At the end of his scholarly piece on whether the Rules of the Houses of the Oireachtas applied to non-members, Fergal correctly pointed out that while the House rules trying to control how Oireachtas video was used might lack teeth, they did not deal with the question of copyright.

The relevant portion of the Copyright Act of 2000 which deals with copyright on proceedings in the Oireachtas is Section 71
71.—(1) The copyright in a work is not infringed by anything done for the purposes of parliamentary or judicial proceedings or for the purpose of reporting those proceedings.
(2) Subsection (1) shall not be construed as authorising the copying of a work which is itself a report of the proceedings which has been lawfully made available to the public.

The question arises then: is copying, adapting, quoting or otherwise using the streaming footage from the Oireachtas an infringement on the House’s copyright?

Well, Section 71 (1) tells us that that we can do anything for the purpose of reporting proceedings. The nature of that report- be it positive or negative or a mixture of both- isn’t relevant.

Section 71 (2) makes sure we realise that 71(1) doesn’t mean that we can start to copy other people’s reports with impunity. No taping Oireachtas Report by RTE from the telly and then rebroadcasting it on your own station.

This position relies on the meaning of the word ‘report’. A reasonable argument can be made that if a ‘report’ were to include the raw streaming footage of what is happening in the chambers, then we would not be allowed to copy it. But if a ‘report’ were something made from that streaming video (ie it required some further intervention to turn it into a report) then it would be a legitimate source of footage.

That the latter is the case is possible given the existence of Section 71. If the raw, unmediated stream of events from the chambers were to be, in themselves, a report and therefore under copyright then Section 71 (1) would be a dead letter, in relation to video footage when read together with Section 71 (2). As nobody other than the official in-house system are permitted to record the business of the chamber, there is no other source of footage from the House. Therefore any report made using the official footage would be liable to a claim of breach of copyright- making the rights granted by Section 71(1) worthless.

It is a long-standing principle in jurisprudence that if there are two competing meanings which can be put on a piece of legislation, and one would mean that the Oireachtas had passed a meaningless law, the courts will presume that the legislature (acting as a rational agent), did not intend that meaning and will apply the alternative.

However, we might also consider the alternative case- that the stream is a report, and therefore is protected by S 71(2). This could arise because the wording of S 71(1) could be argued to have been intended to protect old fashioned Dail Reporting. That is, it prevents a person who has said something in the Dail they might wish didn’t become public knowledge from blocking the reporting of the text of that speech by claiming copyright over it.

Nonetheless, even if that were to be the case, it is interesting to note that S. 71(1) uses the phrase “copyright in a work” while S.71(2) only claws back the right to control copy. S. 37 of the Act defines the rights of an owner of the ‘copyright in a work’ as being the power to restrict a) copying, b) making available and c) adaptation. So the rights to make available and adapt the Dail footage remain protected by Section 71(1).

Let’s turn our attention to another interesting part of the Copyright Act 2000 we haven’t yet discussed. Section 52 deals with the permitted use of extracts, quotation and incidental uses of copyrighted material in a new work. It’s short, and worth quoting in full.
52.—(1) The copyright in a work is not infringed by its inclusion in

If you’re working on a video, and you want to beef up your sound track (or add the wonderful sound of a man slipping on a banana) you probably won’t have access to the towering stack of Sound Effect CDs your local radio station will have. But fear not. In this, as in all things, the Internet will provide.

Freesound (google it to find it) is a collection of noises and sounds released under a Creative Commons attribution licence, suitable for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Alfred Hitchcock found the actual business of filming tiresome. He thought of it as mere assembly work. That was because he’d done all the interesting pieces of film-making beforehand. Shots, angles, lighting and so on were all worked out in advance on a storyboard. Filming was just the plodding recreation of the already imagined scenes.

You may not be making a Hollywood thriller, but even a simple video, particularly one with a narrative, will benefit from some preparation. Its faster (and therefore in commercial filming, cheaper) to rub out or erase a sketch because you don’t like the angle of the shot once you see it on paper than it is to reposition the camera on a set.

If, like me, you’ve never progressed beyond stick figures you might find a storyboarding programme can help.

And, as it so happens, here’s a free one now (http://www.atomiclearning.com/storyb.... It even comes with twelve little video tutorials to show you how to use it.

Now don’t say I never give you anything. Come to think of it, by the time a full storyboard is done, you could almost just film that and put it up instead of going to the trouble of shooting the thing. If only Alfred Hitchcock had thought of that.