[3 Bells]
[Music from the Military Bands]
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory ﬁre.
They died from ﬁre, smoke inhalation,
and by jumping off a 10-story building to avoid the ﬂames.
They died because the ﬁre exits were chained shut. They died because there were no ﬁre codes in 1911.
They died because there were no ﬁre codes in 1911.
Today, there's a law for that. But when we ignore the law, history repeats itself.
In 2012, at the Tazreen Fashion Factory in Bangladesh, 117 people died and 200 were injured
because basic building and ﬁre codes were not observed.
In 2005, a hydrocarbon vapor cloud exploded at a reﬁnery in Texas City, shattering windows
3/4 of a mile away. In 2010, a natural gas pipeline in San Bruno, California exploded
into a wall of ﬁre 1,000 feet high. There are laws —technical standards—that govern
pipelines and reﬁneries and hazardous materials. There are laws—occupational safety standards—that
govern our workplaces, consumer product safety standards that govern baby strollers and microwave
ovens and toys for toddlers. There's a law for all that, but most of
these public safety standards have not been available
unless you payed hundreds of dollars per copy.
This is wrong, and we are changing that.
I'm here today to ask for your help. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
That's why Justice Stephen Breyer said "if a law isn't public, it isn't a law."
That's why John Podesta said "the American people have the right to know the laws by which they
are governed." If we're going to have due process under
the law, if we're going to have equal protection under the law, the law has to be public.
There can be no poll tax on access to justice. We've been changing this situation, we've
been trying to promote the rule of law. In the last ﬁve years, we've posted over
28,000 legally-mandated technical safety codes covering dozens of countries. Just a few weeks
ago, we published 18,592 safety codes for India.
I need your help to take this to the next level. All of these codes start as PDF ﬁles.
Some of them are just scans. Our project—that you can help with—is
to unlock these documents by transforming them so anybody can build ever more useful
applications for public safety. We're turning these documents into valid HTML, with high-quality
vector graphics, properly coded mathematical formulas, and useful metadata.
Your participation—your ﬁnancial contribution—helps take a technical standard and rekey it so
it can be used freely and effectively on the net. I hope you'll see merit in this exercise
and that you'll join me—today—to help make sure that if code is law, then the law
is available to all. We can—as a people, as nations of the world,
as informed citizens—we can own our law, but only if we stand up—only if you stand
up—only if we all stand up together. I hope you'll join me in making our world a safer place.
Thank you for your support.
[Music: Eternal Father] [Virginia Grand Military Band]