Laws of India in Akoma Ntoso v1 XML format

[Srijoni]

https://github.com/nyaayaIN/indian-laws-akns

Nyaaya's updated Indian laws in machine readable format. AKN or Akoma Ntoso defines a set of simple technology-neutral electronic representations in XML format of parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents. We'll be adding to this repo as we update the laws.

Also wrote about the importance of thinking of laws as open data here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-platform-laws-how-adoption-standards-tools-can-strengthen-sen

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

Hello,

On 29 June 2017 at 16:45, Srijoni <sri...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://github.com/nyaayaIN/indian-laws-akns

Nyaaya's updated Indian laws in machine readable format. AKN or Akoma Ntoso defines a set of simple technology-neutral electronic representations in XML format of parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents. We'll be adding to this repo as we update the laws.

Thanks to everyone behind this :) More power for upcoming updates.

I have a small issue with license that you chose. GPL is widely known for its limitations for applying to artifacts other than software code, hence GFDL, OFL, creative commons, ODbL, et al came up.

I was looking up and could find other AKN repos using creative commons and started to think backwards on who really holds copyright of Indian laws, before one can license it under CC suite.  TIL, a concept called Crown Copyright related to copyright of parliamentary work, but Wikipedia didnt have a note about India. I am wondering what could be right license for "Indian laws" and I am sure you could help legal naive folks like myself.

The other interesting aspect of using GPL is its restrictive, virality nature and I am not really sure if it was intentional. In some ways I would be happy if it was intentional as an open source fanboy.

Also wrote about the importance of thinking of laws as open data here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-platform-laws-how-adoption-standards-tools-can-strengthen-sen

There is no doubt that AKN would take law literally into the hands of a person through a smartphone and be a good law abiding citizen, but there might be a lack of restrictive clauses on licenses against abuse of these same laws by AI / machines using these in a FAT free manner, even while FAT-ML is being discussed academically. It might be a good thing for anyone who might be interested in opendata work.

Regards
Srikanth.L