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Douglas County commissioners declined to take action Wednesday against a group selling DVDs of excerpts from Board of Commissioner meetings and hearings.
The Liberators 11 group, formerly known as the Lawmen ad hoc Steering Committee, is offering a four-DVD set of material compiled from four meetings on Internal Revenue Service lien procedures held by the Board of Commissioners over the past year.
The discs, containing five hours of testimony and discussion, sell for $40 on the group’s Web site.
The telecasts can be viewed live or after they’re recorded at no charge on the county’s Web site. The county also offers discs from individual meetings for $5, which is meant to defray the county’s costs but not make a profit.
Questions arose whether the county holds a copyright on the telecasts and whether the sale and distribution by another group would violate that copyright.
The county places a copyright notice on each page of its Web site.
Kathleen Johnson, assistant Douglas County attorney, told commissioners the county does hold a copyright on the meeting telecasts and could assert its rights.
“The question becomes, do we want to?” she said. “Do we care that people are charging for them?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Commissioner Doug Robertson said.
Jake Weigler, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice, agreed with the county’s interpretation.
“Based upon our understanding of the law, the state and local governments have copyright protection,” he said.
The county itself sells assessor tax roll information to companies such as LexisNexis, a compiler of business information that resells the information to subscribers.
The county began telecasting its weekly Board of Commissioner meetings and twice-monthly Planning Commission meetings in December 2005 to give residents better access to county government, after consulting with officials from the city of Roseburg, which added a similar system.
Because the intent of the cameras was to open the county meetings to as many people as possible, Robertson said he didn’t see a problem with the Liberators’ group selling the discs. Fellow commissioners Marilyn Kittelman and Joe Laurance concurred.
• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@nrtoday.com.
The Liberators 11 group, formerly known as the Lawmen ad hoc Steering Committee, is offering a four-DVD set of material compiled from four meetings on Internal Revenue Service lien procedures held by the Board of Commissioners over the past year.
The discs, containing five hours of testimony and discussion, sell for $40 on the group’s Web site.
The telecasts can be viewed live or after they’re recorded at no charge on the county’s Web site. The county also offers discs from individual meetings for $5, which is meant to defray the county’s costs but not make a profit.
Questions arose whether the county holds a copyright on the telecasts and whether the sale and distribution by another group would violate that copyright.
The county places a copyright notice on each page of its Web site.
Kathleen Johnson, assistant Douglas County attorney, told commissioners the county does hold a copyright on the meeting telecasts and could assert its rights.
“The question becomes, do we want to?” she said. “Do we care that people are charging for them?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Commissioner Doug Robertson said.
Jake Weigler, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice, agreed with the county’s interpretation.
“Based upon our understanding of the law, the state and local governments have copyright protection,” he said.
The county itself sells assessor tax roll information to companies such as LexisNexis, a compiler of business information that resells the information to subscribers.
The county began telecasting its weekly Board of Commissioner meetings and twice-monthly Planning Commission meetings in December 2005 to give residents better access to county government, after consulting with officials from the city of Roseburg, which added a similar system.
Because the intent of the cameras was to open the county meetings to as many people as possible, Robertson said he didn’t see a problem with the Liberators’ group selling the discs. Fellow commissioners Marilyn Kittelman and Joe Laurance concurred.
• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@nrtoday.com.
