Electronic Devices on Airplanes and e-CFR

Everyone who’s flown is familiar with the announcement to shut down portable electronic devices for take-0ff and landing.  I was recently directed to an article in the New York Times (thanks to Above the Law) wondering why we have such a rule.  The article links to the regulation in question as shown in the e-CFR.  While reading the regulation raises important questions (like why are electric shavers included with hearing aids and heart pacemakers as exceptions to this rule), I want to talk about the e-CFR.  The e-CFR is a unofficial government-produced version of the CFR.  The e-CFR is helpful for researchers because it incorporates the newest regulations into the CFR.  The official version of the CFR is updated annually (with different titles being updated at different times throughout the year).  This is based off of the print model, which can be a pain to update.  The e-CFR takes most of that pain away as it is generally only two days out of date (which is often better than Westlaw and Lexis).  The best part of the e-CFR is that it is free and, therefore, should be a resource you get familiar with.  My hope is that some day the e-CFR will become an official version of the CFR.