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[Music: Marine's Hymn ] [The 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing Band]
[Carl Malamud] Public Resource is a non-profit corporation, and our mission is to make
government information more available.
We've put 14,000 hours of congressional hearings online,
we've put 100 years of the Court of Appeals that were not available on the
Internet for anybody to use, without restriction.
But people may not realize this, there's a large part of the federal law,
and the state law,
that isn't available, and it costs money to purchase.
[Efren Carrillo] My name is Efren Carrillo, Sonoma County Supervisor, representing the 5th District.
Another responsibility that comes with being on the Board is also a Director
of the Sonoma County Water Agency.
We are charged with the duties of water supply, flood control, and sanitation.
In fulfilling our responsibility to provide water to our constituents,
we're required to follow strict state regulations and federal regulations.
Here in our agency, we do spend thousands of dollars in ensuring that we
have the codes and the regulations available to us to ensure that we are
meeting our requirements.
[Roberta MacIntyre] Hi, I'm Roberta MacIntyre, I'm the Fire Marshal for the County of Sonoma.
That means I'm responsible for fire prevention. As the Fire Marshal for
Sonoma County, one of the things we have to do is maintain
an enormous library of codes and standards.
For example,
not only do we have to have the California fire code,
but we also have to have the California building code,
the California electrical code,
the residential code now,
which is new to California.
On top of all of that, we have the entire NFPA standard set,
which in itself is,
for my budget, about $1,500.
[Shems Peterson] I'm Shems Peterson, Head Building Inspector for Sonoma County.
This is my 25th year, uh, 26th year excuse me
of service.
The department has to purchase the codes for all the inspection and plan checks staff.
For the County of Sonoma. I believe it was over $30,000 for the
last code cycle.
[Carl Malamud] Because a lot of technical standards developed by the private sector are
mandated by the federal government and by state governments,
we think that citizens have a right to read
these laws that are binding, that are critical to the public safety, that have
criminal penalties attached for noncompliance.
We're buying these standards. We started by spending $7,500 for 73
standards that are
mandated by OSHA and the Department of Transportation.
We've gone on and spent another $30,000 buying some of these
standards that have been incorporated by reference. We're beginning the process
of copying those standards, retyping them into HTML so that the tables are nicely typeset,
we're taking the diagrams and we're redrawing the diagrams so that they look nice,
and we're trying to make this information available to the people.
[Tim O'Reilly] When somebody can say to you,
"this is the law,"
and you can't read it
unless you pay for it, then we've really undermined something really fundamental
in our society.
[Shems] Contractors, designers, architects, civil engineers, structural engineers
need to know or to verify that
they're in compliance by looking at the code, particularly structural engineers,
because there's actually formulas in there that they have to use in order to demonstrate
their design will withstand the structural loads that are going to be imposed.
[Efren] You know, oftentimes people think that
the regulations or the laws in the books are only for the engineers or for
the decision-makers. Private residents want to see this information and want to have
access to that as well, whether it's the private resident turning on the tap,
whether it's the farmer who depends on the water to grow their crops.
I absolutely believe that this information should be made available to everybody.
[Roberta] For volunteer firefighters, really, fundamentally, they should have an awareness
of fire prevention.
In terms of the reference standards for them, the one that comes to the top of
of my mind is NFPA 1500.
That is the reference standard that speaks to their fire protection ensemble
their clothing that they wear.
[Carl] I'm a firm believer that when you put
technical information up on the Internet, people have the opportunity to educate
themselves, to create new businesses,
and just as importantly, they have the opportunity to know what the law says
and obey the law.
They have the opportunity to have access to justice,
to be able to say "Gee,
I want to do something; let's make sure I'm doing it right."
[Bill Fink] My name's Bill Fink.
Over the years, I've imported a number of vehicles for sale in this country.
The standards have never told you how to meet them.
The standards basically say what needs to be done,
and how you do it is up to you.
[Carl] Our goal is that our government
reform the way they make regulations, and make public access to the law
a fundamental part of the regulatory process.
[Shems] One time when I was out during an inspection,
not going out in the field like I used to,
I had 1998 codebooks in my vehicle, because I hadn't changed
them over yet, and we were in the 2007 version.
The gentleman on-site had a smartphone, and we went to your web site,
got into the building code, and could look at the specific section that I
needed in order to determine whether he was in compliance or not. If a laptop for the
standards would be able to do the same thing, it'd be wonderful.
[Roberta] I remember years ago, before we had
the ensemble requirements per se,
we would go into a building
to make a fire attack
and you knew it was
about time to back out
when the earwax in your ears started to melt and drip out.
That was an indicator that, "You know what? It's getting a little hot in here, let's get out!"
[Bill Fink] Part of the magic
of the automobile manufacturing procedure
is to do good without obviously doing good.
This car will stand up to a 50-mile-an-hour rear impact.
[Shems] In an earthquake, when a force comes this way, the tendency is for the building to want
to uplift on one end. It's hard for us, as people to conceive a
huge building actually lifting up and turning over, but yet it does happen.
If you have a load path that allows the energy of the load to be
transmitted from the topmost down to the ground, and they're all connected
properly, the result will be less catastrophic damage.
You'll always have damage in an earthquake, broken windows,
broken sheetrock, some doors and things like that, but what we're trying to
prevent here is catastrophic damage where lives are lost and huge property
damage occurs. The purpose of the code
provides for methods and prescribes methods that you have to use
to help mitigate those forces that are applied in an earthquake.
When you have an "X" or cross like this
embracing the vertical elements, what it does is
it will help move everything together
and again, prevent catastrophic damage and that's an important part of a seismic
force-resisting element.
[Rob Bulik] My name is Rob Bulik.
I own Schank Brothers' Garage
and I care about workplace safety.
It's a high-current electric motor that runs a hydraulic pump that powers the pistons.
The shop's main air compressor powers all of our air tools that we have here.
It runs two hydraulic cylinders
and it's also balanced with the steel cables that support everything.
Just some light duty welding, things like that, anything that needs heat applied to it.
The electrical part is quite dangerous
if we had issues with the wiring or something like that.
If one of these tanks was to fall over
and the top was to break off, the thing will basically shoot off like a missile.
[U.S. Navy Band Playing "Eternal Father"]
[Carl] Our goal here
is to publish the law to, establish the principle that the law become available,
but then government should take this over and figure out a way to make the
law available and do it in a way that the standards bodies that make these
standards are able to survive because they do need money.
The National Fire Protection Association, for example, does amazing work.
They save lives. They have standards for fire sprinklers,
standards for fire hydrants, standards for foam,
standards for life safety,
and these protect the lives of our volunteer fire fighters.
They protect the lives of our children.
It's important that organizations like the National Fire Protection Association
continue to survive.
To do my job properly, I have to have those standards. I refer to those standards
on a daily basis.
With the extrication equipment that we use to get people that are trapped in vehicles out,
we have a couple of fundamental kinds.
This is called a set of cutters.
Obviously, you could see how the blades would operate. They open up wide
and they're used to cut like the posts on vehicles, to take the roof off.
[Shems] What we have here are several safety features that are very common in buildings.
First of all, we have the luminescent exit sign that during a fire, for instance, where you would have perhaps a lot of smoke,
you should be able to see that sign through the smoke.
[Bill] The passenger bags now are dual-stage and if it's a
light impact, only stage one will deploy,
but stage two is still there.
[Shems] Emergency back-up lighting, that if the power goes off, that would act as a
lighting to help people find their way to this exit.
In addition to that, we have what we call panic hardware on the doors.
Anybody just gets pushed
right up against the door, and you're outside.
[Carl] I'm based in California, but I frequently go to Washington D.C.,
and people look at this quest to make the law available,
in fact, to make any government database available, like patents or the
Securities and Exchange Commission, and they say
"You know, this is really silly
because most people don't want this information. It's boring. It's technical.
Most people aren't going to be able to read this. Why do you want to make the
building codes available for free when the only people who really need it are a couple of
building inspectors and a couple of engineers?"
I call that the "Dumb American" theory.
The theory that Americans are not capable of reading a building code,
that a homeowner wouldn't be able to consult a building code to see whether their
contractor put those electrical outlets at the proper spacing.
I think Americanas are smart and in fact, every time I've put a big database online...
I remember when the Commissioner of Patents,
the Honorable Bruce Lehman,
and he and I had a long fight about whether the U.S. Patent Database should
be available on the Internet or not. Well, we put that patent database online,
and do you know what?
All of a sudden, engineering students and
engineers in Silicon Valley , and Journalists, and
just people that were interested, amateur inventors were able to start reading
these patents without paying a lot of money
and they understood what was in there.
[Dale Dougherty] MAKE Magazine is really a kind of a magazine
for amateurs who build things, who make things,
mostly with technology. I like to think of it as kind of a reinvention of some of
the older magazines that once existed in this vein of
Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, that encourage people to go out and build things.
A lot of the world has become professionalized,
meaning, in a sense, you pay for access
to information.
You pay for access to
a society, you're certified
to belong there and I think we've kind of squeezed out some of the amateur level.
Not that it's necessarily ever gone away, it's just we almost ignore it
because it's not ... it doesn't fit into the professionalization picture.
I think one of the things I do is
I'm an advocate for the role of amateurs.
They build things.
If we just take something that is traditional DIY space,
they build
additions to their home, they repair their car.
They probably should have access to the same kind of information as
either a professional licensed carpenter or a professional mechanic.
[Mick Thompson] I think standards, making them publicly available, actually, one of the best things
is that enables discussion around those standards.
People can not only know
what they're legally required to do, but then they can make new suggestions.
[Efren] In a time when we have
competitive dynamics here, where the United States is competing with
other markets around the world,
we need to ensure that our students have the resources and tools available,
to ensure academic success.
Whether it's engineering students, science students, or math and science students
in our universities,
having access to these codes and regulations is just as important to them
in their education
as it is to someone carrying it out in the practical real world, in the work world.
I believe that when we provide these codes and these regulations to our
students, we're strengthening their academic ability to ensure future
success in their careers.
[Shems] Students often read codes. In fact, I used to teach at the JC, local JC here, and
that was part of the problem was that
a code book, just the building code, was $270.
If they're not going into a field where they'd be able to reuse it,
it's a large investment.
[Sheba Najmi] I think it's not for us to decide who can and cannot make sense
of the law or whatever is
available to them to read.
It's up to
the people themselves to judge whether or not they want to make sense of it
and some certainly will.
[Carl] We think a lot of these technical standards are important for
engineering students.
They're important for small businessmen that are trying to start new businesses.
It's about innovation. It's about America's competitiveness.
It shouldn't have to cost a lot of money
to know what the law is.
Every day we get dozens of standards in from different kinds of bodies.
Sometimes we buy them on the used market: Amazon, eBay, some of them from used bookstores.
Sometimes we write away to the different standards bodies.
This is the Orifice Metering of Natural Gas standard.
The Cosmetic Ingredients Dictionary. This is a fun one: this is the Safety and
Handling and Use of Explosives. This is the Air Release, Air Vacuum
and Combination Air Valves Manual of Water Supply Practices.
It comes in a shrink wrapped agreement
and by opening this package, you agree
to certain terms and conditions, and what you're agreeing to is you're not going to even
give this copy to somebody else. That's really not very fair.
Not only that, for the amount of money we're spending to buy the law, you ought to be
able to at least make Fair Use.
This is the U.S. Public Health Service "Public Health Service Drinking Water Standard."
It came from a library,
which disposed of it like libraries do, and it ends up on the used market.
This is a 1962 standard.
There's obviously safety implications of the federal government requiring
standards from 1962.
One of our hopes is that by publishing this information, the government
regulators will go in and clean up the books.
I bought this on the used market. This is the International Maritime Dangerous
Goods Code. I found a used copy for $31.
This normally costs a few hundred dollars for the current version,
but because the specific version incorporated by the federal government
is an older one, we were able to purchase this on the used market.
Not all standards are like that. Some of them are simply just not available that way.
[Tim O'Reilly] The whole progression of technology
depends on our ability to see and understand what went before.
And, I think the same is true of the law
and particularly when we
incorporate technical standards into the law,
we have a real problem if
only some people can read them.
[Alex Yule] The laws are the operating system of the government. If you don't have access to the code
of government, you have no idea how things work. If there are things that are
wrong, you can't bug fix
if you don't have access to the source code.
[Jennifer Pahlka] It's not just the legal outcomes that we should think about here.
I think we should be thinking about the way citizens think about government and
the larger impacts of the way we think and feel about government on the
way we fund our public institutions. If we feel like we're being treated fairly,
if we have access to the information that we need in order to live
legal and free lives as citizens here, it's going to improve our relationship in a way
hat makes us care about government, and we need to start caring about
government again. We need to make it work for the people.
[Music: Eternal Father] [Played by the U.S. Navy Band]
[Carl] When our government
was formed, when our founding fathers came up with our constitution,
there was a big argument about the level of democracy
that we would have.
There was the Roman republic model which was top down, aristocratic...the senators
telling people what to do.That led to big empires. There were good things about
the Roman Republic.
but there was also the Greek democratic model in which everybody had a voice.
John Adams felt very strongly that if democracy was going to work, it would
only work if the citizenry was informed.
If people had knowledge
and were able to educate themselves, then we would have a democracy that functioned
and we would have
a government that would become great
and that would fair and it would be an economy that would prosper for everyone.
What John Adams said,
and it was very memorable quote, he said, "Let every sluice of knowledge
be set a-flowing."
And, that wasn't
"knowledge must be free," like we do in today's free culture world.
It was for democracy to work,
"let every sluice of knowledge be set a-flowing,"
because that is what would make America work. I think John Adams was right.
I think we need to go back to those fundamental values.
The idea that American people are smart and can make their government work,
and can make our economy work, but that only happens if we take away these barriers
to that very fundamental information which are the basic laws of our country.
I'm Jennifer Polka from Oakland, California.
I can read the law. I want to read the law. Show me the manual.
My name is Shems Peterson.
I'm a building inspector and I believe everybody ought to have access to public safety codes.
My name is Mick Thompson. I'm from Los Alamos, New Mexico.
By making the law available, we make it better. Show me the manual.
I'm Joe Merante. I'm from New York. I truly believe that technical standards
are essential to our modern society. Show me the manual.
Hi. I'm Dale Dougherty and I believe that public safety codes are relevant to
the makers, the doers, the risk takers.
My name is Rob Bracket. I'm from Chicago. I think open standards and understanding our laws is critically important.
Show me the manual.
My name is Roberta Macintyre and as the Fire Marshall,
I believe everyone should have access to the codes and regulations.
My name is Zack Williams. I'm from Fort Worth, Texas.
I think it's important that people be able to read the manuals. Show me the manual.
[Alex Yule] Laws are the source code of our democracy.
So show me the manual.
[Efren Carrillo] My name is Efren Carrillo
and I believe all of our citizens
should have access to public safety codes
and have the right to bear knowledge.
[Music: Over There] [Played by the U.S. Marine Band]