Does copyright provide shade against Sunshine laws? - Scholarly Communications @ Duke

"There are many situations in which the application of fair use is vitally important.  Educational uses are paramount, of course, and the law of fair use was clearly written with them in mind.  But right up at the top of the list, along with education, should be protecting free speech and supporting governmental transparency. This last value, however, has been put in some doubt by a decision back in August by the Missouri Court of Appeals.  The question, which has arisen in several recent court cases, is whether copyright can be used by a state university to avoid releasing materials that have been requested under the state’s freedom of information, or 'Sunshine' laws as they are often called.  The laws are intended to shine light on the workings of government, and these situations where copyright is asserted to prevent the release of records threaten a novel method by which government agencies can avoid public scrutiny. The cases have been brought by an organization called the National Council on Teacher Quality, or NCTQ, which advocates for tougher evaluation standards for teachers and is sharply critical of many teacher education programs.  The NCTQ has sent requests under numerous state Sunshine laws asking for the syllabi used in various teacher education courses at state universities, and that is where the copyright cases have arisen.  In at least two states the university and/or a teachers union has sought to prevent the release of the requested syllabi by asserting that such documents are the copyrighted property of individual faculty members and that the Sunshine laws do not permit the state to release material when doing so might infringe copyright. I am coming at this issue slightly backwards, because I was alerted to it by a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education  when, earlier this month, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a decision refusing to release the syllabi because they were protected by copyright.  That decision, handed down in August by the Missouri Court of Appeals, was something of a shock to me; the reasoning is so bizarre and it seems to try so hard to misconstrue the arguments made by the NCTQ that I can only conclude it is result-driven.  That is, the court decided what it wanted to do and then contorted the law to achieve that outcome.  I want to walk through some of the oddities of this decision, then look briefly at a case from Minnesota, decided a year earlier, in August 2013, and pointed out to the Missouri court, that got the situation right, in my opinion, recognizing that fair use can prevent state entities from using copyright to shield themselves from sunshine laws ..."