A little while ago I blogged about Oregon Legislative Counsel claiming copyright over their revised statute laws and asking sites like Public Resource.org and Justia.org to take down copies of those laws. On June 19th the Legislative Counsel held a hearing with activist Carl Malamud from Public.Resource.org and others to discuss the issue.  Check out the testimony here.   In the end the Legislative Counsel voted to not assert copyright over the Oregon Revised Statutes.

This is a great victory for openness and democracy.  The idea of restricting how people see, use, and collect laws is absurd and I am relieved that Oregon made the right decision.