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Matthew Burton has developed a site — ReadableLaws.org — as a thesis (under the estimable Prof. Jay Rosen) where we can translate legislation into understandable English and discuss its implications. The first bills posted include one to broaden Fair Use, one that criminalizes hiding information about video games to skirt the ratings, and an expansion of Internet monitoring to prevent child pornography.

I can see the implications pages getting bogged down because the site has no built-in way of handling disagreements, but the translation-into-understandability pages look like a great idea. (And maybe the implications pages will work out, too.)

This is all part of Jay’s NewAssignment.Net project. [Tags: ]

3 Responses to “Readable Laws: The Wiki”

  1. on 05 Apr 2007 at 8:25 pmBen Tremblay

    The gnoöshpere as mashable? Sure … primordial wisdom has a “semantic” component.

    I recommend Evidence Based Library and Information Practice for anyone engaged in this; my own work concerns what I’ve been calling “evidence-based discourse”. Such as The Innocence Project and Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted deserve whatever techniques we can cobble.

  2. on 06 Apr 2007 at 10:06 amMatthew Burton

    Hi David,

    just a reprint of what I emailed you earlier:

    regarding disagreements: I’m hoping that the audience will be a *tad* restricted to the geek crowd at first, expanding later to a more general (and politically diverse) audience; that way, by sorting out progressively more intense disputes, we’ll gradually work our way toward an official dispute resolution mechanism instead of building something before I even have my first user.

    Thanks for the post.

  3. on 15 Feb 2008 at 12:29 pmKakJesflefe

    Just discovered a complete list of all marked down products at Amazon, sorted by category
    and % off, ranging from 50% off to 90% off (thanks Sonja for the effort).

    Actually I never thought Amazon would have articles with 90% off, but only in the category
    Electronics there are more than 3000 of them – look for yourself, the list is on
    Bargain Hunter (which is a blog of a woman who specializes in finding good deals at
    Amazon, like Britain’s “Jeanie”).