is law enforcement waiting for crashes -- in either country? Cite illegal drone operators on sight. I've personally reported several incidents to local law enforcement (while we were operating our drones safely in a safe area and below 400'). They did nothing.

Is a citizen's arrest feasible in these situations?

I just tried your link. It seems like you can only read the law a chapter at time, and there are 800+ chapters. And then it is only HTML text that can't be readily saved in formatted form, and with the law, formatting (e.g., indentation) is critical to interpretation. There doesn't appear to be a way to download a PDF of the entire law corpus. And there is no search function at all!

Ominously, there is a link that lets you purchase the 21-volume paper copy for $615.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said, "if a law isn't public, it isn't a law."

An excellent way to help is to contribute to public.resource.org, the non-profit being sued by The State of Georgia: https://public.resource.org./ Click on the "$$ SUPPORT THE PUBLIC DOMAIN" link at the bottom of the page.

Public.Resource.Org is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit and your contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

There is an excellent video entitled "Show me the Manual!" that introduces the issue.

If you think it's so easy, try to write one. Here's the link:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/hott...

OK, do it if it's so easy. Here's the URL:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/hott...

LGill,

New laws in Georgia become effective on January 1st and July 1st. Occasionally an emergency statue goes into effect immediately upon passage. The 2015 laws thus began on January 1st 2015 and continued to be updated through the current year's regular legislative session, which ended on April 2. The 48-volume print edition typically is published after April and includes laws scheduled to become active on July 1st.

All law library online access to the Official Georgia Code is exclusively via the broken-backed Lexis system. Georgia is one of the worst offenders in the US where citizen access to the law is concerned. And Georgia legislators aim to keep it that way, which is why they are suing Carl Malamud. The State of Georgia claims copyright in the annotated Code, and that Carl Malamud, and Public.Resource.Org have violated that copyright. That is why they are suing him.

The government's specious argument is that parts of the annotations -- case summaries -- are the creative authorship of a third party, and thus the copyright to those summaries belong to those third parties. But the federal courts have already held that indexes, captions, section headings, change histories, cross-references and case citations are not copyrightable. The case summaries are really of little value, but the citations and indexes are critical to practical use of the Code. But Georgia, by official statute, bundles them all together as the Official Georgia Code Annotated and gives the public only paywall access.

So let The State of Georgia publish the full law as a completely downloadable file, with all section headings, captions, indexes, change histories, cross references and case law citations. If the public demands that they do it, they will be forced to. You're absolutely right that Georgia should not be an exception.

KGill,

You are incorrect. On January 1st of every year in Georgia, including 2015, hundreds of new laws take effect. These make up the current year's code,mel@becknet.com which is then update again on July 1 with additional new laws. The library's have outdated codes, and a quick survey of several municipal libraries found none with code books newer than 2011, so libraries are not even updated annually. Ironically, the libraries I spoke with said only the lexis site has the current code. At least they knew their business. Unlike many commenters in this thread.

I'll say it again: Georgia's state government has conspired with Lexis to keep practical access to Georgia law out of the hands of the public. Their motive is clearly to force people to purchase the Lexis product. Practical access includes full electronic text in a single corpus, to permit anyone to search and index with their own tools, plus the annotations, which encompass essential indexes and case references in addition to abstracts. The government could easily publish the law directly as PDFs, complete with indexes and case references, excluding the useless analysis. But that would not serve political cronyism. The so-called creative copyrightable abstracts are a red herring the devious device to force copyright between the public access to the law.

The sad thing is, Georgia is lawmakers have sold the legal legacy that belongs to the people for a song to a single commercial entity. It's truly a travesty, and one that many other states have avoided. So why doesn't Georgia?

Also, the link you provided is not to current Georgia law, only past. 2015 is not included. The site disclaimer notes this. The only place to get free access to the current code is the lexis hobbled search.

Gnupun,

They are not shown in full detail. That's my point. You can only view a tiny fragment of the Georgia code at a time. Just reading the law in sequence becomes a hugely tedious exercise, and this crippling is deliberately intended and sanctioned by the State of Georgia to force meaningful access through the lexis paid service.