![]() Then Moses wrote this law and…commanded them, “At the end of every seven years…you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Even if any citizen of that ancient nation tried to bury their hand in the sand and run from knowing the law, it was a requirement that everyone at least hear the whole law every seven years: ![]() The law had to be made publicly available. The court’s answer was simple: “as law, the model codes enter the public domain and are not subject to the copyright holder’s exclusive prerogatives.”Īncient Israel had similar rules. The question asked to the court was “may a code-writing organization prevent a website operator from posting the text of a model code where the code is identified simply as the building code of a city that enacted the model code as law?” Two lower courts sided with SBCCI, but the United States Court of Appeals (Fifth Circuit) overturned the rulings of two lower courts. SBCCI said he was guilty of copyright infringement. Veeck did so because several small towns in Texas had adopted their code as law, but he discovered there was no easy way to access the code, which had actually become law. SOME BACKGROUNDĪround 1997, Southern Building Code Congress International sued a man named Peter Veeck for publishing their code on his website. Once the National Electric Code, or any privately-published code, becomes adopted by any government jurisdiction as law, it enters the public domain. If it’s private property, then to do so is theft, which is illegal.Īdvocates of the public interest’s reasoning is simple: downloading the code for free is legal because US courts have ruled that laws must be freely accessible to any citizen. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if it’s legal to download free copies. ![]() Advocates of the public interest say yes. You can download free copies of the latest version, as well as previous versions, online at certain websites.īut is it legal to download them? This is being contested in court right now. The various governments don’t always adopt the latest code version immediately (which comes out every three years), but they typically don’t wait too long. Some say you should be able to download the NEC 2014 for free, online. ![]() It is also adopted by local governments in their official building codes. The National Electric Code is officially adopted as legal building code in 47 states. ![]()
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