Dear Law-Libbers:
James Love's answer to my posting of last Friday depicts me as
someone who is satisfied with the "status quo" of legal citation
systems. This is not the case. As I said, I have not yet made up my
mind on many of the complex issues that have been raised.
The ideal of inexpensive and universally accessible public domain
databases of legal information that can be retrieved utilizing simple,
yet precise and vendor-neutral citation systems is an extremely
attractive one. Any librarian who would support the status quo over this
ideal would have to be crazy. The quarreling on this list is over what
path we should take to reach this ideal.
TAP's point of view seems to be that the path to this ideal is
very direct, but that blazing the path inevitably requires the immediate
demolition of one barrier. The barrier is the near-monopoly that West
has held for many decades over the dissemination of certain categories of
primary source legal information. The point of my original posting was,
and remains, that the very tenor of TAP's postings has actually
_inhibited_ my support for this point of view!
Many on this list have pointed out legitimate problems with TAP's
point of view in its simplest formulation. Not the least of these
problems is the possibility that West's endeavors over the decades may
turn out to have vested in that company some sort of legally cognizable
property interest in the citation of its published works. This is for
the courts to decide and, what's more, is beside the point I'm trying to
make here.
My point is that all too often when a commentator points out
flaws or weaknesses in TAP's position, TAP responds with flames,
consigning the commentator to the ranks of the retrograde (as Love did
with me,) or impugning their motives on the ground that they are servient
to corporate interests. Jamie, if your point of view is unassailable,
please defend it on its merits, not through posturing and innuendo.
I've probably got more to say, but I'll stop here, except for one
thing: Apparently, it's very bad form to criticize anyone for committing
typographical errors on the Internet (even though these errors often make
the postings difficult to understand.) I'm sorry for this and I'll never
do it again. :-)
Oh, and thanks to colleagues and friends who posted replies of
support for my original posting.
_________
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Bill Mills, / |
Associate / |
Librarian / |
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