Page:Crowdsourcing and Open Access.djvu/15

 Google crowds out other open-content projects —for example, in the wake of Google’s announcement, the AltLaw project essentially declared that it was no longer relevant and would shut down. Nevertheless, despite their noteworthy accomplishments in a comparatively short time, the many projects working to make legal information freely available online share some common drawbacks. Work focused on ameliorating these shared flaws would do a great deal to make open-access projects viable substitutes for proprietary legal databases.


 * The bias towards collecting case law. First, nearly all the projects discussed above have focused on collecting the works of the judicial branch—a worthy endeavor, but one that risks bypassing the most important sources of governing authority in our “age of statutes.” Only the LII devotes substantial resources to collecting and updating federal executive and legislative materials such as the Code of Federal Regulations and United States Code.


 * The bias towards contemporary sources. Legal history, if the extant online resources are any guide, began in the mid-20th century. This is still a substantial improvement over the state of play in the open-access world as recently as three or four years ago, when history seemed to begin circa 1994. But to a