Is a Polititians speech subject to copyright.

or is it freely given to the world and in fact it is given with the implied consent to disseminate far and wide.

Politicians do not sell the rights to their speeches nor do they collect money from them so how can they retain copyright to something that they deliberately disseminate.

Thanks

P

reply to post by pheonix358


The words of a public speech are not copyrighted, and are public domain... but recordings or video of the speech may be copyrighted.

~Heff

reply to post by Hefficide


you sure about that ?

how is a political speech diffferent to the public reading of an [ unpublished ] poem , an essay or the preformance of a play ?

my knowledge of copyright law is strictly limited to photographers rights - so i dont know the answer -

Uhm, why would you anyone want to copyright verbal diarrhea? Seems like a waste of time and energy

A publicly elected official ("politician"):
- speaking in the performance of his duly elected duties, does not not have copyright protection.
- speaking outside &/or independent of, the performance of those duties, may have copyright protection.

An entity recording the speech, has rights to that recording - not the speech itself.

In order for a work to be copyrightable, it has to be set in a fixed medium, such as written down, recorded, photographed, etc. Also, any text produced by the federal government, for the most part, is automatically part of the public domain. Given that:

* If the speech was written down and read verbatim, it is protected by copyright because it was written down.
* If the speech was written down and the speaker goes off script, than those parts of the speech would not be protected because speech is not a fixed medium, unless...
* The impromptu speech is recorded or otherwise set in a fixed medium, than it does become copyrightable.
* If the speaker is a federal employee, than his or her speeches, regardless of being in a fixed medium, probably are in the public domain and so not copyrightable.

An example of a speaker whose estate has gone to great lengths to protect his copyright is Martin Luther King's. No one can freely reproduce his speeches without getting permission from his estate. But there is a cottage industry of folks who attempt to recreate his impromptu speeches from memory and distribute them precisely because they were never in a fixed medium and so are not copyrightable.

Whether a speech is copyrighted or not, it still must follow the rules ATS has set in place for posting content from other sources:

IMPORTANT: Using Content From Other Websites on ATS