Mass shooting survivors turn to an unlikely place for justice – copyright law; The Guardian, October 18, 2024

Robin Buller , The Guardian; Mass shooting survivors turn to an unlikely place for justice – copyright law

"In a Nashville courtroom in early July, survivors of the 2023 Covenant school shooting celebrated an unusual legal victory. Citing copyrightlaw, Judge l’Ashea Myles ruled that the assailant’s writings and other creative property could not be released to the public.

After months of hearings, the decision came down against conservative lawmakers, journalists and advocates who had sued for access to the writings, claiming officials had no right to keep them from the public. But since parents of the assailant – who killed six people at the private Christian elementary school, including three nine-year-old children – signed legal ownership of the shooter’s journals over to the families of surviving students last year, Myles said releasing the materials would violate the federal Copyright Act...

Keeping a shooter’s name or creative property – such as a manifesto or recording – out of the public eye does more than protect the emotional wellbeing of those impacted, experts say. It also helps to prevent future massacres.

That such material can serve as inspiration has been widely documented, explains Rachel Carroll Rivas of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “Those videos just have an inherent dangerous factor, and they really shouldn’t be allowed to spread across the internet,” she said.

The danger stems from the fact that shooters, research has shown, often desire attention, recognition and notoriety."