When writing articles on legislation for the Congressional wiki I work on, Congresspedia.org, I often look around at what the various public interest groups have to say about what's in a bill and what their take on it is. Many groups write their reports so well that I'd often like to just copy and paste their whole take into the wiki, exposing their message to its many readers. Unfortunately, all to often I'm stopped in my tracks by a copyright notice at the bottom of a group's website. Many - perhaps most - public interest groups are unnecessarily hamstringing their own effectiveness and reach by using the same copyright protections that prevent Mickey Mouse knock-offs and xeroxed Harry Potter books. Our copyright laws are designed to protect profits by keeping information from being freely disseminated, but unlike Disney or Simon & Schuster, most public interest groups want their research, opinions and publications to spread, unencumbered, through the public.

The advent of the Web has infinitely expanded that potential as reports no longer have to be mail-ordered or press releases picked up by reporters to get your message out. That is, unless you copyright your materials, preventing them from finding their way into Wikipedia, blogs or the classroom. You may even be copyrighting materials without knowing it - since 1989, U.S. law assumes an implicit copyright on all published materials, regardless of whether a webpage or document has a copyright notice.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has long championed the establishment of a publicaly assessable contractor misconduct database that would include criminal, civil, and administrative cases in order to prevent offending private contractors from receiving contracts from the federal government. POGO has set up their own Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, listing companies with histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations. Backing up POGO on the need for a public database are 32 like-minded organizations (including the Sunlight Foundation). U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney has introduced H.R. 3033 which would establish the database and make it publicly available. The bill passed the House last month. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has introduced S. 2904 which mirrors the House bill.

McCaskill's bill has stalled, however. GovernmentExecutive.com reports "senators on the Armed Services and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees -- both in the majority and minority -- would not support the bill if the database were open to the general public." The article quotes unnamed members of McCaskill's staff as saying there were two main objections to making the database public. One was concern over "administrative challenges" of a public database. Two databases would have to be created, one for governmental eyes only (which would include sensitive and private information) and one for the public. Transparency is too much work, I guess. Another concern objecting senators have is the fear of "Monday morning quarterbacking" by the public. Oh, we don't want the public second-guessing governmental decisions...Jeez.