YouTube and the First Amendment in Knox County
I need some legal advice. I also need some guidance.
Per Randy Neal’s request to me to not link Copyrighted material from YouTube on KnoxViews I requested via email permission from Community Television of Knoxville (CTV) to continue to provide Knox County Commission meetings on YouTube as I have done for several months now.
I received a reply email from David Vogel, the General Manager of CTV. It read, “Please remove all segments of the Knox County Commission Meetings that you have uploaded to YouTube, until proper copyright clearance has been obtained.”
I replied back that I did not recognize the alleged Copyright per the fair use doctrine of Copyright law. I ask what I had to do to receive permission from CTV to continue to post the County Commission meetings on YouTube. I also requested that CTV provide the service I have been providing for several months. I explained I did not want to provide this service as it was very time consuming and I hoped that CTV would decide to take this off my hands.
Today I received from Mr. Vogel an email stating, “As a non-profit corporation, CTV has the same rights under the copyright laws as any other company. CTV owns the copyright to any program produced by its employees. As the copyright owner, CTV maintains its right to exercise all privileges of copyright, which includes the right to exclude others from making and publishing copies of its programs and the right to exclude others from making derivative works using its programs. If someone edits or changes a CTV program, this constitutes a “derivative work.”
As a matter of policy or choice, CTV will allow others to publish copies of our programs under certain conditions. In order to make and publish unedited and completely unchanged copies of our programs, a Permission Request must first be submitted in writing, along with a copy of your personal identification (eg. driver’s license or passport). As a general rule, we do NOT grant permission to publish edited or changed versions of our programs (derivative works).”
I replied to Mr. Vogel that the Knox County Schools already has an Internet Archive of school board meetings and asked him if there was a way for CTV to do the same with Knox County Commission meetings. Mr. Vogel responded and said there were exploring this with the same firm that does the Knox County School Board meetings. He explained there was no time table as yet.
That is the background so let me explain my problem. CTV does not “produce” Knox County Commission meetings. They “film” the meetings. Today’s meeting may be historic on both the Storm Water issue and the Metro Government issue.
What should I do? I understand Mr. Vogel’s position and I don’t know the fine details of Copyright Law or what the right thing to do is. I feel that the idea of Copyrighting a public meetings is ludicrous. I see this as a violation of my First Amendment rights. But I may incur legal action if I continue. How can anyone Copyright a Knox County Commission meeting?
If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
March 26th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
[…] Original post by SayUncle […]
March 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Take your own video camera to the meeting, tape it, then upload it to Youtube. Then its your own work and you can do what you want with it.
March 26th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Smack him with a large salmon.
March 26th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
IANAL.
The fact that he hasn’t sent YouTube a DMCA takedown order is telling.
All he really needs to do is to send YouTube a DMCA takedown order, and for them to keep their “safe-harbor”, (the business model that YouTube has built itself around), they need to take down the videos.
Then if you file a counter order, and they refuse to prove their copyright ownership within a few weeks or something, then you are entitled to repost the vids. Or something like that, because IANAL.
Anyway, you know the words to google now, “DMCA takedown”
March 26th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Brad and drstrangegun both have excellent ideas. If you record it yourself, you can tell the nice tv lawyers to FOD.
March 26th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Brad and drstrangegun both have excellent ideas. If you record it yourself, you can tell the nice tv lawyers to FOD.
For those who don’t know me, I pay for CTV, it is completely funded by taxpayers. I pay for the Knox County Commission meetings also. Like hell I will pay the bills and ask for permission for what is mine.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I dunno about CTV, but CSPAN produces both copyrighted and uncopyrighted works. It gets confusing because so much of CSPANs work is not copyrighted (as opposed to a normal TV channel where almost ALL the work is copyrighted).
As I understand it, CSPAN cannot claim copyright to hearings and votes held in the Senate and House that are recorded on government cameras. Footage created using CSPAN camerais, and any of their “value added” works (commentary, narration, etc) is considered copyrighted. Of course it’s confusing because they put their logo on both copyrighted and uncopyrighted works.
So the question at hand probably centers around the nature of CTVs feed. Do they use their own camera equipment or is it provided by the government? Do they simply air it on TV, or is there narration and summation involved?
Without them giving you permission, the only way to be sure is to set up your own camera like Brad said.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
FYI, Wizbang has more on the CSPAN kerfuffle: http://wizbangblog.com/2007/03/08/the-pelosi-precedent.php
March 26th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
AFAIK; so long as you’re not serving the content (you’re just linking to it), their beef is with youtube and therefore google.
I think there was a past ruling on linking to other sites. While you are making the video viewable on your page, youtube is hosting it and playing it for your viewers.
Sounds like some saber rattling at someone they think they could scare.
March 27th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Technically the CTV guy is correct. The copyright is not on the meeting itself but the choices made by CTV in taping it — camera angle, special lighting, color balance, and the like. I doubt that they would spend the money to enforce their copyright, but you never know. I would follow the advice give above to do you own taping, and you will own that copyright.
March 27th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
This is a libertarian den of anarchy?