Coastsider fights for the right to stream clips from MCTV

Coastsider has been trying to persuade MCTV to let us stream clips from their cablecasts of Coastside board meetings since April of last year.  Julia Scott has written a pretty good summary of the situation for the County Times.  I’m working on an opinion piece that lays out our position on this issue in greater detail, and I invite MCTV to participate in the discussion here on Coastsider. In the mean time, I recommend you read the story from the County Times.

"I think the ordinary presumption is that (the station) does have a copyright to the images that it creates," said lawyer Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.

However, he said, "When the city or any other agency makes a recording of its proceedings, that has to be made available. One could argue that because it is a public record, MCTV loses the right under the federal copyright law to try to restrict its distribution."

Scheer said Parr could also try to obtain the tapes under an exception in the copyright law for "fair use" of a cable segment for journalistic or educational purposes.

Two small corrections to the County Times Story: MCTV’s executive director’s name is Connie Malach (not Malack), and Coastsider gets about 5,000 unique visitors per week, not per month.