Expanding the info commons
Do people still speak of "the info commons"?
Carl Malamud and PublicResource.Org are doing wonderful, wonderful things. Here's something very new and very useful:
Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced ... that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose....
The agreement calls for definitive paperwork approved by both parties within 30 days with Public.Resource.Org making developer snapshots of the archive available in early 2008. Public.Resource.Org is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this transaction. The cases will be marked with a new Creative Commons mark—CC-Ø—that signals that there are no copyrights or other related rights attached to the content.