When A Senator Reads 'Green Eggs & Ham' On The Floor, What About The Copyright?

from the questions-questions dept

You may have heard that Senator Ted Cruz spent a fair bit of time on the Senate Floor doing an old fashioned filibuster. Of course, what seems to be drawing almost more attention than the thing he was filibustering about was... the fact that, as part of that, he read aloud the classic Dr. Seuss book, Green Eggs and Ham (though many people pointed out that he appeared to totally misunderstand the meaning of that book).

But more interesting from our standpoint are the copyright questions this raises. Some even pondered if his reading the book on the Senate floor would impact the public domain status of the book. The answer to that is no, though some other questions may be a bit more obscure. I've emailed some copyright lawyers for their take on the question, but we might as well discuss them here in the comments. The book is clearly covered by copyright. Cruz's reading of it is likely protected by the speech or debate clause, and even potentially a fair use claim. The bigger question is about everyone else who's showing it. Are TV news programs who show it violating the copyright? It may depend very much on how they present it, and it seems likely that many would have a very strong fair use claim -- it's newsworthy (in some sense), it's unlikely to negatively impact the work, etc. Of course, if a TV program decided to use it, instead, as a "storytime hour with Senator Ted Cruz" in which he reads the book to entertain children... there might be some copyright questions raised. Still, it's worth noting that the owner of the copyright, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, has a history of going legal over pretty clear fair use claims.

Still, there is a larger point in all of this: this is yet another example of a politician realizing that there's benefit in being able to use copyright covered material for his personal benefit, without the permission of the copyright holder. This is why fair use is important, and why attempts to limit it are so problematic. While I've never seen Senator Cruz involved in any copyright debates, but it will be interesting to see, should copyright reform issues ever finally reach the Senate floor, if he's willing to stand up for expanded fair use, based on his own recognition of the value of being able to, say, read an entire book to try to make a point.

Filed Under: copyright, dr. seuss, fair use, filibuster, green eggs and ham, speech or debate clause, ted cruz

Internet Catches Texas Senate Fudging Time-Stamps On Abortion Bill

from the isn't-that-a-crime? dept

What with all that's going on in the world, you may have missed the news that the state of Texas was attempting to introduce a controversial bill that would close down a ton of abortion clinics. The bill had first failed to pass the state senate, but Governor Rick Perry demanded a special 30 day session which would bring the bill back up for debate. There was a deadline for the bill, which would have had to be voted on and passed on June 25th to become law, leading to a fairly impressive filibuster effort by Senator Wendy Davis. The entire thing was internet-y already, with scores of people tuning in live on YouTube to watch Davis go on, while Texas Republicans attempted to find procedural methods for ending her filibuster. It was all the more impressive due to various filibuster rules in Texas law, such as when Republicans complained that she had had someone assist in putting on a back brace, since by rule she wasn't allowed any assistance in standing straight up without leaning during her filibuster. #StandWithWendy trended on Twitter, a portion of the internet poured through Texas legislative rules for discussion points, and even President Obama was reportedly glued to YouTube.

In the end, Davis' efforts paid off, with her pushing her filibuster just long enough to delay a hurried vote from being taken before midnight. Liberals rejoiced, conservatives lamented. And then, dear friends, things got really strange.

In a desperate effort to pass a controversial bill that would shutter hundreds of abortion clinics in Texas, a slew of Twitter sleuths, including Circa's Anthony De Rosa and former Reuters social media editor Matthew Keys, discovered that the state legislature altered official state documents to show that the vote was passed before the midnight deadline.

In actuality, the Texas state senate did not pass the bill, SB 5, in time—thanks to defeaning cheers from the gallery from supporters of State Senator Wendy Davis, who spent more than 10 hours filibustering a vote.

De Rosa and Keys managed to get screen grabs from the Texas Senate's page that detailed the proceedings of that particular bill. In the immediate aftermath, it listed the date of the vote being recorded as 6/26, which was past the deadline. Shortly after, and as of this writing, the page has been altered to show the vote being taken on 6/25, which would have been within the deadline. As Gawker notes, this is an extremely serious matter.

So what happened? Did someone tamper with official state documents? It would seem so, and that's a crime.

And no, according to experts like tech policy analyst Kathy Gill, this is almost certainly not an innocent accident.

In order to change something like this, someone has to change the database. And things like votes and official times, they’re often (usually?) automatically generated also.

In other words, changes like this are deliberate.

Now, you may not like abortion and you may not care for filibusters, but no matter what your ideology you had damned well better be against the bullshitting of the constituents. The internet certainly is, having already sprung an official White House petition to defend the filibuster and preserve proper voting procedure. But the real beauty of this story is that it's thanks to the internet that this was found out so quickly and spread in such a viral fashion.

Filed Under: abortion, filibuster, internet, texas, texas senate, timestamps, wendy davis

How Senator Wyden's PIPA Filibuster Will Work, And What Harry Reid Will Try To Do To Kill It

from the cloture dept

Last month, Senator Harry Reid decided that the massive and growing public outcry against SOPA shouldn't be of any concern at all to the Democratic Party in the Senate, and announced plans to bring the Senate's companion bill, PROTECT IP (or PIPA) to the floor, in an attempt to get around Senator Ron Wyden's hold on the bill (Wyden has been joined by Senators Rand Paul, Jerry Moran and Maria Cantwell, in objecting to the bill and promising to fight against it). As has been noted, Senator Wyden has promised to read aloud the names of those who have signed a petition against the bill.

There has been some confusion over the whole process of the filibuster, as well as the process of the "cloture" vote to both get around the "hold" on the bill, as well as end the filibuster. Some have insisted that Wyden simply won't get to speak on the floor at all if there are the necessary 60 votes for cloture. So, thankfully, Ernesto Falcon at Public Knowledge has put together a fantastic post that explains the hold/cloture/filibuster process and more or less explains what will happen at the end of January if Reid can get the votes to get cloture:

On January 23^rd, the United States Senate will reconvene to begin legislative business for 2012. After the first order of business is taken care of, Majority Leader Harry Reid will then continue the process he started on December 17th of moving PIPA towards a Senate floor vote. This process is known as invoking "cloture," which is a rule that allows any Senator to impose a 30 hour time limit on debate subject to three-fifths of the Senate agreeing to end debate. Senator Ron Wyden has stated he will filibuster PIPA along with Senators Jerry Moran, Maria Cantwell, and Rand Paul and together they will use the full 30 hours available resulting in the cloture vote being held the next day.

On January 24^th, Majority Leader Reid’s cloture motion will have matured its 30 hours and he will then be allowed to call for an up-or-down vote on moving forward to consider PIPA. If three-fifths of the U.S. Senate agree by voting yes on cloture (ending debate), then the bill can be taken up for consideration and the process where Senators can offer amendments will begin as well as another cloture motion (resulting in another 30 hours of debate). The general rule of thumb is a bill that has 60 Senators in support of its passage will take about three days to pass the U.S. Senate.

However, if 60 Senators do not vote yes on cloture, then Senators Wyden, Moran, Cantwell, and Paul will be allowed to continue to speak in opposition to PIPA forever. That being said, what would likely happen in the aftermath if PIPA fails to gain 60 yes votes is the bill is withdrawn and a compromise is negotiated. If no compromise is possible, then the bill officially dies. It is important to note that three-fifths of the Senate must vote yes to move PIPA forward. For example, if 59 Senators voted yes on cloture and 41 Senators voted present or do not vote at all, it fails to pass. The key factor in cloture is three-fifths of the Senate voting yes on cloture and not how many votes are against PIPA.

In other words, as we noted at the time, the race is now on for an additional 20 Senators to sign on with the existing 40 supporters of the bill. If supporters can't find 20 more Senators willing to put their name on the record as supporting PIPA, then the bill likely won't move forward. They already have 40 Senators signed on -- putting their names on a bill that sets up the fundamental legal and technological framework to censor the internet in the US. But, over the last few weeks, this bill has certainly become more toxic as people have spoken out. Unfortunately, it's not toxic enough, and there are plenty of out-of-touch Senators, who don't even realize what's in the bill and what its likely impact will be. That's why there's basically three more weeks in which to make it clear to both supporters of PIPA, as well as those who haven't yet taken a side, that supporting this bill is a huge mistake with serious consequences. If you do have a chance to go to a Town Hall meeting, or otherwise meet your Senator, Public Knowledge has also put together a handy information packet (pdf) with some quick points about the bill, and some sample questions you might want to ask your Senator.

Filed Under: cloture, copyright, filibuster, harry reid, pipa, process, protect ip, ron wyden, senate

Senator Wyden Promises To Read Out The Names Of Those Who Oppose PROTECT IP

from the sign-up-now dept

As stories begin to circulate that the Senate is about to make a big push to get PROTECT IP (aka PIPA) through while everyone's been focused on SOPA over in the House, Senator Ron Wyden has reiterated his commitment to being against the bill, and promising to actually use his allotted time to filibuster on the bill if he has to. Too often these days, Senators have been able to get away with a sort of fake filibustering, where they say they will and everyone just assumes it's as if they did stand up and talk for days on end. However, Senator Wyden has said that he'll really filibuster if the Senate really does try to move forward by standing on the floor and talking. While, in the past, the "standard" is to do something like read names from the phonebook, Wyden is promising to read the names of people who signed petitions against PIPA. So if you'd like your name to go into the official record of the US Senate as being against PIPA, here's your chance... You can sign at that link.

Filed Under: filibuster, grassroots, protect ip, ron wyden, sopa, support