I wonder what legal contortions were necessary to argue that "the speech was a performance distributed to the news media and not the public." That's some of the

I wonder what legal contortions were necessary to argue that "the speech was a performance distributed to the news media and not the public." That's some of the purest baloney I've ever heard. If giving a speech to a fifth of a million people on the steps of one of the most famous public monuments in the world, in one of the most famous public spaces in the world, doesn't count as "public," what possibly could? Maybe the "not the public" summation is a poor one. I've often thought it would be beneficial to the cause of history and governmental transparency to get more videos, recordings, and photographs of our important leaders (presidential candidates, et al) into the public domain. I had thought it was something a non-profit, a quasi-governmental corporation like PBS, or a governmental department could organize. But I don't know how copyright law interacts with public performances (obviously).