A free law publication charity will publish the UK's 3,000 most
important legal decisions freely for the first time by June. The
project will involve publishing vital rulings, dating back to the
nineteenth century, on which UK common law is based.
English
law and Scots law are based on acts passed by Parliament and by
decisions made by courts which other courts must follow, which is
called common law. But many of the rulings which make up the body
of common law across the UK are very old and only published by
commercial law publishers.
BAILII (the British And
Irish Legal Information Institute) has said, though, that it will
publish nearly 3,000 of the most important rulings, as chosen by
academics, for free by this summer. ...
"What we have now is various publishers and transcribers
claiming copyright interest in the bulk of judgments that go back
into the nineteenth century," said Ury.
To provide access to these documents BAILII founded the Open Law
Project with support from academic computing funding body the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC). ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 4/01/2008 05:45:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
