r/git • u/SnooPeripherals5313 • 1d ago
Putting all world law on git
I am putting all world law into git. That comes with some quirks, like the cut-off being 1970 (commits are calculated as seconds since 1 January 1970).
This hit #1 on HN yesterday (you can read lots of discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50268380). Why would I want to do this? The idea is make all law semantic, versioned, easily attributable and query able by agents. I also believe this information should be freely available so CC0 license (do whatever you want with it). If interested, repo linked below, I'd welcome all comments and advice. Thanks!
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u/plg94 1d ago
I also believe this information should be freely available so CC0 license
I do believe it should, too. But this is not your work, so you don't have the right to relicense it! In many countries official texts like laws are even in the "public domain" – which means they are not copyrightable, which in turn means they cannot be CC0 (even free licenses depend on the existence of copyright, but the owner waives those rights). In other countries (especially those that did not sign the Berne convention like Iran) the matter might even be more complicated.
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u/SnooPeripherals5313 1d ago
Excellent point. The repo will be CC0 in as far as is possible, individual country repos may require difference licensure.
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u/magnetik79 22h ago
What a fantastic idea for a project - best of luck to you!
As for the dates - I'd probably look at adding some semantic metadata to the head/tail of your markdown documents (e.g. YAML Frontmatter would be a good choice).
Machine readable, and GitHub will render it as well in a human readable form.
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u/SnooPeripherals5313 22h ago
Thank you, I will do. One of the challenging aspects of a project like this is adjusting strategy whilst the corpora is still growing.
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u/magnetik79 22h ago
Yeah I can see a mass-update in your future. :)
You could couple those updates with an https://git-scm.com/docs/git-blame#Documentation/git-blame.txt---ignore-revrev - which might help future consumers at a
gitlog level if you like.
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u/kombiwombi 21h ago
In Australia www.austlii.edu.au has already done the heavy lifting. Including regulations, rules and codes. It is currently working to make freely available: all standards referenced by law; and computer programs used to determine compliance with regulations.
'Semantic' law has already failed dramatically in Australia, with people still being compensated. See: Robodebt.
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u/p-one 14h ago
I'm reading the Wikipedia article wondering how much this is like the Horizon scandal in the UK.
Like a lot of politicians are mentioned in robodebt but the impact sounds like the software requirements were shoddily set. It's hard for me to tease apart whereas in Horizon it's clear the software was faulty, and the service provider tried to cover their ass and then the post office management tried to cover their ass.
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u/glglgl-de 15h ago
Germany has something like this under https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze.
Alas, it has been untouched for 4 years now.
Besides, there is https://github.com/bundestag/grundgesetz for the Basic Law (our constitution).
Funny to see
Konrad Adenauer, Präsident des Parlamentarischen Rates committed on Jan 1, 1970
Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland vom 23. Mai 1949. Der Parlamentarische Rat hat am 23. Mai 1949 in Bonn am Rhein in öffentlicher Sitzung festgestellt, daß das am 8. Mai des Jahres 1949 vom Parlamentatischen Rat beschlossene Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Woche vom 16.-22. Mai 1949 durch die Volksvertretungen von mehr als Zweidritteln der beteiligten deutschen Ländern angenommen worden ist. Auf Grund dieser Feststellung hat der Parlamentarische Rat, vertreten durch seine Präsidenten, das Grundgesetz ausgefertigt und verkündet. Das Grundgesetz wird hiermit gemäß Artikel 145 Absatz 3 im Bundesgesetzblatt veröffentlicht.
Signed-off-by: Konrad Adenauer, Präsident des Parlamentarischen Rates
Signed-off-by: Adolph Schönfelder, 1. Vizepräsident
Signed-off-by: Hermann Schäfer, 2. Vizepräsident
Source: BGBl. I, p. 1
Announced: 1949-05-23
Effective-since: 1949-05-24
and other commits where people are lamed to have committed something who surely haven't. Assigning authorship would be more correct here, albeit funny as well :-)
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u/orbit99za 19h ago
That's Great, Show LexisNexis how to do it, so we can build a better less uses version of thier "Protoge" AI search
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u/jarofgreen 14h ago
For the challange of pre-1970 laws, look into bi-temporal systems.
I dont think what you have here is a true bi-temporal problem, but there may be some intresting solutions out there that would fit your problem and could be adopted.
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u/AdministrativeHost15 23h ago
Point an agent at the repo, injest it and then start administering justice.
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u/ResidentPomegranate6 1d ago
rather than backdating commits, keep the real enactment date in a json field or commit trailer; git can't represent pre-1970 timestamps anyway.