This is an amusing copyright case. A court reporter in the City of Albuquerque insisted on getting paid for the use of his court transcript by a lawyer. This was upheld by a district court who ordered the lawyer to pay $4K to the reporter. The lawyer appealed and the lower court decision was overturned:
“In broad terms, [the court reporter's] fee claim rests on the tacit premise that court reporters in some legal sense own the content of the transcripts they prepare, such that they are entitled to remuneration whenever a copy of a transcript is made (even if they played no role in making the copy). To accept this premise would effectively give court reporters a “copyright” in a mere transcription of others’ statements, contrary to black letter copyright law. See 2 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright, Ch. 4 Noncopyrightable Material, § 4.88 (Updated Sept. 2008) (court reporters are not “authors of what they transcribe and therefore cannot be copyright owners of the transcript of court proceedings”).”
Interesting, the court reporter had to write this down, most bloggers can just do “cut & paste” and they still think it’s sort of authored and certainly could be monetized. Even Moses knew better, he said “Erase me from Your Book” – I am just a transcriber. (via Ex©lusive Rights )