AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TESTING AND MATERIALS et al v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC.

Filing 1

COMPLAINT against PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. ( Filing fee $ 400 receipt number 0090-3425373) filed by AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TESTING AND MATERIALS, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEATING, REFRIGERATING, AND AIR-CONDITIONING ENGINEERS, INC., NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATION, INC.. (Attachments: #1 Exhibit Exhibit A, #2 Exhibit Exhibit B, #3 Exhibit Exhibit C, #4 Exhibit Exhibit D, #5 Exhibit Exhibit E, #6 Exhibit Exhibit F, #7 Exhibit Exhibit G, #8 Exhibit Exhibit H, #9 Exhibit Exhibit I, #10 A0121 Form, #11 Civil Cover Sheet Civil Cover Sheet, #12 Summons Summons)(Clayton, Michael)

EXHIBIT E

12 Tables of Codes

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Twelve Tables of Codes
DIRECTORY OF TABLES

Table 01

Table of Codes

Table 02

Table of Authorities

Table 03

Table of Revenue and Renumeration

Table 04

Table of Pricing Variances

Table 05

Table of Procurement

Table 06

Table of Production

Table 07

Table of Reverse Lookup

Table 08

Table of Works Consulted

Table 09

Table of Tweets

Table 10

Table of Transformative Use

Table 11

Table of Official Proceedings

Table 12

Table of Requests for Comment

§ 1. The Right To Know
The right to know the law, so as not to be ignorant, as ignorance of the
law is no excuse.
The right to speak the law, so as to inform the citizenry.
The right to know and speak the law is the underpinning of government
in ancient and modern times. The right to know and speak the law is the
foundation of the doctrine of the Rule of Law, which provides:
• First, that the laws shall be public, that the arbitrary whims of
individual men and women have no place in a society ruled by law.
We declare ourselves to be nations of laws, not empires of men.
• Second, that the laws shall apply equally to all. There shall not be
one minimum wage for people of color and another for white
people. There shall not be one court for men and another for
women. The vote shall not be reserved for the rich, disenfranchising
the poor with poll taxes or other artificial barriers meant to come
between a people and their government.
• Third, that there shall be due process under the law. Judgment shall
only be applied after a fair and open proceeding; you shall know the

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charges levied against you and shall be provided counsel, so that
you may be heard.
When we fail to live up to the Rule of Law, we have failed as a society.
Despots may make excuses about extraordinary times or states of
emergency, but those reasons are given sheepishly and accepted
grudgingly, as we all know that a government that fails to live by the
Rule of Law is one that will eventually face the springtime of revolt.

§ 2. The Rule of Law
In the early days of the Roman Republic, the commoners rose against
their aristocratic masters and demanded that the laws by which they
would be judged should be made known. When the aristocrats resisted,
preferring to impose the law arbitrarily, the people quit the city of Rome,
leaving the city defenseless and without workers to keep it running.
The great secession led in 450 BCE to the promulgation of the Twelve
Tables of Law, which were inscribed on bronze tablets and placed in the
agoras for all to read. All citizens were expected to read and know the
law, indeed when the Gauls burnt the city in 390 BCE and the tablets
were destroyed, all the schoolchildren were able to recite them from
memory and they were easily reconstructed.
That the laws shall be written down and promulgated for all to know was
a universal value. In Greece, the laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden
cylinders and placed in the markets. Aristotle stated in Politics that “the
rule of law…is preferable to that of any individual…[H]e who bids the
law rule may be deemed to bid God and Reason alone rule, but he who
bids man rule adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and
passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men.
The law is reason unaffected by desire.”
In India, Ashoka the Great ruled from 269 BCE to 231 BCE and
inscribed the Code of the Dhamma on 50-foot pillars of stone throughout
the land, declaring in Edict Number 4 “that there should be uniformity in
law and uniformity in sentencing.”Ashoka appointed Dhamma Officers
who went out into the provinces, reading the edicts aloud to the people
and helping them to understand his laws.
That the law should be known to all was fundamental, but equally
important was that the law should not be for sale. When the Barons of

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England confronted King John in 1215 on the meadow of Runnymede,
one of their chief complaints was that access to the courts had become
matter of access to money and that judgments were for sale to those who
chose to pay for them. This led to the most long-lasting provision of
Magna Carta, one still in force in the United Kingdom and many other
common law jurisdictions:
Article 40: “To no one will we sell—to no one will we deny or
delay—access to right or justice.”
Likewise, in Japan, the 7th-century Prince Shokotu recognized that
access to the law and justice should not be a matter of access to money.
In the 17-Article Constitution, which is also still in effect, he instructed
all Ministers and officials of state to observe the principles he set out:
Article 5: “Of complaints brought by the people there are a
thousand in one day. If in one day there are so many, how many
will there be in a series of years? If the man who is to decide suits
at law makes gain his ordinary motive, and hears causes with a
view to receiving bribes, then will the suits of the rich man be like
a stone flung into water while the complaints of the poor will
resemble water cast upon a stone. Under these circumstances the
poor man will not know where to take their complaints.”
That all people should know their duties was expressed in China in the
first printed book, The Diamond Sutra, which was dedicated to “universal
free distribution.” In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, one gains merit by
copying or printing. The writing of the laws began in China in 536 BCE,
when Xing Shu inscribed the code of punishments on a bronze tripod for
all to see. Then, 20 years later a neighboring state inscribed the laws on
an iron tripod, then private citizens copied them onto bamboo. For the
next millennium, the Chinese government balanced the Confucian
precepts of rule-by-man with the codified principles of rule-by-law.
As new governments were formed to throw off colonial and dynastic
yokes, equality under the law and government by Rule of Law became
guiding principles. The U.S. Constitution enshrined equality and due
process into the fabric of the newly United States. John Adams explained
in his Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law that the key to making
this experiment in democracy work would be the participation of an
informed citizenry:

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“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of
knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. Let every
order and degree among the people rouse their attention and
animate their resolution. Let them all become attentive to the
grounds and principles of government, ecclesiastical and civil. Let
us study the law of nature; search into the spirit of the British
constitution; read the histories of ancient ages; contemplate the
great examples of Greece and Rome; set before us the conduct of
our own British ancestors, who have defended for us the inherent
rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and
usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests, in short, against
the gates of earth and hell.”
An informed citizenry requires the freedom to read and write the law.
When the issue came before the U.S. Supreme Court, it ruled
unanimously in Wheaton v. Peters (1834) that the law belonged to the
people, not to the government and certainly not to private citizens, stating
“no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions
delivered by this Court.”
The principle that the law belongs to the people was repeatedly affirmed.
In Banks v. Manchester (1888), the Supreme Court rejected copyright
claims over state court opinions. In Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code
Congress (2002), the 5th Circuit of the Court of Appeals rejected
copyright claims over model building codes that were incorporated into
law in Texas, stating “[P]ublic ownership of the law means precisely that
‘the law’ is in the ‘public domain’ for whatever use the citizens choose to
make of it.”
In the 20th Century, governments all over the world have repeatedly
reaffirmed the importance of the Rule of Law and of fundamental human
rights, which include the right to know what our governments require of
us. This right has been particularly important in the formation of the
European Union. Article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the
European Union emphasized the“right of access to documents of the
Union's institutions,” the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European
Union guarantees a “right of access to documents,“ and the Treaty of
Amsterdam firmly reaffirmed the principle:
Article 1: “The Union is founded on the principles of liberty,
democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,
and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member
States.”

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The courts in Europe have repeatedly reaffirmed these principles. In the
United Kingdom, for example, in Blackpool v. Locker (1948), the King's
Bench refused to enforce regulations that were not available for the
public to read. In Fothergill v. Monarch Airlines(1981), the House of
Lords stated that “the need for legal certainty demands that the rules by
which the citizen is bound should be ascertainable by him.” In Sunday
Times v. United Kingdom(1979), the European Court of Human Rights
stated that “[T]he law must be adequately accessible: the citizen must be
able to have an indication that is adequate in the circumstances of the
legal rules applicable to a given case.”
The Rule of Law is not a concept limited to western or northern
countries, to developed countries, or any other lines drawn that divide our
world into sectors. The Rule of Law unites our world around a basic
truth, that all human beings have basic rights. The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948) states:
Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes … to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.”
The rights of speech and expression are fundamental to any declaration of
human rights. The right of access to justice is equally fundamental. There
can be no human rights in any meaningful sense if we limit who is
allowed to read the law and who is allowed to speak it. Human rights
begin with all citizens knowing their duties and their rights under the law.

§ 3. Code is Law
Law has always been technical. Regulation of public safety and the
promotion of standards for fair trade have always stood hand-in-hand
with the regulation of the procedures of justice. When the Barons at
Runnymede forced King John to agree to Magna Carta, the articles
guaranteeing access to justice came right after the article proclaiming a
system of uniform weights and measures:
Article 35: “Let there be throughout our kingdom a single
measure for wine and a single measure for ale and a single
measure for corn, namely ‘the London quarter,’ and a single width

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of cloth (whether dyed, russet or halberjet) namely two ells within
the selvedges and let it be the same with weights and measures.”
England was not unique. In most of the ancient edicts of government, we
see the regulation of technology for public safety and the promotion of
trade sitting alongside the procedures of justice, the functioning of the
divisions of government, and other constitutional issues. In Ashoka's
Second Edict he made provisions for the availability of important medical
roots and fruits; in other edicts he established systems of irrigation and
safe roads. In early Irish law we see provisions of family law sit
alongside standards for beekeeping and the proper functioning of
watermills.
As our modern era began, the provision of the public safety became an
increasingly important function of government. Railways helped open up
the United States, but at a tremendous cost in lives from manual hand
brakes and link-and-pin couplers for the cars. With the passage of the
Railroad Safety Appliance in 1893, the number of accidents fell
dramatically as air brakes and automatic couplers became required on all
trains.
In American cities, children were dying because milk was being
adulterated with fillers such as chalk and kept in grossly unsanitary
conditions. With the passage of the Food Act of 1899, the Board of
Agriculture was finally able to issue the 1901 Sale of Milk Regulations,
establishing standards of purity and hygiene, followed soon after by the
Federal Foods and Drugs Act of 1906 which established the Food and
Drug Administration.
Perhaps the most significant of the public safety regulations at the turn of
the century were the fire codes. The impetus was the horrific New York
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, where the exit doors were
locked shut and 146 garment workers died from fire and smoke, many of
them leaping to their deaths from the 10th floor of the factory, a scene so
horrific that an observer called it “the day it rained children.”
The fire led to the creation of a Committee on Public Safety led by
Frances Perkins, and with the backing of Tammany Hall's Al Smith, to
the promulgation of mandatory fire codes. Since then, groups such as the
National Fire Protection Association have created the high quality
building, fire, electrical, and other public safety codes required
throughout the world. When those codes are ignored, we see tragedies
such as the Bangladesh Tazreen Fashions fire of 2012, a fire that bore a

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striking and horrifying resemblance to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire 101
years earlier.
In our modern world, public safety regulations are a key function of
government. Natural gas and oil, for example, power our modern cities,
but those substances can cause grave harm. In the United States, we
learned this repeatedly when the Texas City refinery explosion of 2005
killed 15 and injured 170, when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010
threw 4.9 billion gallons of oil into the Gulf, and when a 30-inch gas
pipeline in San Bruno, California, exploded and sent a blast of fire 1,000
feet high.
Technical regulations encompass a huge swathe of our modern life, a
natural outcome of our technical society. Building and other codes, food
safety, hazardous materials, the environment, occupational safety in
factories and farms, and the safety of products are all subject to these
regulations. While some may argue there is too much regulation and
others argue there is too little, before we can have that discussion the
citizenry must be informed.

§ 4. Indefensible Thunderbolts
Ignorantia juris non excusat is the well-established doctrine that
ignorance of the law is no excuse. That citizens must be notified of the
laws that affect them was the genesis of the Federal Register, an official
gazette of the United States, established after the Supreme Court ruled in
the Hot Oil Case (1935) that regulations that the government failed to
publish were not valid. Notification of the citizenry of their rights and
responsibilities is a requirement of lawmaking.
In most of the world, including the United States, there has arisen a
system for technical laws known as incorporation by reference. The
standards governing topics such as building codes or hazardous material
transport are developed by ostensibly private bodies. The government
then publishes a notice in an Official Gazette incorporating these
standards into the law, but the text of the standards must often be
purchased from a private body.
The private bodies that develop these standards have been delegated lawmaking authority from their governments. In most cases, these private
bodies are created by their governments. The British Standards
Institution, for example, was created by a Royal Charter in 1929 and

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represents the United Kingdom in numerous international forums,
including the International Organization for Standardization (which it
helped create) and the European Union's European Committee for
Standardization (CEN). As the duly delegated agent for this form of
European Union regulation, the British Standards Institution is required
to adopt and publish EU standards without change, making the law
available to citizens. The official United Kingdom repository of statutes
lists hundreds of statutory instruments that mention British Standards
Institution documents.
While technical standards have the force of law, the governmental bodies
that promulgate these standards and a series of nonprofit organizations
that have sprung up besides them all to often maintain that the laws are
their private property and can only be accessed after paying a fee. More
insidiously, these organizations maintain that they continue to own the
documents even after you have paid the fee, exercising controls such as
restricting the ability to print the document, or copy it, or even to quote
excerpts without their case-by-case prior written approval.
These restrictions on use are implemented through a number of
techniques. Many standards are only available in a shrink-wrap license,
an agreement that claims that by opening the packaging the reader agrees
that they don't own the document but only“license” it and agree not to
redistribute or quote without permission. For online distribution, many
standards come with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that
ties the document to a specific computer and restricts the ability to copy
text from the standard or print it.
These restrictions on use are proclaimed loudly and prominently, with
watermarks being put on every page of some documents purchased,
strident terms of use, and publicity campaigns reminiscent of the “FBI
Warnings” stamped on the beginning of many movies. But, there is a
world of difference between a privately created movie and a legal
document carrying out the edicts of government. To proclaim ownership
of edicts of government is a false proclamation, what is known in the law
as the Doctrine of Brutum Fulmen, the use of an indefensible thunderbolt
to make others give up their rights under the law.
The law belongs to the people, and cannot become the private property of
some governmental or non-governmental organization, no matter how
seemingly well-deserved are the rents one could extract from winning a
monopoly concession on a parcel of the law. While standards bodies need
money to carry out their valuable work, and while it is clear that these

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standards bodies create high-quality documents that are essential to our
public safety, one cannot cordon off the public domain simply because of
an institutional desire for funds.
An examination of the financial status of standards organizations reveals
a wide variation in composition and revenue streams. In India, for
example, less than 4% of revenue at the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
comes from the sales of documents. BIS, like the British Standards
Institution, Underwriters Laboratories, Standards New Zealand, and
many other organizations throughout the world, have a thriving business
in certification and testing.
Some standards bodies, such as the National Fire Protection Association
and the International Organization for Standardization, depend more
heavily on the sale of standards documents. However, even in these cases
there are many other revenue streams and there are opportunities to adjust
the business models to more properly reflect the importance of their work
throughout society. And, in many cases, there is room for a fresh look at
expenses, such as million-dollar CEO salaries, some of the highest
salaries in the non-profit world.
Not all standards bodies have become addicted to these copious revenues
that accompany these indefensible thunderbolts. In some countries, such
as Thailand, Indonesia, and Ecuador, standards are freely available to
citizens as a matter of public policy. Many standards bodies thrive on an
open standards model, including key areas such as all the standards that
govern the operation of the Internet created by the Internet Engineering
Task Force and the World Wide Web Consortium, and the food safety
standards promulgated in the Codex Alimentarius by the World Health
Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations.
One of the most insidious aspects of the current system is the wide
variance of the price of standards. A basket of 11 public safety standards
published by the International Organization for Standardization and also
required by the European Union was assembled and priced by
Public.Resource.Org in the retail outlets of 42 national standards bodies.
Even within the European Union the prices varied wildly, from $175 in
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to in Lithuania to $2628 for
the same standards in the United Kingdom. Because access to the
standards (and the national forwards to the standards) is vital for
economic activity across national borders, the opportunistic pricing by
money-hungry standards bodies becomes a tall barrier to trade.

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While extracting a tax on each reader of a standards document is an
impediment to the Rule of Law, the restriction on reuse of the documents
is even more serious. The law is the raw material of democracy, and
being able to work with these documents to create better ways to inform
the citizenry is crucial to the proper workings of justice, governance, and
politics.
In many cases, the standards promulgated by standards bodies are only
available electronically on a web site that only works on a certain of
browser, or as a PDF file with a plugin that only runs on certain operating
systems. In many cases, the documents are so restricted in use that they
won't work with software used by the visually impaired, or the searching
capabilities are so restricted that lawyers, paralegals, policy analysts,
legislative aides, and government officials are unable to find the passages
they need.
One of the most important reasons the law has no restrictions on use is so
that innovation may flourish in the marketplace, creating better solutions
for citizens, lawyers, government workers, and public safety
professionals. Restrictions on reuse have frozen the format of standards
documents inside dozens of old web sites and outmoded formats
maintained by standards organizations, many of whom run Internet sites
that are littered with technical errors and broken software.
Perhaps the most troubling indefensible thunderbolts are when the law is
kept secret and may not be consulted. In Estonia, one of the most
advanced and democratic societies and generally an exemplar of open
government practices, Eesti Standardikeskuse (EVS) received an order
with payment via PayPal from Public.Resource.Org for €3,208.68 for the
purchase of 166 technical standards required under Estonian law. The
next day, the order was cancelled, the money returned, and a notice
dispatched indicating that the service was being refused. When we
inquired as to why, the answer was a curt 1-line response:
“We would keep the circumstances to ourselves and we
recommend to order the standards from another country.”
Even in the case of European Union regulations, which must be adopted
by all European Union nations without change, there is a national
foreword. Other standards are developed specifically for Estonia and are
only available from EVS. Public.Resource.Org wrote to the Honorable
Thomas Hendrik Ilves, the President of Estonia and a leader in open

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government and asked him for help. When he didn't answer, we wrote to
the President's aide, and then to the President's son, neither of whom
answered. In a society governed by the Rule of Law, should one have to
know the President's son to be able to purchase the law? In a modern
democracy, should the government be able to pick and choose who shall
know the rules?

§ 5. This Law is Your Law
The U.S. Copyright Office, in the Compendium of Copyright Office
Practices, states:
“Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative
rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar
official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of
public policy.”
In order to promote public education and public safety, equal justice for
all, a better informed citizenry, the rule of law, world trade and world
peace, Public.Resource.Org has undertaken to make technical edicts of
government available on a noncommercial basis, as it is the right of all
humans to know and speak the laws that govern them.
The focus in this release is on mandatory public safety standards. In
many nations, public safety standards are expressly mandatory. In other
countries, elaborate dances are undertaken to protect an illusion that the
standards are somehow voluntary, but in each of the documents published
there is a compelling public interest and the documents have been
promulgated under the direction of government and play a key role in
society.
A number of the documents released come directly from the standard
bodies, because they make the documents available in draft or in final
form. In other cases, such as China, the documents were submitted to the
World Trade Organization, which maintains a portal with thousands of
standards. These standards are made available to the public as part of the
WTO's mandate to promote world trade by requiring full disclosure of the
rules and standards governing trade with a country.
Many of the documented released were purchased directly from standards
organizations after careful research. Most of the standards were ordered
in paper format. For PDF files, such as those that were obtained from the

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World Trade Organization, the documents were fixed by properly
embedding fonts and fixing technical errors.
One of the most important reasons for making standards available is to
allow for transformative uses, proving better access and utility for
citizens. Of the standards being published, several hundred have so far
been rekeyed and reset by Public.Resource.Org into valid HTML files.
Many of the graphics have been redrawn into the open Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG) format so that the graphics can be resized and
manipulated. Likewise, mathematical formulas are being reset into the
Math Markup Language (MML), providing better access for the visually
impaired and better functionality for those wishing to cut and paste
formulas.
A number of other transformative uses become possible when the
documents have been rekeyed into valid HTML. Proper metadata is
added to the document headers, making them accessible and discoverable
by search engines. Access protocols such as FTP and rsync allow bulk
access and resynchronization to large collections of standards documents.
Digital signatures allow users to verify that the documents have not been
modified by comparing them to a known good version of the document.
All over the world, for centuries, nations have embraced the concept of
the Rule of Law—the principle that prescribed law, rather than the whims
and desires of any individual, should govern society. The Rule of Law is
enshrined in ancient texts and in modern legislation, treaties, and judicial
decisions. It is a central protection against tyranny and against a society
where justice is arbitrary and some gain unfair advantage over others.
Only if the law is truly free and available can we expect people and
enterprises to obey the law, to know their rights under the law, and to
evaluate and participate in the work of improving the law. Only if the law
is accessible to all, can we truly say that a society is governed by the Rule
of Law.
By making technical standards governing building safety, transportation
safety, energy safety, food and water safety, and other important areas
readily available to all without restriction, we make society better. First
responders and government officials can do more to protect citizens.
Small enterprises can more easily and affordable comply with the law and
build new businesses. Students, educators, scientists, engineers, policy
advocates, journalists, and government workers can more easily read the
standards and learn about technology, commerce, and government. They

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can work to improve the standards themselves, and they can improve
upon the accessibility and usefulness of the standards by making
searchable databases or better navigational tools.
Innovation and education will benefit by opening up this world, but at the
root are basic issues of democracy and justice. We cannot tell citizens to
obey laws that are only available for the rich to read. The current system
acts as a poll tax on access to justice, a deliberate rationing and restriction
of information critical to our public safety and economic progress.
The law must be easily available to all people, access to the legal system
and the texts that make up the law should not be bought, or sold, or
rationed. People must have the right—an unfettered right—to read the
law.
People must also have the right to communicate the provisions of law to
others—to speak the law. When Justice Stephen Breyer said,“if a law
isn't public, it isn't a law,” he was expressing the long-standing doctrine
of the Rule of Law, one that has become ever more important in our
information age.
Nobody can deny you the right to read and know the law. Nobody can
tell you that justice is for sale. Read the law and make it better. Make
your society better and make it safer.
You own your government. The Rule of Law is the rule of the people.
The law is yours to read, yours to know, and yours to speak. This law is
your law.

Published by Public.Resource.Org
Last Modified January 7, 2013

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