The United Nations released today the new United Nations Treaty Collection Database, including the full-text of agreements in the UN Treaty Series. For those that miss the old interface, it does include a link to the legacy site. It does include a new search interface. Many thanks to the folks at the UN Treaty Section of the Office of Legal Affiars for their work on the new database.
New United Nations Treaty Collection http://treaties.un.org/
Old legacy site: http://untreaty.un.org/
The Times of London has an interesting article on censorship of the performance of plays in England, including historical discussions.
A disgusting feast of filth? by Anthony Burton. The Times. September18, 2008.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article4775754.ece?&EMC-Bltn=B9QEK9
Excerpts from the article:
It was the Licensing Act of 1737 that gave the Lord Chamberlain the role of arbiter of theatrical taste. The role, held until 1968, was introduced by the Prime Minister Robert Walpole to gag his theatrical critics, in particular Henry Fielding, by banning any offensive reference to a living person. So from the 18th century every British playwright had to obtain a licence for the public performance of a play … By September 1968 the Theatres Act was in force and the censor banished.
This new resource from our good friends at Public.Resource.Org:
Those of you interested in federal materials such as the Code of
Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, the U.S. Code, and other
core legal materials may be interested in a recent initiative intended
to produce timely bulk feeds of key databases:
Thank you Carl Malamud!
Why is Carl doing this?
Here is a bit of explanation from Carl in a letter to The Honorable Robert C. Tapella, Public Printer of the United States :
Our intent in purchasing this product is to make it available in raw format on the Internet for access by anonymous FTP. We will not charge for access, nor will we restrict usage by the imposition of any license agreements. Since public documents are defined as “public property” in 44 USC 1119, this deployment of the raw feed of the Code will make it available for all to use without restriction and will allow for-profit and non-profit entities to construct alternative versions of the CFR. . . .
While a rudimentary version of these “products” are available on the GPO Access web site, they are built upon a very old technology known as WAIS, a database that allows keyword searches and browsing, but does so with unstructured text and a very primitive user interface. The more definitive bulk products that you sell are used by commercial services to build value-added systems. As evident from the broad interest in the CFR product and by the proliferation of “Web 2.0” sites that build more advanced public interfaces to public information, there is a great demand for the raw data in the public, academic, and nonprofit sectors.
All of these databases are core to our system of government, a collection of rules, laws, and reports we call America’s Operating System. Creation of these products is integral to the operation of the legal machinery in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government. Even if no commercial firms were to purchase these products, the Government Printing Office would create them as required in Chapter 44 of the United States Code and as part of your annual appropriations for congressional printing and the operation of the Federal Repository Library Program.
Public dissemination is at the heart of the Government Printing Office: “GPO’s main mission is to ensure the American public has access to Government information.” For electronic products, 44 USC 4102 is very specific that “fees charged under this section shall be set so as to recover the incremental cost of dissemination of the information involved.”
*PS – some very interesting factoids at the bottom of the public.resource.org/gpo.gov page that will really give you something to think about….
