Public.Resource.org v. Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association, Inc.
Filing
32
EXHIBITS re 30 Declaration in Support, of Vincent R. Sandusky filed bySheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association, Inc.. (Related document(s) 30 ) (Napolitan, Nicholas) (Filed on 6/17/2013)
EXHIBIT A
TO
DECLARATION OF
VINCENT R. SANDUSKY
DOCKET NO. 30
One Man's Quest to Make Information Free - Businessweek
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Bloomberg Businessweek
Politics & Policy
One Man's Quest to Make Information Free
By Brendan Greeley on April 12, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-12/one-mans-quest-to-make-information-free
Carl Malamud once told a senior official at the Securities and Exchange Commission that he wanted
to put the agency’s filings online. “I just don’t think people who use the Internet are going to be
interested in this stuff,” Malamud remembers the official saying in 1993. Malamud bought all the
filings and put them online anyway, using a computer borrowed from his friend Eric Schmidt. (Yes,
that Eric Schmidt.) About a year later, he took them down. That prompted more than 17,000 day
traders, investment clubs, and business school professors to beg the agency for free Web access to its
records. You might know it today as the SEC’s “Edgar” database.
More than 15 years after that stunt, Malamud is still making the same argument: If you make
government information free and easily accessible, there’s no telling who’ll start using it or what good
ideas will spring up. “Every time I put something online there’s a huge audience,” says Malamud,
founder of Public.Resource.Org, a nonprofit that advocates for government transparency. “The
industry guys think the only audience is industry types and Ralph Nader.”
Now Malamud’s taking on the best practices for construction, industry, and manufacturing. They’re
written by hundreds of nonprofits known as “standards development organizations.” About 3,000 of
these standards are referenced but not fully spelled out in federal law. Let’s say you’re building a
hospital for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Federal law says you need to follow the “Life Safety
Code,” a set of rules on how to prevent fire, smoke, and toxic fumes from injuring tenants. To get a
print copy of the code you’d have to send a payment of $82.95 to the National Fire Protection
Association, which wrote it. Malamud argues that the code is a law—and therefore part of the public
domain—and should be distributed freely. NFPA maintains that it holds a copyright on its standard.
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/19490-one-mans-quest-to-make-information... 6/17/2013
One Man's Quest to Make Information Free - Businessweek
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Malamud is forcing the issue. Last month he bought and copied 73 different standards and boxed
them with American flag packing tape. He sent the packages to the 10 organizations that wrote the
standards to “put them on notice” that he plans to publish the specs online beginning in May. He’s
been doing something similar over the last five years with state building codes, gradually uploading
them to the Web after a federal appeals court ruled they’re part of the public domain. Not one
standards organization has sued him to uphold its copyright on those codes. Malamud is hoping for
the same result with the federal standards. “We are very serious about doing this and intend to see it
through to completion,” he says.
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/19490-one-mans-quest-to-make-information... 6/17/2013
One Man's Quest to Make Information Free - Businessweek
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Sound arcane? Malamud’s mission will spur investment, says Stephen Schultze, the associate director
of Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, who’s worked on similar
projects with him in the past. “You’ll have a round of innovation,” says Schultze. “Other people will
find ways to make [the information] easily searchable and create guides for businesses—plumbers
and electricians.” Or how-to apps on building to code for homeowners.
There’s an economic case for copyrights. It’s expensive to develop good standards—you need panels
of engineers, industry representatives, and consumer advocates weighing in. Some organizations
recoup their costs by charging to test products for manufacturers and granting their seal of approval;
others rely on selling standards to make ends meet. “This source of revenue gives us great
independence,” says Jim Shannon, president of the NFPA. “We don’t want the industries to pay for
standards. Then there will be industry-dominated standards.”
Malamud doesn’t argue with that. But charging for public information “comes up against this brick
wall,” he says, “which is the U.S. Constitution.”
The bottom line: An activist for open government says unlocking the paywall on open information
will spur innovation.
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