Copyright Law Being Misused to (Continue to Hide) Manifesto of Nashville Mass Murder

If the mass murderer had been an avowed white supremacist, his/her writings would have been public immediately after the murders. In the case of the March 2023 Nashville mass murders, however, the shooter was a transgender man, so the rule are completely different. The authorities are doing everything possible to prevent those writings from being public because the would (presumably) conflict with a powerful narrative relating to transgender ideology. FIRE explains:

A Nashville judge held that the journal entries of school shooter Audrey Hale, who went by Aiden, can’t be released under state open records law because to do so would violate copyright law. If you’re confused, that’s probably because you understand copyright law, open records law, or both.

In the United States, copyright is an economic right. While those are important, they should not generally outweigh compelling public interests — like knowing how we missed the motives that led to the murder of three children and three adults.
I recently wrote about the backstory of this case on FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff’s Eternally Radical Idea Substack newsletter, but let’s walk through how we got here.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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