Was worth a shot
If NEC is required to be free because it is adopted as law, how is NFPA supposed to fund the continuing development and new editions? They are in same boat with many other publications they make.
Free, in this case, means that you can read it without paying a fee. This is what the free read -- no copy -- version available on the NFPA website addresses. The requirement to be able to read the NEC for free because it is adopted by a State (and becomes "law"), does not mean that it must be free (without cost) in any form. That is the current situation, you can choose not to buy a copy of the NEC and just read the online version (but you will begin to hate it very quickly).
I don't really know how this works, but at same time we can go to our constitution of the United States and look at it in somewhat the same way. Is it free? Kind of. Can a private publishing company put it into print and distribute it for a fee? I think so. How many school textbooks have the Constitution printed in them and were purchased by someone (usually the school districts)?
The Constitution is freer (as in totally free) than the NEC. If you choose to publish a copy of the Constitution, no one can sue you for copyright infringement. Indeed, if you choose to copy the Constitution out word for word from a copyrighted textbook, the publisher has no standing to sue you. If you sit down and copy a large portion of the NEC and publish it , NFPA does have standing to sue you.
One thing about the NEC that is different though is the source (NFPA) is a private company.
I don't really know exactly how State laws usually work either, I don't think here in NE that the entire NEC document is on record anywhere in the law journals, it is merely referenced in those journals. Every time we start on a new code the Legislature needs to introduce a bill to have that reference changed and it has to pass through proper legislation like any other bill before it becomes a law, but the only thing that changes is the reference to which edition of NEC is the law - and if there are any amendments (we currently don't have any but have in the past) I believe are also not in the journal- but a reference to where those amendments are found is in there.
