Take A Free Ride

Take A Free Ride

"If a law isn't public, it isn't a law."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

This is another common sense argument that is more complicated than it appears.

AFAIK, folks like Elsevier, who have a stranglehold on scientific journals, do not contribute to the costs of research in any way (and, it should be noted, much of the research that they do publish is free of the data sets that scientists use to support their conclusions).

However, the standards bodies that create codes for construction have their research and administration funded by these fees. And if you've had much experience with OSHA, you might want to think twice about handing that whole thing over to the government to manage. Either way, it has to be paid for.

I say this as a builder who has more than a little experience of both the arbitrariness and value of building code compliance. I also know some folks who have worked with construction standards bodies.

It's also worthwhile to mention the fact that local AHJ are often free to re-write or re-interpret those codes as they see fit. It's just as hard to win a argument with an AHJ as it is with an umpire, for about the same reasons.

But it is a legitimate point to raise that ordinary citizens can't access these materials without a fee, or without the inconvenience of going to a library or public office that has paid the fees.

Given the tortured history of standards and legality on the Intarwebs, I'm not exactly sure that we'd be best served handing all of this over to the tech wizards, either.

But it is certainly a matter worthy of discussion, with some notably broken parts.

The Open Law movement, with Carl Malmud: https://law.resource.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOJdGaMvVw

via Edward Morbius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOJdGaMvVw

Comments

  1. Florida is one of the states that require full disclosure - and if you ask to see any municipal, county, or state documents, the employee may not question your reasons. Several newspapers test governments each year, and there is always a few government employees that ask "why"; seldom has an outright refusal been noted. I'll try to find time to watch this later.

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  2. I had some recent experiences in FL that demonstrated the ubiquity of bureaucratic obfuscation, but I honor the intention.

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  3. B.O. is certainly a problem - I hope you found some resolution, Drew McCarthy .

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  4. I did, indeed, Timothy Street. I found that showing up and glowering in person was helpful. It took a little work in some cases to find the physical location of the correct office to occupy with my moodiness. Once that was accomplished, progress occurred at a satisfying pace.

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