SACRAMENTO (CN) — A bill giving California a copyright in records created at taxpayer expense is set for a floor vote Thursday in the state Assembly, over the stark warning of First Amendment advocates.
The bill would take California records and put them within the federal copyright and trademark protections accorded to private intellectual property, allowing the state and county governments to control their use. The bill would cover works such as maps, reports and recorded hearings.
"What we're really aiming at are the trademarks," said Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterrey Bay, during a Judiciary Committee hearing in April. "I don't think this bill reaches unnecessarily or reaches at all into the way copyrights are formed or attached under the federal law."
Despite those statements, the bill continues to refer specifically to "public works" under "copyright protection."
The bill's sweeping change of status for public records comes out of a limited dispute between an ex-concessionaire and the federal government over Yosemite National Park trademarks, such as the Ahwanee Hotel and the Curry Village. In an effort to prevent such a threat to any public creation in California, the Assembly Judiciary Committee unanimously passed AB 2880 in April.
"The bill is a remedy in search of a problem," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition based in San Rafael. "What they don't realize is they're stepping into a hornet's nest."
He pointed out that the federal government itself does not claim copyright protection in its public works and that absence has not caused any crises in government. He questioned why California would need to go so far as to threaten its own Public Records Act through the proposed legislation.
Jim Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said, "Our concern is the potential for an agency to use copyright as a means to limit the public's ability to use records that a state or local agncy has created."
The CNPA on Thursday declared its opposition to the bill in a letter to Stone because of the dramatic changes to existing law that would result from the bill and the limits on the public's ability to share public records. The publishers association is joined by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association.
Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel for the San Francisco-based Electric Frontier Foundation, first raised the alarm about the bill's overreach, testifying before the Judiciary Committee before it was passed on a 9-0 vote.
"We have not seen any justification for moving government works out of the public domain into copyright and none has been provided for such a broad authorization," he said in an email on Wednesday. "The Legislature has passed limited and narrow copyright bills in the past but this departs from that practice."
The tide of criticism from civil liberties advocates resulted in a modest set of proposed amendments published Wednesday, in advance of Thursday's floor vote. If the bill passes, it will then move on to the state Senate, in all likelihood assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The amendments appear to add a layer of regulation but do not undo the brunt of the legislation changing the legal status of public works.