Y’all have probably heard about the copyright fight going on between the Oregon Legislative Counsel and Justia, which posted the full content of the Oregon Revised Statutes, apparently without permission. (For those who are unfamiliar with this, you can catch up at the Washington Times, the Citizen Media Law Project, and ars technica.)

As others have pointed out, we don’t know the whole story yet, which makes it difficult to say much (see also their post on the difference between session law and statutes, and further updates here and here).

That being said, I consider myself to be on the side of open access, and if the revised statutes weren’t available online at all, I’d most likely come down on the side of Justia. But they are available (here). Ok, so the site needs some work, but there it is. Full content and freely available.

And, more importantly in my book, it’s direct from the source. I’m always a little wary of looking up laws, legal cases, and the like online because there’s no way of knowing what changes — whether necessary, accidental, or malicious — might have been made. Even though online sources aren’t the legal sources (the printed versions are), if it’s on the site of the originating body I at least have some confidence that someone’s at least making the necessary updates.

(Full disclosure: I worked for the Oregon Office of the Legislative Counsel almost ten years ago.)