Are City Council Meetings Copyrighted Material?

An activist who assembled documentary-style videos using clips from Inglewood, Ca. City Council meetings and posted them on YouTube was hit with a federal lawsuit in the Central District of California. The city claims its meetings, in which the Council’s actions – or lack thereof – met with the filmmaker Joseph Teixeira’s disapproval, are copyrighted material. “I try to be fair,” says Teixeira. “I pick the things that are obvious, and it’s by their very nature that they are damning.” The city sent him a cease-and-desist letter, then sued when he ignored it.