[Infowarrior] - FBI Agent Tries To Register Copyright On Top Secret Interrogation Manual... Making It Available To Anyone

[Richard Forno]

FBI Agent Tries To Register Copyright On Top Secret Interrogation Manual... Making It Available To Anyone

from the copyright-uber-alles dept

Here's a bizarre one on so many levels. The FBI has a top secret 70-page "interrogation manual." For years, the ACLU has been trying to get its hands on a copy, finally receiving a heavily redacted one. However, it turns out that if the good folks at the ACLU had just decided to wander over to the Library of Congress, they could have seen a totally unredacted copy of the entire manual, as could anyone else with a library card. Why? Because in this bizarre age we live in, in which people seem to think it's important to copyright absolutely everything the senior FBI official who authored the manual decided that he should try to register a copyright on it, and submitted it to the Library of Congress as a part of the registration process, whereby it becomes available to anyone who stops by and asks for it. 

This is idiotic on multiple levels. First, as is well known, documents produced by federal government employees are automatically public domain, meaning that you cannot copyright them. Second, of course, why the hell would this FBI supervisory special agent think it even made the least bit of sense to try to get a copyright, let alone submit a copy of the top secret manual to the Library of Congress? Then, of course, there's the issue that even if it was possible to put a copyright on this document (and, again, there's not), it would almost certainly belong not to the individual FBI agent, but to the government itself. Not only can't this guy get a copyright, but there's no reason for him to try to get a copyright (what, is he going to sell the book?), and then revealing the manual to anyone, let alone an operation whose basic entire purpose is to catalog the works and make them available to the public is quite incredible. 

Mother Jones, who went and found the manual at the Library of Congress, quotes a few people who are reasonably shocked that this happened.....

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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131220/10200525651/fbi-agent-tries-to-register-copyright-top-secret-interrogation-manual-making-it-available-to-anyone.shtml

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