Talk:Text of Arkansas Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act

This is in the public domain, as a governmental document. You have the legal right to copy, reproduce, or share it, as it is the text of an actual proposed bill from the State. It was also part of a court record, and as such is public domain for a different reason. I don't know how our templates work, though. Godot   Grow a vagina 18:27, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We just have PD-US for this, I've added it. 19:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not all documents obtained from government are public domain; if they're created by government they may be but you have absolutely no idea whether Arkansas asserts copyright in that text or whether it was republished from a site like Matthew-Bender, which absolutely does assert copyright. I wasn't finished with this so I haven't looked into the issue, though it doesn't matter now since you'll do whatever you want anyway. The broader problem I was trying to address is that we're going to be republishing proposed "academic freedom" bills submitted by creationist outfits that may not have been enacted. Those are not necessarily public domain. They may be subject to any number of statutes, however, like Freedom of Information acts, Open Meetings Acts, Public Records acts, etc. I attempted creating a FOIA template but failed. Whatever. 20:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand that. but this is a proposed bill.  ALL proposed bills are open public documents, because they are part of the legal proceeding in making them a law.  (this is stuff I work with each day).  This is not a random text, it is a bill being discussed on the floor.  It's also, as I said, part of a court proceeding, adn thsoe, too are open documents.  If a bill is SUBMITTED, it is part of the system and an open document.  If it is just handed to a congressional person as a course of conversation "what do you think of this", then yes, it's not an open document without a FOIA process.  I'm not tossing around "it's a government doc".  I'm tossing around THIS TEXT, of THIS BILL which is part of the legislative record.  [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Grow a vagina 20:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, it looks like it was passed, which means it not only was a proposed bill, but part of the Statues of AK. even more reason it's PD.[[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot    Grow a vagina 20:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is what I'm talking about. You just completely ignored what I said. I just told you some states assert copyright in their codes. It just so happens that Arkansas does. This particular statute is no longer on the books and isn't published in the official record, which is published by LexisNexis, who also asserts copyright, so I have no idea whether Arkansas asserted copyright as of 1982. Do you? I have no idea whether bills are subject to copyright or not. I'd imagine that someone submitting one to government for consideration might very well assert copyright just as it may with any other document that also has an independent existence of the statute ultimately passed, but who knows. It's not true that anything that's part of the record in a legal proceeding is automatically "open." Sure, you can look at it if it's not sealed, but the copyright considerations are no different for that document than any other. Consider a trademark dispute in which the marks will most certainly be published in the record, just as they are at the PTO. You might be able to republish one with substantially lower quality than the original for the purpose of critically examining the case or the mark, but you'd still have to do some analysis. This isn't as easy as you think. We can come to a good faith conclusion about whether or not we can use this stuff but it's not going to be by mere assertion. 20:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't have time for this discussion or care that much. Do whatever you want. I've got to get back to work. 20:51, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

What was wrong with your template exactly? Peter Monomorium antarcticum 20:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)