Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law. After all, the law is readily available. Unless it's not. In an engaging and interesting post on RegBlog, Jessica Bassett discusses the current debate in a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives over federal standards that are not spelled out in the Code of Federal Regulations (uncopyrighted and free for all to access) but instead incorporated in the Code by reference to a private standard-setting organization responsible for setting those standards but under no obligation to provide them for free. Unsurprisingly, this has sparked some debate in the subcommittee responsible for reforming the copyright law. For the full discussion and the interesting arguments for and against "secret laws," see Jessica Bassett, House Subcommittee Airs Debate Over Secret Law, REGBLOG (Feb. 11, 2014), http://www.regblog.org/2014/02/11-bassett-incorporation-by-reference-hearing.html.
The intellectual property student group at the University of Pennsylvania Law School