[open-government] Jason Kitcat, copyright and closed government

[Toby Mendel]

Under prevailing laws, that may indeed be theft, although I cannot see  
how they could argue that the material could not be used for political  
purposes but might for other purposes.

Regardless, one might argue that the right to information as protected  
by international guarantees of freedom of expression gives a right to  
reuse information covered by public copyright. As a prima facie  
argument, this has merit, but international guarantees do allow for  
restrictions on freedom of expression and it is not yet clear how far  
these might go in relation to reuse. My view is that it is probably  
unrealistic to argue that freedom of expression protects any form of  
reuse of public copyrighted material, but that the government would  
need a good reason to assert such a restriction. I haven't had a  
chance to study the materials here carefully, but I am not sure what  
legitimate public interest might be harmed in this case.

Toby

On 1 Nov 2010, at 17:02, Tim McNamara wrote:

> More broadly, I disagree with your statement that a council's  
> enforcement of their copyright creates censorship. They're not  
> censuring anyone, they're merely exercising their legal rights. As  
> it stands, you've described a situation where someone has acted  
> outside their mandate, downloaded content and then redistributed  
> that content. That looks like theft. I'm sure Councillor Kitcat  
> could have raised a motion at the council to have its officers post  
> the content onto YouTube.
>

___________________________________
Toby Mendel
Executive Director

Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org




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