PDF of 2011 National Electrical Code posted

[Ed Huntress]

Why should the taxpayer subsidize YOUR business?

So whose standards are you going to use? Make up your own as you go along?

[rangerssuck]

Do you think Jesus would approve of the notion of someone stealing someone else's work product and sharing it with others as if it were his own? Seriously? Do you think that your employer would be able continue to pay you if all of your work product was going to enter the public domain?

It's not even a slightly fine line. It's a big fat line between sharing and stealing. This is a copyrighted work. It's not yours (or anyone else's except for the copyright owner) to give away. If you don't like it, take it up with them. But don't try to justify this by misrepresenting the law as an impediment to sharing information.

You are free to buy the book and share it with your friends. You are free to read the book and tell us about the contents. You are free to buy the book and resell it. You are free to borrow it from a library. You are NOT free to make copies of the book and distribute them. To anyone.

If you don't like it, elect officials who will change the law. Then sit back and watch publishers go out of business.

[jk]

Seems to me he was the "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" guy wasn't he?

Sure seems like this falls under that.

jk

[Ed Huntress]

Aside from the Biblical considerations , the NEC (NFPA 70) is available for free viewing on their Website. The organization is made up of volunteers. Apparently some folks here think that the research, testing, organization, and writing of the Code should come out of the volunteers' pockets.

It's widely available in libraries, and any state or municipality that adheres to the NEC can download the full text for free. As for the responsibility of local government to fund it and to supply it to tradesmen for free, tell them to take it up with their local legislators. Tell them they want the taxpayers to pay for their work documents, and see how they react to it.

The NEC is NOT a government code, nor is it produced by the government. A state or local government may decide to require adherence to it. If they do, then there are several ways to view it for free.

Nobody will stop anyone from sharing this information. What they will stop them from doing is sitting on their butts and downloading a copy of it so they don't have to contribute to the cost of producing it, all for the sake of their own comfort and convenience. If they make even the slightest effort, they can read it for free. Is that too much to ask for intellectual material that requires considerable labor to produce?

(I'm not directing this to you, but to the people who are miffed that information isn't "free.")

[Vic Smith]

I don't have a business. Thought codes were about public safety, not business.

As I said, codes are about public safety. It's government workers enforcing codes, not businesses. I pay their salaries. Laws are public knowledge, and codes should be too, since they are enforced like law. Simple as that. Already said I'd pay for costs. I don't like paying profits to a company to see codes that can be used by government workers to have me in court and fine me. It's not a big deal to me, since I don't plan on doing any work needing code inspection, and I can always find somebody to do it. It's more about philosophy. If a cop gave me ticket for breaking a law I never heard of, and told me I had to pay a private for-profit company to get the book of laws, I wouldn't like that at all. Greg Fretwell was a city or county inspector. I'd like to hear his views on this.

--Vic

[Steve Barker]

thanks for the suggestion. still not seeing it.

[Ed Huntress]

Codes apply to the businesses that do the work.

No, you don't. The NEC is researched, tested, organized and written by volunteers, who hire professionals to do the professional parts of it.

If the people who wrote the law are going to make the NEC free to you, it will cost your state or local taxpayers money. The legislators don't write the NEC.

No, you said you'd pay for printing, or something like that. Printing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Vic, the Code is not produced by government. It's produced by the National Fire Protection Association. Do you want to pay them with taxpayer's money?

[Higgs Boson]

Say what? Smashing up the money-changers' booths at the Temple! NO respect for private property!!!

(Test: Who knows why the so-called money changers were actually ng at the plaza before the actual entrance to the Temple?)

HB

[Michael A. Terrell]

Really? I see over 4 million new headers in that group.

[Lewis Hartswick]

I don't see the difference between reading it at the library and reading it at home. ...lew...

[Ed Huntress]

The difference is that having the ability to download it for free eliminates all incentive to buy it. That's the straw that's breaking the back of many niches in publishing. Electrical tradesmen at some level can easily afford to buy it, and their incentive to do so keeps the business of producing it in balance, while still allowing people to read it for free if they make a little effort.

To me, it's the difference between borrowing something and stealing it.

[trader4]

Actually, you can read it at home very much like you can read it at the library. NFPA makes it available online for free. You can read it online via their reader, but you can't download it, for obvious reasons.

Also, I'd say the folks who try to make the case that because it's used by most municipalities as part of their code, that it should therefore be available for free or very low cost. That argument doesn't fly very well because I can show you plenty of municpalities that charge fees similar to what NFPA charges for a copy of their zoning laws, land use rules, EPA rules, etc.

[bud--]

"In the United States, statutory law cannot be copyrighted and is freely accessible and copyable by anyone." This refers to the same legal case as g does above.

The wikipedia article has a link to a site with state electrical codes that are downloadable. Someone who downloaded one said it was the NEC with a few pages at the start relevant to that state.

My opinions:

- making available an electronic copy of the NFPA published NEC is not legal (I think the layout may be protected). That would include an NFPA created pdf, if there are any.

- typing that text from the published one and distributing it is legal. (Could be done by scanning removing formatting.)

- creating a downloadable state electrical code, which includes the NEC is legal.

When I looked a while ago, the state code source linked by wikipedia had other state codes(not just electrical).

[Ed Huntress]

Yes, I pointed that out in an earlier message. Some people think they should be able to download it.

It's the "user should pay" idea that took hold among conservatives when they started cutting support for free services. We've always had some of that. Either the user (the electrical tradesman) pays for what he has to use in his business, or the taxpayer pays. Someone has to pay, in any case.

[aemeijers]

Because the library paid for their copy? (Presumably with your tax money.)

Not a fan of industry associations essentially writing laws and administrative regulations, and lazy legislatures giving them the force of law by including them by reference in the laws they do pass. (ie, bar association, AMA, et al) But that is how the world we live in works. And these private trade groups do still have a intellectual property interest in the compiled product. Now if the legislatures would instead make the privately written rules part and parcel of the actual law, rather than by reference, anybody could make and sell copies. (of course, the trade associations would respond by making trivial annual changes, so all the 'free' copies would be instantly out of date.)

[Ed Huntress]

I'm in general agreement with your post, but if the legislation allowed anyone to make copies, the trade associations would respond by not issuing standards on their own doing the research and organization, not to mention the writing and publishing, because it would cost them money they couldn't recover by selling the things.

And then the government would have to step in with a new bureaucracy to handle the job.

[Bob Engelhardt]

RE: the ethics of downloading the code.

No harm, no foul. I would never buy a hard copy, 'cause I just don't need one. Nor will I ever likely need one. My downloading the PDF does not cause the loss of a sale to the NFPA & hence does them no harm.

Having it available for online reading is (almost) exactly equivalent to downloading it. The only difference being the ability to print the downloaded version. But maybe you can print it online, too. If the NFPA provides it online for reading, how could they care if it's available for downloading?

Bob

[Bob Engelhardt]

...

Here's an interesting quote from the Wikipedia article on the NEC: "In the United States, statutory law cannot be copyrighted and is freely accessible and copyable by anyone.[1] When a standards organization develops a new coding model and it is not yet accepted by any jurisdiction as law, it is still the private property of the standards organization ... Once the coding model has been accepted as law, it loses copyright protection and may be freely obtained at no cost."

Bob

[ATP]

I wouldn't want the government writing the electrical code. I think the process as it stands is a pretty good one. It's not like the mine operators getting together to make the rules, the panels include representation from a heterogeneous group, and I doubt any of them want to encourage unsafe electrical practices.

[Ed Huntress]

They don't let you print if. If you need a printed copy, buy it.