[qingcharles]

Statutes are free by law. There was a case a few years ago that definitively affirmed this. A lot of counties and municipalities have zoning laws and building codes, but they don't have staff to write them, so they buy stock model codes from a corporation that writes them. These venues were then telling their citizens they couldn't give them a free copy, they had to buy them.

Someone got sued for copyright infringement for giving away a copy of the statues, but they ultimately won.

See e.g., Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (2020) & Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int'l (5th Cir. 2002).

[derektank]

Case law is real law in a common law system. Parent is absolutely correct to point out that without access to court records, the public does not have a complete understanding of the law. Statutes only provide you the full picture in a civil law system.

[qingcharles]

Agreed, e.g. case law provides interpretation of statutes to clarify their meaning. I just wanted to point out that the free-as-in-beer nature of statutes has been completely clarified, whereas case law and court records continue in some murky grey zone.