Are you saying that there's law in California (i.e. something you can violate that the justice system has the authority to punish you over) that is not freely (as in freedom) available to any citizen (for whatever purpose, reading, distributing, etc)?
As a practical matter, no, its not freely available. There is a reason why no one knows the law, and its not because no one tries, but because their efforts to know the law that binds them are actively thwarted by its publishers.
It is available online, but its unusable for the layman due to ridiculously bad design. You must agree to a contract to use it ("terms of use", "license") and promise never to repeat what you read. Purposely bad design in my opinion. Its 30,000 sections of regulations we're talking about here (there's a further 150,000 sections of California law, 50,000 sections of federal law, and 30,000 sections of federal regulations), and you only know it doesn't apply after you read it. Its javascript-based and uses session cookies, so if you take longer than 5 minutes to read a 30 page section with a bad layout that uses intensely complex verbiage, the next click will "close the book" in your face, and if you have no idea where you were, well, tough luck, there's always prison. If you try and open multiple windows, say, to read another section which is referred to, each window will interfere with each other. (Even trying will likely close the book in your face.) Each click is unbearably slow to load. (29,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 29,999 bottles of beer, take one down, can't pass it around, 30,001 bottles of beer on the wall.) There is no way to give a permalink to your grandma or on your blog, because there are no permalinks. Grandma will have to try and navigate the horrible website herself, and when she likely fails, well, tough luck, there's always prison.
It is available as bulk data on CD-ROM (in California) for a significant price, on the order of $3000 per edition. Did I mention it changes almost constantly? Obviously, no permalinks for your blog.
California is better than most in that the government was sued and forced to release the statutory law on the web.[1] Other states are not so lucky.
Can you point out a state that does not provide their laws and regulations available online? I have never experienced a situation where the laws of a state are not available online for free, and I've researched laws in all 50 states. As for regulations, I've not researched those in each state, but the states that I have looked at regulations in all have them available online, so I think a citation is needed that there are state or federal laws or regulations that are not available freely online.
And what contracts have you entered into for this "free" access? What have you agreed to, what rights have you given up? And when will your obligations end? Do you even know, or did you just blindly click "I agree"?
I know this sounds lame, but freedom isn't free, and you shouldn't have to give up any rights to access the laws that bind you. Period. No exceptions. No compromise.
(I should note the biggest problem with this seems to be codified regulations, not so much the codified laws or gazettes, although some states do require a contract to view the "free" versions of the statutes, such as Georgia and Colorado. And I should note the online version of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations from the Secretary of the Commonwealth costs $110 per year and requires a credit card...)
As a matter of principle, in the US at least, laws to which you are bound are supposed to be freely-as-in-freedom available. That doesn't mean they invariably are, though; people find various ways to extract rent from the law.[1]
Usually the law as enacted by the legislature / ruled by the courts is free, but they might incorporate by reference some non-free rules developed and maintained by commercial entities. These are things like building codes, fire codes, and so on, which might cost thousands of dollars for a copy and not be redistributable. [2] The recentish example (2002) is Veeck vs. SBCCI[3].
I've made a FOIA request for all regulations, including the building codes (which is title 24), with the OAL. They claim not to have them. They claim they don't have the regulations they are entrusted with publishing, and that I should buy them from someone else. I'm sure there's a perfectly legal reason for this, such as being morally corrupt, but legality aside, the current and all former directors of OAL should be impeached for entering into such scandalous contracts. Its simply unacceptable.
Are you saying that there's law in California (i.e. something you can violate that the justice system has the authority to punish you over) that is not freely (as in freedom) available to any citizen (for whatever purpose, reading, distributing, etc)?