This statement from the first paragraph of the article seems relevant: "Georgia has a somewhat bizarre system in which the only official version of their law is the 'officially' annotated version". If that's so, Georgia is blocking public access to the ONLY OFFICIAL version of their law that exists.
So I think your first sentence may be mistaken. THESE annotations are not "work done outside of writing the laws". They constitute PART of writing the laws. Sure, Georgia could "offer their laws in an unannotated version," but that wouldn't solve the problem. The unannotated version is not the official one.
The annotations may take a lot of work, sure. So did the actual text of the legislation. And together, the text and annotations constitute the official law of Georgia. The people have a right to see it.
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Re: I have no problems with annotated laws being copyrighted
This statement from the first paragraph of the article seems relevant: "Georgia has a somewhat bizarre system in which the only official version of their law is the 'officially' annotated version". If that's so, Georgia is blocking public access to the ONLY OFFICIAL version of their law that exists.
So I think your first sentence may be mistaken. THESE annotations are not "work done outside of writing the laws". They constitute PART of writing the laws. Sure, Georgia could "offer their laws in an unannotated version," but that wouldn't solve the problem. The unannotated version is not the official one.
The annotations may take a lot of work, sure. So did the actual text of the legislation. And together, the text and annotations constitute the official law of Georgia. The people have a right to see it.