Another related issue is the copyright of technical standards incorporated into law. A selection of technical standards, especially in the domain of civil engineering, the standards on fire, electrical safety, energy efficiency, and test design standards, are effectively laws. The implementation of standards is explicitly required by the laws and there's no alternative. Yet, these standards are often sold for-profit with copyright restriction.

The EFF has some coverage on the issue [0][1].

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/eff-court-dont-let-pri...

[1] https://www.eff.org/press/releases/publicresourceorg-prevail...

I'm pretty eager to see where the ASTM case lands. I'm rooting for Public.Resource.Org, but given that the DC Circuit remanded on fair use (rather than copyrightability), the court will probably consider "amount and substantiality" of the work reproduced relative to the original.

Public.Resource.Org photocopied and distributed the complete standards, cover to cover, including ASTM's illustrations, logos, etc. But what aspect of the manuals are the actual law? The technical measurements? From what I understand, the Georgia annotations became law by reference in their entirety. I don't think it's obvious here and I worry the court will rule against them :/

Regardless, I love Public.Resource.Org's work and wish them the best.

> I don't think it's obvious here and I worry the court will rule against them :/

Yes, ultimately, the issue of technical standard is still untested in court and remains a problem, it will take a prominent lawsuit before it's resolved.

> But what aspect of the manuals are the actual law? The technical measurements?

What Public.Resource.Org is doing is still a gray area, as you said. But I guess it will not be a total loss - if there are legal challenges in the future, they can publish a "censored" version of technical standard and defend that.