[Fsf-friends] Free the Law

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Ramanraj K said on Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 07:47:07PM +0530,:

 > Information Institute.   The website allows  _free_ access to  most of
 > the Australian legal resources, including legislation and decisions
 > of

Yes, and in many respects, the US of A is very back in this.
 
 > have  devised  standard  notation  for  citing  case  law  that  is
 > uniformly followed througout Australia,

To a large extent, this is  because Australia has a well developed and
formalised research  and citation  system within _public_  control. In
the US, this  is done by private bodies, like  (IIRC), LEXIS or NEXIS,
and they have  a vested interest in that  an alternate citation system
does not come up.
 
 > not  everything is free.   AFAIK, there  are no  standard notations
 > that enable citing case-law published at the NIC servers before the
 > courts.

Wait a minute. Is any case law published on any of NIC servers? I have
not seen any. May be I am missing something?

The NIC does  have a CD of  few Sup. ct. decisions for  sale. For some
reason (it is  not actually available if you decide  to buy it) people
choose to pay three to ten times more for data bases from other
So
Called
Cd
vendors.
 
 > Again, AFAIK,  many proprietary software  tools are used in  India,

In India, weebee is in public domain (grin).
 
 > available  at:  http://www.lawonline.cc/accesslawright.htm  under  the
 > title "Free the Law"

Great link.

If  you  have the  time  or inclination  look  into  the situation  in
Singapore. last time  I went there (the sites,  that is) they required
software of a particular brand and version.

And there  is a proposal to  implement something along  those lines in
India.

-- 
         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com
Buy Free Software -- It gives you freedom!