The SDC, which is the Society of Directors and Choreographers, talks about it. They are careful to point out that they've never attempted to infringe on a playwright's rights or a playwright's income. But the consequence of director's copyright should one ever be recognized. And the law does not recognize the director's copyright. It simply doesn't exist. But their union has been trying very hard to establish one. The fundamental reason it's a problem, it seems to me, is that it's thought of as something that a director who does a first production either on Broadway or at a theater like the Goodman, a major first production should be entitled to participate in some ownership way in what results on stage. The difficulty with copyright is that it does not simply apply to one director in one set of circumstances. If the director of the first production at the Goodman is entitled to copyright his staging, his or her staging, then it means that a director who does it in a high school in Texas someplace 10 years later is also entitled to the same copyright protection. So that a play, which exists as an independent piece of theatrical art, inevitably becomes something that you don't own on your own, but which you begin to own in partnership with every director who has ever mounted it any place. And the consequence of that in terms of your ability to control what you write would be devastating, frankly. And we have done everything we can and continue to do everything we can to intervene, to monitor, to try and put a lid on this. The SDC seems to have backed off slightly in their sort of political decision to push this, but they were very active for 15 years and they've created a situation in which people are confused about whether or not directors actually own what they create. There should be no confusion, they don't, and we're struggling very hard to make sure it stays that way. We are in the process and have been for the last, oh, year or so of having discussions with the SDC in an attempt to be not just at loggerheads and not simply to be hostile to one another, but to try to find as much common ground as we possibly can. One of our offices on the council, Doug Wright, has spent an enormous amount of time heading a committee, a group of dramatists who have been meeting with counterparts at the SDC to discuss these issues and to see where we agree and where we don't. And there has been a surprising amount of agreement, though we certainly have our areas where we still strongly have different positions. What we are going to attempt to do as a guild, and it's interesting that Ralph pointed out to me the letter from Robert Anderson, where essentially he wrote to the members of the dramatist guild with a kind of a guild position on this, what we are going to attempt to do and we hope we can achieve it by the end of this year is to have a fairly definitive set of recommendations for our membership in terms of when a director is entitled to some continuing participation in the show or maybe entitled to continuing participation in the show beyond the production that he or she directs. What are those circumstances and when is that not the case? And to try to define it pretty clearly and unambiguously for our membership. Obviously, we being a guild and not a union for the reasons that the legal reasons with which I think everybody's familiar, it's not something that we can dictate to our membership nor frankly, even if we could, would we probably want to but we would like to be pretty definitive about our recommendations and we will tell you the areas with which we are in agreement with the SDC and the areas with which we're not. And as I said, that's forthcoming. The discussions are ongoing. They've been extremely productive. Doug, James Lapine and Emily Mann in particular from the drama skilled have been putting in a great deal of time on this. Yeah, let me just so it doesn't sound as though Stephen and I are disagreeing because we're not. Stephen has really spearheaded this attempt to find common ground with the SDC which has been enormously productive. It's not useful for us to be at loggerheads all the time. The copyright issue, however, is like an entirely separate stream and that's really what I was addressing myself to not to the issues that Stephen is talking about. Absolutely and I think there is no question that the guild continues to feel and with the support of the copyright office that there is no director's copyright. The copyright law is currently up for review being rewritten and myself and other members of the drama skilled have been in touch with the copyright office. We've given some testimony, et cetera, to try to make sure that this does not change. Yes, we met with the current register and I think the copyright office is sympathetic to the notion that ideas, which is what direction is, should not be elevated to the status of property. It would be chaotic not just for the theater but for every industry working in with copyrighted material where people have ideas and then claim ownership. Ideas are not property. Under copyright law, ideas are public domain. So there may be some other theory under which directors might claim some interest or something but it's certainly not copyright and that's been our position. The SDC a few months ago put out, they put out a regular magazine or newsletter where they were once again telling their membership, make sure you register your work for copyright. So they haven't given up this claim and their basic contract with the producers says that they have a property right. It doesn't tell you what kind of property it is, it just says a property right and that they retain ownership of it. How they can do that when the producer who's their employer doesn't have the right to give them anything because the office contract with the producer says we own any changes in this work. So what can the producer give their employee, the director? Just one other thought to add to that. If you are ever handed a collaboration agreement and those of you who work on musicals may be and I have been a collaboration agreement that is between you and other writers but also conceivably a director as well, make sure you read your own agreement because it may contain language in which you acknowledge that the director has the right to copyright his or her work and I have dealt with an agreement like that with a close friend and insisted that the language come out and it did but you wanna make sure it's not there because it puts you in a compromise because it won't change the law but it puts you in an uncomfortable position. Simply their act of registering their stage directions it's often done with notations on your script submitted to the copyright office. So arguably just the act of the registration is a violation of your copyright. Certainly they need your approval to do it because if it's any kind of property it can only be a derivative work based on your play and when you create a derivative work you need the underlying owner's permission and unless you've given that permission then it's not an authorized registration. So there's very many reasons why this thing doesn't exist and shouldn't exist. That's interesting, there have been cases they've all been settled. There was a case right here in Chicago involving the show You're in Town. There was a production in Chicago and won in Akron about the same time and the New York director and choreographer and designers with their union representatives had a press conference in which they told everybody that these people were infringing their copyrights. And so there was a litigation. The directors, one of whom was an SDC director being sued by his own union decided to fight back and fire the first shot and preemptively sued them first for the kind of judgment that you would wanna have which is the court saying either this is copyrightable or this isn't. Unfortunately, both the director in Chicago and the one in Akron didn't have the means to withstand a kind of prolonged and protracted litigation. And so it was settled and these settlements have no legal bearing. No legal bearing but they can create the impression depending on how the language which comes out of them is framed. They can create the impression that a director's copyright sort of exists. And I would like to say that Tom Mullen who was the director who was accused of plagiarism here was did a very courageous thing which was to initiate the litigation essentially to sue his own union which is not an easy thing to do. And we were able to obtain through some odd freedom of information act the correspondence between the attorney for the SDC and the copyright office in which repeated attempts to copyright the Broadway director's work on your intent. Repeated attempts under different theories to file a copyright were rejected by the copyright office. And in the end, the copyright office asked the Department of Justice to intervene in the legislation. The assumption clearly being that they wanted this issue resolved and the way they wanted to resolve was a resolution that we mean there was no director's copyright. But the SDC settlement was reached before that happened. And of course courts are unpredictable and if this is ever litigated to conclusion there's really no way of knowing how one particular judge will view it. So it's a very prickly issue. And it's one of the reasons we formed the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund which we're gonna talk about a little bit later. I would like to get onto some of the other subjects and we'll take questions more at the end. Let's talk about some other collaborator issues. We have orchestrators and we have dramaturgs. Oh, let's deal with the dramaturgs first since it's related to the director's issue. John, you were on board when we did the rent case, right? Yeah. I mean, most of you, many of you may be familiar with this case, but if not, after Jonathan Larson died, Jonathan Larson wrote rent, all of it. After he died, a woman who had been assigned to work with him as a dramaturg asserted a joint authorship or co-authorship claim in the work that her contributions to the script itself, to the lyrics were so substantial that she should be recognized as a co-author. And the Larson estate vigorously rejected this assertion and it was litigated and the Dramatist Guild filed an amicus brief. Obviously, the issue involved was very important to us and to all of you. You don't want to discover that you've acquired a co-author when you didn't expect to, when you didn't ask for one, and maybe you were assigned one. And in fact, the outcome in the case was one that we would have hoped for. The, although these decisions are usually more complicated than you'd like them to be, but the dramaturg's assertion was rejected. With the issue, whether the issue will come up again, maybe less a matter of litigation and maybe a matter of the kind of pressure that's put on you if you are working at a not-for-profit theater or you receive a commission and there is a dramaturg on staff who somebody you are expected to collaborate with whatever collaboration means. So again, it's an ongoing issue that we're dealing with and you will be too. I think that the thing to take away from the rent case is we produced an amicus brief on both the trial and appellate levels and the judge's decisions on both levels quoted our briefs to some degree and accepted our reasoning and they held and it's still true and this is the law for you guys going forward. You can't get a co-author by accident. It requires two things. It requires actual copyrightable contribution by both parties. So ideas are not copyrightable. But the court in rent said, okay, well except for the sake of argument that this was a copyrightable contribution. They really didn't get into the specifics. But it also requires the intent, the subjective intent of the two parties that they be co-authors. With Larson having passed away, they had to look at what they called indisha of authorship. What things did he do that would make it clear to a third party that he intended for her to be a co-author? Did he give her co-authorship credit? No, he gave her dramaturg credit. Did he give her approval over the text? No, he maintained the text and she only had input and advice. Did she have approval over casting or the other approvals that authors are entitled to know? It was his exercise of approval. So these are the kind of things that the court looked at. So when you're working with people in this context, it's the obligation of the other party to try and get an agreement with you if they want a co-authorship deal and it's your right to say no. Those are the kind of situations that the court is gonna look at if you're giving somebody a conceived by or a with or any kind of ambiguous kind of credit that could be thought of as a thorial, you're laying the groundwork for a claim. So I would suggest you not do that. You can be grateful in the thank you section..(audience laughing and laughing loudly in background.) Let's move on to orchestrators. Steven, could you tell us a little bit what issues have arisen between composers and their orchestrators? Yeah, in a way, Ralph, I'm gonna kick this back to you pretty quickly because I know you were looking at these contracts as they come in. Over the last few years, this is a fairly recent development brought about by sort of aggressive representation of orchestrators trying to expand the rights of orchestrators and arrangers in a composer's work. And part of it is the fuzziness of defining what the difference is between an arranger and an orchestrator, which is a somewhat blurry line. It's very clear if the composer has presented quite complete music to be orchestrated. It gets less clear when you have a composer who sings a tune and someone puts the tune down and provides harmonization, et cetera, of the tune. That gets to be increasingly blurry. And there are a lot of examples of this, including extremely well-known Broadway composers who... Tony-winning composers. Tony-winning composers of whom this was true. And so this sort of leaked into the orchestrator issue. I wanna kick it over to Ralph to talk a little bit about what he has been getting in terms of contracts. And we've had discussions with representatives of orchestrators and arrangers, again, to try to make sure our position is clear and understand their position such as it is. My understanding of the way it works with an orchestrator is that, again, they are hired by the producer as employees, obviously with the approval of the composer, generally you get to pick your orchestrator. But you're not hiring the orchestrator. The producer is hiring the orchestrator. The producer is paying the orchestrator in a way that's very clearly defined by the union, by the musician's union. And then over the course of time, if you have a show that's running for a length of time and generating income, as the composer, a certain amount is deducted from your weekly royalty to pay back the producer, what he, she, they have paid the orchestrator. Is it up to 50%? Yeah. But, and obviously if the run ends before that 50% is completed, so be it. But if it's running a good long time, that does get paid off. And my understanding is under that agreement, the composer owns the copyright to the orchestrations. Yeah. The composer owns the copyright under the APC and the work done by orchestrators and arrangers are done on a work for hire basis. And the producer assigns those property rights to the author, the composer. That's part of the deal. So under, the orchestrator is part of the musician's union. The musician's union has something to say about what orchestrators get paid. It has nothing to say about what arrangers get paid. So we have to look a bit, what's the difference? I mean, as Stephen says, this is a very fuzzy area. And so I'm gonna over generalize in a gross way to try and make you see what might be the difference. If you imagine an orchestration being, the arranger, a composer has provided melodic, harmonic, rhythmic elements score to an orchestrator, and the orchestrator takes that and assigns those lines, those notes, to various instruments in an orchestra, orchestrates. They technically may not add any additional copyrightable material to that score. It is an interpretation of that score to make it work for the size orchestra that is gonna be using that score. An arranger may be only, may be asked to change rhythms, may be asked to change harmonic elements for a specific moment in a show, for specific uses. They may be adding copyrightable, theoretically, material to the score. And that's why the union doesn't represent them, because if they're authors, they're not employees, they're not union members, but orchestrators are employees. So the orchestrator should be getting for their orchestration the fees that they get from under the union guideline, plus what are called new use fees. When the orchestration is used in a new context, for example, if you've produced it on Broadway, you then wanna use that orchestration for stock and amateur licensing. That's a new context. And so an additional fee is paid. If you want to do it for a movie, if you wanna use that music in a movie, that's a new use.  But what if the orchestrator and or arranger wants a fee, not just for new uses, but for reuses. If they're going to do another first class production somewhere, maybe in Europe, maybe a touring show. That's not provided for in the union contract. That's provided for in a side letter deal that you as composers are asked to sign by the producer with the orchestrator as a condition of them signing their contract and doing it at work for hire. They want you to sign a side letter, giving them all these additional fees. And if they don't get paid those fees, you can't use their orchestrations, they say. That's a question still. But anyway, it's making all of these things more expensive. If you look at the growth of the cost of orchestrations compared to the cost of the growth and the cost of any other aspect of a theatrical production, it's disproportionate to say the least. But that's part of the cost of doing business, okay, the orchestrator, the composer is being asked to bear these additional costs now. And so there's now a conflict between the composer and the orchestrator. So we're trying to, it's too important a relationship to leave like that. And so we've been in conversations, we've been having some round table discussions with composers, with their representatives to see if there's some way to resolve or come up with an industry standard that everybody's okay with. May I ask, has the use of, because this is something that I'm ignorant of, though I know in execution, I always wind up, my orchestras always wind up getting paid for the stock in amateur. But is that really a new use? It's not a new use, it's a, well, it is a new use because the contract with the union has a provision that says if you want to do the stock in amateur, it calls it a reuse, a new use, and it says you can pay a discounted rate. If you exercise that option within a certain amount of time. So the producer can sort of pay a quick option on the orchestrations without having to pay the full fee if they do it quickly. By the way, one of the things that has been happening recently with some aggressive representatives is they have said that their clients are refusing the discounted rate. Yes. At which point, what I have done and what I recommend doing is to say then I'm getting a different orchestrator. And at which point the orchestrator then accepts the discounted rate. Right. What you're buying when the composer reimburses the producer, what they're buying is the physical scores. You already own the copyright in the scores, which you're buying is the physical scores that you can take and give to the stock in amateur licensing house so they can make copies and use it for their licensing and other producers and productions around the world. So it's becoming less and less valuable for composers to do this since especially in the digital age when there are no physical scores necessarily, there could just be a digital file that is emailed back and forth and sent to the, eventually somebody has to print something out so there will be a physical score so there's at least an argument that the producer still has to be paid back for that. But it's becoming less and less valuable to the author to pay this option, this fee for you might be better off hiring a new orchestrator than paying the reuse fees that are attached to them. So I think that's enough on that. I'd like to switch us to production issues. After collaborator issues, the biggest major issue is what happens when a show is in production and what issues arise that impact the author. I'd like to talk about subsidiary rights and what the Guild has been doing about that over the years. John, can you start us up on that? Yeah, I can start, and I'll pass it up to Stephen and we can talk about what's going on now. Over the course of the last four or five years, this is an issue that we've tackled head on starting in New York City. We're in New York City, that's where often these battles get fought for the first time, but the success that we've had there, we now expect to roll out across the country once we've established a kind of a standard with New York Not-for-Profit Theatres, and we're talking about not-for-profits for the most part. There are in New York, it's generally recognized to be sort of four preeminent not-for-profit theaters, Lincoln Center Theater, the Public Theater, the Roundabout Manhattan Theater Club.  It would be for a limited number of performances, covering, let's say, a couple of months. The author's royalty would either be fixed or would be quite low, and in exchange for that, they expected 40% of the author's sub-rights going forward. 40% of a play which is not successful is 40% of not much, but if you take a play, and this was one of the plays that started this discussion, like Intimate Apparel, for which I think Lynn Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize, as soon as the run at the Roundabout was finished, there were dozens of other theaters that were interested in producing her play, and the issue was, given the compensation she had received from the Roundabout, was it fair for the Roundabout to expect 40% of her income from those subsequent productions? The answer is no. We entered into discussions with the Roundabout around another play, and in fact, and credit to the Roundabout, they recognized that fact, not comfortably or easily, and they changed their policy to something which is now eminently acceptable. They will run a play for a limited period of time. There was no sub-rights relationship. There's no sub-rights agreement with the author at all. If they want to extend the play, they can then enter into a discussion with the playwright in which they ask for a sub-rights participation. The playwright can say, no, I'm happy to have you close the play. But if the playwright says yes, the sub-rights participation is capped at 10%. Is that right? It's not. How high can it go? It will probably float up back up to 40. It can go back to 40. But let's understand that this pertains to shows at the Roundabout that run more than 18 weeks. They give you 12 weeks for a flat fee, up to another six weeks of extension for gross royalty. And then past that, they have to come to terms with you. But you get 18 weeks of presentation with no subsidiary rights obligations at all. If they go past 18 weeks and you make a deal with them, you make a deal on whatever terms you feel like making a deal with. The issue though is that they've never run a show more than 18 rights. In their history. So it's more theoretical than actual. I mean, we then, and I'll let Stephen talk about this. We then entered into what was essentially a negotiation with the public theater, which under Oscar Eustis, again, was eager to fix what once it was pointed out to them. They acknowledged was an imbalance in this area between them and their playwrights. And we arrived at a different arrangement, but one which seems equally equitable. It's a version of what's referred to as a windfall of sub rights participation in which the first $75,000 of sub rights income to the playwright is not touched by the theater. And then beyond that, the theater will participate. So it's only if the playwright has had a really successful play, which has had a vigorous stock and amateur life that the public then begins to participate. So the playwright is protected in that instance. Lincoln Center's never taken any sub rights. So we felt we would leave them alone. They're not trying to negotiate them out of that position. Although they do have a guild contract. They, you know, it's a certified guild contract. And Manhattan Theater Club, which was recalcitrant in this area for a long time in discussions with Stephen has made real progress. Not quite as much as we would like, but it's coming. And once this package is completed, I think it's fair to say the plan is to try and extend these standards to comparable theaters across the country. Did you want to add anything to this? Not really. I think John has given a, you know, really clear explication of this. We are close with Manhattan Theater Club, but there is one, I won't go into detail because the negotiations continue, but there is one area that is very, very significant to us in the guild that they have not yet agreed to. And that may founder the entire agreement we'll see. But the point is that we are talking quite actively and aggressively with those theaters which present new work and attach themselves to the author's income from the new work subsequent to those presentations and trying to arrive at some standard that is fair to the theaters, but also not over burdensome to the authors. And we're making progress in that area. I mean, just to add to that, one of the things that is sort of entertaining about this, it seems to me is that because not-for-profits have to make public filings that other theaters don't have to, we have had access to the information about how much money they have actually derived from these sub-rights' participation. And the numbers, particularly taken as percentages of their operating budgets, are insignificant. And so put us in a position to be able to point this out to them, something that you would think they would have known themselves. But again, it's one of those negotiations where you're dealing with- Egos? Well, yes, egos, but also very shifting senses of what's fair and what isn't fair. What am I as a theater entitled to as a result of having produced your play? Have I sort of done you a favor which has now made it successful around the country? The counter argument, of course, is, well, it didn't do the round about any harm to produce intimate apparel. It's good for them to produce both surprise winning plays. But there's a lot of emotion involved in these discussions. And we've been able to get past a lot of that, actually. I think part of that conversation was to show them that what was essentially paperclip money for their administration of their institution was grocery money, was rent money for writers. It allowed writers to keep writing in the theater. And if they weren't willing to invest in the writers instead of their overhead, that's a choice they're making. And they can make a different choice. And so some theaters have made a different choice and we congratulate them for that. We're gonna ask some other theaters to make that choice. I mean, Todd, Todd Hames, excuse me, Todd London did all of us a favor. I mean, I don't know how many people have read Outrageous Fortune here, but it's a dismal picture of what it's like to try and make a living as a playwright. But the fact that he quantified how dismal it is means that there's sort of an objective source of information about how much more it means to a playwright to receive $175 that you don't need than it does to you. And so hopefully it'll help us going forward. We're running out of time. So I wanna talk about the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund. This is a recent initiative. The Guild is created in part to try and deal with some of these issues that we've been talking about. John, do you wanna talk a little bit about it? Yeah, this is a young organization. For many years, the Dramatist Guild had virtually no money. Then all of a sudden, the Dramatist Guild had money thanks to Ralph and Stephen. And so some of that money was carved out to fund a separate organization which can be more immediately into use of, we'll be hearing the papers all the time, more nimbly involved in actual legal issues and litigation. The board consists of me and Ralph and Lauren and Rick Pappas and Sarah Rule and Lydia Diamond and J.T. Rogers. So it's a very nice balance between sort of attorneys and playwrights. And for example, at the moment, we're looking at anti-smoking laws, which don't seem to have a lot to do with the theater. But the anti-smoking law in New Jersey prohibits smoking in public places. And as a consequence, certain plays can't be done without changing the stage direction. You cannot smoke an herbal cigarette on stage. You cannot use an electronic cigarette on stage. So if you're doing 12 Angry Men, you've got a problem. And but if you think about the number of great American plays that look dumb if somebody's carrying a candy cigarette around the stage, this is clearly one assumes an undetended consequence of this legislation. So it's the kind of thing that we now have an organization which can step directly into this and try and get the law altered so that Emily Manitou-McCarty Theater can go back to using cigarettes, herbal cigarettes and her Edward Alvey plays. There was a Colorado law suit on this issue that TCG defended with the theaters. And we participated in that with an amicus brief on that one. But I think Chicago also has this very same problem. I'm not sure, but I remember getting contacted by a reporter in this town about a year ago on this very issue. So it's something we'd like to address nationwide eventually, but we're gonna need a test case and we'll see if we can find one. Meanwhile, the Defense Fund is a 501C3 non-profit organization that can accept donations for its efforts. So that's different than the GIL, this is a trade association. And we're going to be dealing with this and censorship issues, directors, copyright issues, anything that impacts the public domain because if you take work out of the public domain and give an ownership interest to Romeo and Juliet, to every high school teacher in America who directs a production of it, that's an impact on the public domain and on the rights of audiences to see that play. So those are the kind of questions we're gonna hope to deal with and we hope you will bring us some issues that you're dealing with. And right now I'd like to throw the floor open for questions. Yeah, what about how conversion times are over the director's right for future royalties or first refusal on productions which can be a real impediment to going forward with the play? What's the GIL's position on that? GIL's position is no. But you're under a lot of pressure. Yes, absolutely. Look, am I gonna tell you that writers don't give those? Yes, some writers give those. It will encumber your play. If especially early in the life of a play, if you've attached a director that a subsequent commercial producer doesn't want, the commercial producer has to buy out that director and then hire another director. So that makes your play more expensive to produce than somebody else's play. And you don't wanna give producers reasons not to produce your play. With regard to, and that's regards first refusal. What's interesting about first refusal is they want the right to produce the next production but they don't want the obligation to direct the next production because that's indentured servitude. We don't do that in this country anymore. But they certainly, there's a one way, there's an assumption that they, by directing your play, they have added value to your play, your copyright. But yet they have gained nothing from you so you have to pay them or give them future employment. No, directing your play has allowed them to present your play as their work, to other theaters, to work with actors, to work with designers. It advances their career. They don't do it out of altruism. They do it because their professionals looking to advance their career and think that your play is a vehicle for that. So that's the value they should be getting and you should be getting the value of having had the production. Everybody bears their own risk or should be but you're being asked to be a guarantor of their future employment.  And let me just add to that because this is, Stephen has been in the middle of this.  But regardless of where the negotiations or the conversations go, correct me if I'm wrong, but the intention is to publish a set of guidelines that hopefully will allow you as a guild member when you're asked to do something that is offensive to say, you know what? My guild has published a set of standard behaviors that apply in a situation like this and I really have to adhere to that. That doesn't mean they're gonna go, oh well in that case you can have everything you want and we apologize. But it hopefully it's something which the guild, as your guild can do, which will support you when you're confronted with that kind of dilemma. Last night in that video that we showed that sort of says, introduces the dramatist guild to people. One of the pieces that I find the best in that is John Kander saying that being a member of the guild has allowed him to say, because he's not a confrontational gentleman, he has allowed him to say producers, I'd love to give you all my royalties, but I can't because my guild won't let me. And listen, it's all very well for us to sort of make jokes about saying no to directors, but you are right, there is an enormous amount of pressure to do so. And this is why we are working urgently to try to come up with guidelines. I will tell you that knowing in advance some of the things that I believe are going to be in these guidelines, I have just had a circumstance with a specific director on a new show who asked for more than these guidelines where I could say to the representative, I can't do it. So if he wants to direct the show, I cannot do that because the guild is not gonna let me do that. And that was the end of that discussion. And this is a pretty powerful director. So there is some value in that and some power in it, and that's why we're really trying to get some specifics for you guys. And I don't know if it makes you feel better or worse, but I mean, those problems don't go away when you get to be Stephen Schwartz. No, they don't. They don't. That's what I'm saying. You're always under a lot of pressure and there's sitting in that room that there's a letter from Clifford Odette's from 1930 something to the Dramatist Guild asking for help because I think it's a wake and sing. And he's saying, this is my first play and I really wanna get this produced and I like this director, but he's asking for things that I don't wanna give help. So this is an ongoing problem and it's one of the things we wanna try to be able to be helpful with. There are folks in the back who've been. I have the microphone. Okay, oh, okay. Oh, sorry. But a very brief. We can get to you, I promise. But a very brief question. Just the name of the rent case? The rent case, a Thompson v. Larson or is it Larson v. Thompson? One of those. There's a Larson and a Thompson. Yeah. There are guys in the back. The actual case. The cases and our briefs are on our website. So you can go to our website, the DLDF website. Go to the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund website and you'll see all these statements we've made about those cases and the year in town cases and everything else. Ned? On the first and third topics today, is choreography not copyrightable in some form? I remember working with the original choreographer of Ain't Misbehavin' on a project and he used to tell me stories. He would go around the country suing people for copyright infringement. Choreography is specifically identified in the Copyright Act of 1976 as being copyrightable. There are odd little things which work their way into the legislation. At the same time, you can make a case for choreography being copyrightable because of the issues, Ralph, I'll turn this over to you, the issues of fixation and... There's ways to notate choreography. Laban notation, other forms of notation is a bunch of them now. So that satisfies the fixation requirement for copyright. For copyright, you have to have original expression fixed in a tangible medium. So choreography, if it's original, you cannot choreograph folk dances and common movements, which is why a stage direction, when it claims itself to be stage movement or stage or choreography, that's one of the strategies directors have tried to use. The copyright officer said, no, it's not original movement. These are general scenes of fair. These are common movements. You can't choreograph them. You can't own them. But choreography as a category is a copyrightable category of expression. And secondly, on the orchestrator question, since I've been occasionally represented by one of these aggressive gentlemen, I think you mentioned. You didn't talk about royalties. And a number of my contracts, I've had royalties. Does the guild, never mind new use and reuse, and you've stated it all very well, but does the guild have a position about royalties? They can get whatever they can negotiate for. If the producer wants to give you, give an orchestrator 50% that's the producer's business. That does not impact, other than affecting the length of the run of the show. But it doesn't impact author. It does not impact the authors. What impacts the authors is when your show is going to be produced in Bolivia and you can't get the production, you can't get the orchestrations without some extraordinary payment for what is not a new use, et cetera. That's where it comes into play and that's what the guild is in discussions with. But orchestrators, and I'm happy to say that some of my best friends are orchestrators, do great work and I'm delighted that they make a lot of money from royalties from a long running show. They deserve it. I also have two questions. Is somebody like the STC or some entity lobbying to rewrite the copyright law when it's up to be rewritten to give directors make a direction or state directions copyrightable? And the second question is you said you're coming up with a set of recommendations for playwrights to deal with these issues. Would you go one step further and perhaps make an agreement, a boilerplate agreement, that you could give to a director that would say, if you direct a show you'll agree not to file a copyright or ask to write a first refusal. In terms of drafting a model agreement between authors and directors, that's something we've been thinking about. It may encourage it more than we want to. But the criteria within the memorandum we're going to issue, the white paper, if you will, will be very specific and give you or your representative the ability to draft an agreement that is consistent with those standards. Whether we actually give you a template for it, we haven't really decided yet. As to the first question was about the copyright office, you would think they would. But so far, in our discussions with the copyright office, they've told us that there's been absolutely no pressure or effort to include direction as a category of copyrightable work. That doesn't mean they won't. It's just so far no. Oh, I see somebody has a mic. Kind of far down the list of topics was contests and festivals and I know we're out of time. So I wondered if you could say quickly something about guild activities related to that. We're concerned when people ask you to self-produce under their banner and then ask you for sub rights on top of that as if they produced your show. It's morally reprehensible and silly. Sub rights are for producers, not for presenters. And if they haven't taken on the risk and expense of producing your show, they shouldn't be getting any share of sub rights. Also, the notion of contests or when they charge these excessive entry fees or submission fees, where does that money go? If it's going to hire readers to read your scripts, why are they having a festival if they can't afford the overhead or the staff to run it? Why is the author subsidizing their overhead to do these things? If they're taking all the money and giving it to the winner of the festival or contest, why are you subsidizing another writer's work or career? So there's just really no good reason for it, but it's sort of the genies out of the bottle to a certain degree on that. And what we've been trying to do over the years is maintain a lid, if you will. There are festivals of contests that we won't even print in our resource directory because they charge excessive fees. And if they charge any fee, we make note of it in the directory. So we try and give you as much information as possible without being too parental about it. And there are a couple of specific sort of major festivals that over the last couple of years asked for subsidiary rights and we very actively discussed it with them to the point where, in both cases, they withdrew that. So, but we like to know about it when that happens because we are vigilant about it. If you put more stage directions in your script, would we get rid of the directors? And the old company managers? I mean, why should they get rid of it for saying she lives over there if you wrote it? Well, let's not use this as an opportunity to bash directors. I get a bad rap for that as it is. I respect the director and the work they do as interpretive artists and their essential relationship to the author is fundamental to the theater. So I don't want to get into... Well, but actually your published script or the script that you are sending out, whether you are doing it yourself or it's being licensed, you are responsible for whatever stage directions or none you want to have in there. It doesn't matter what happened in the original production. You could include certain things or not, but she enters stage left, whether that's something that the director did or you would like to see the actors coming from stage left or whatever. That's entirely up to you. That's not copyrightable. And what's more, you should assume that most people doing the production will simply ignore it and bring her in from stage right because that's... There is some controversy, though. And stage directions as text have been copyrighted like you can't print these words in this order on this page without my approval, without having a right to perform that. So there's still some area of controversy regarding the reprinting of stage directions. I know some of the licensing houses get very skittish unless they have the directors okay to publish directions that you are including their stage directions in. But the point is that whatever the niceties of these specifics, it's the author's decision. The director can't simply willy-nilly insert his or her stage directions and say, here's the show. It's not up to them. There's nothing... No matter what you put in your script, it won't stop a director who wants to be adding stuff and sending it to the copyright office. So you'll be making yourself crazy. It's hard enough to write a play without trying to fend off a director adding material to your printed page. This is the last question here. Quite a lot, actually. We have the committee with Theresa and... Yeah, the three men sitting in here, though we've been pretty active as a guild, there's a lot going on with that. It's been spearheaded by Theresa Rebeck and Marcia Norman and Julia Jordan. They've done an enormous amount. We do the Lillie Awards now have become an annual thing celebrating the contributions of women to the past season. When there have been... We have been doing surveys of not-for-profit theaters taking a look at gender parity and when it is sort of egregiously unbalanced, we have pointed it out to the theaters and actually made some good progress. Sometimes they were completely unaware of it and fairly appalled when they actually saw the figures. This is something that is ongoing that we feel very strongly about, but we are not the best people to talk in great detail about it. Theresa's here and you can ask her about it because it's something she feels very strongly about and is active. Let me just add to that. I think one of the strengths of the Guild Council is that unlike other institutions, other unions, people on council are not people who would like to be playwrights but have time on their hands and so they do union work. The fact that Theresa and Julia and Marcia all come once a month to participate in running this organization has put them in a place where as an extension of the... Marcia was vice president for 10 years with me. One of the huge benefits of having people of this caliber running the organization is that when they take something like this on, it's not just the sort of Guild letterhead, it's really prominent dramatists attacking an issue like this and it makes people listen in a way that they otherwise might not. And on that I think we have to conclude. Thank you for coming.


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So what are we looking at here? So this is a flexo QD proofing press and so it's actually a flexograph press and here you have a rubber stamping plate, it's actually a photopolymer rubber and what happens is it gets inked by this analogs with silver ink and it transfers onto the high parts of the stamp there and then from there it transfers back onto the film and so using the analogs we can determine how much ink can be applied to the film and of course the Dr. Blade is there to make sure the analogs is metered properly. So you're putting exactly the right amount of ink? Exactly, yeah. How does that work? And if we want well so the analog says little cones cut into it and if the cones are deeper then you put more ink and so this one has a very small very small cones and so it only puts just a little bit of ink down and it makes a very thin film right and that thin film means that we're very efficient with the ink we don't use very much. All right so you work with partners to make some of these? Yeah right so actually you can see their logos here and then of course Dupont provided for us a plate for this this particular film and then actually called Polly is a company that was actually a university and they're doing some image processing and Harper is a guy of course from earlier they're making the proofing press I have right here. What's the image processing that they're doing? So they have to convert it from like a digital file into a an actual piece of plastic right or a piece of rubber and the way they do that is by making a file and then making a very high pixel count bitmap right so they have to make like a 4000 dpi image and that's what uh what Cal Poly was doing there. Nice and where does this fit? Okay so in this machine you just snap it in right here you have these little clamps and then so now we're turning a proofing press into a production press and so from here we'll go after the printing we'll go straight to some drying and then we'll go the final curing and what you have here is is the adfos which is a near-ir dryer you have some intense infrared light and so that actually removes the water vapor from the ink and then here we have the pulse forge which is a photonic curing system the pulse forge 3200 and so you have a pulse of light which centers the metal particles together so I think we'll go ahead and start it up make sure everything's ready. So where would you put the ink? The ink goes right here and actually you can watch him do it so he'll lay the ink just between the analogs and the doctor blade and this is your ink to fill out the ink? That's right that's a pkim brand a pf5500 is the name of the ink. It's not just like a normal ink no not at all. What's going on here? It's a nano part and it's dispersed into a liquid and the solvents are primarily water-based and in a very safe to use and so you can see it he loads it into the pipette and here he'll load it right to the doctor blade so you would have to do this for every how many sheets or you'll see it yeah in a system in production you have a feeding chamber automatically yeah exactly here we just kind of giving a little bit just so we just use just a little bit we can run the demo many many many times okay let's just start it up so here's the print coming out you know you need to make some adjustments to make sure the print is right and then five a second or something like that every five every second five parts every second something like that so go through here it flashes it comes out is this a very precise technology uh how can you get it to you can make a very precise print with flexo depending on the plate that you use you can actually make uh in this case we're actually making about 20 micron lines very fine little lines but depending on the plate that you use you can actually make it even less than and so that's actually where some areas of development are going on right now so let's see an example what what's coming out yeah okay here's what we were making in this case and so this is a just a piano right and so here you have each one is a little is a little wire yeah and when i touch it it it changes the capacitance of that wire and then i turn that signal into music and so in the case of this you have of course the 12 channels right one for c a b so on and of course i can i can play it when i connect it to a device so um can you hold this for a second yeah so there there is a some silver net silver particles as the ink and it's on some kind of plastic yeah right what is the structure down there yeah so this is plastic it's polyester right and we have like a light uh pretreatment and that's for a good adhesion and then uh so it's the material that we buy just from the manufacturer and so you can print file these per second at the speed that you are demonstrating yeah right and actually even faster we can do much faster right because we we uh are just set up here at the trade show so you know we don't want to make too much noise or too much mess but this kind of setup they're running usually at about 600 feet per minute so making these parts you're making what 20 or 30 per second and so uh this one would be connected to some kind of uh electronic exactly right so and you have a connector here where it's called a zip right it's a very small connector you you grab it there and you have a small device which interprets the signals so you you need a little microcontroller but it's a very cheap very common device and uh so the application for this kind of device would be to do a switch right on the on the tv's or on uh your lamps or anything at home you have these little buttons and each one of them is a little contact switch well instead of making a movement to make a contact to a circuit how about instead we make just a little change of capacitance and it makes for a much cheaper switch which has absolutely no wear and tear because when i touch it there's no moving parts for the switch and so it's cheap it's cheap yeah this part is is less than a fraction of a penny and so in this case i get 12 very large electrodes a penny is is one cent yeah one one us sent and this is i don't even know how much less than that right because it's just a little piece of plastic and a couple hundred nanometers of silver ink placed on top of it so this is uh this is printed electronics this is the best of the printer electronics world right now we're like a famous company doing printer electronics right yeah well we think so yeah i mean especially for flexo you know you have a very efficient system to make uh basically to use the silver as efficiently as you possibly can that's key right the silver is expensive everyone knows that but the point is if you use only a little bit of it and use it very efficiently it can actually be really cheap and one of the ways that we get efficiency is with the pulse force right so we give that flash really high intensity pulse of light and it actually centers the metal together right and so now you get a nice conductive tough conductive track leading from here to there with good properties so how uh how many designs are there coming out of this machine like all your customers doing different things yeah yeah so i mean flexo is just one application you know there's also inkjet and their screen and we actually have you know samples of each here's one that we actually did some time ago with with a group that's here called pst and this is a little tiger and in the orange is our copper ink so it's a copper screen printing and that's been put actually with pst's silicon ink and what happens is uh as a function of temperature that you have a difference in the resistance and you can turn that into a temperature signal so uh pst is using your machine so print like five a second or more no no in this case it's screen printing it's a little slower and so we're making the metal and so we're providing to them the metal and then they provide the silicon print right so that's just one application the the copper does yes copper yeah so um how many designs are possible with printer electronics well a lot of different designs right so you one of one of the big really interesting scenes is inkjet right and inkjet is digital right i can put different images in every type and in this case you have again a fairly thin layer of ink maybe one micron maybe two microns yeah sure and so with this you can make you know things like RFID tags and switches RFID tags yeah so that's radio frequency identification right so in this way you have like current moving through there right and for RFID that that current becomes like an electromagnetic wave becomes a radio wave right and you can communicate between a chip that would be placed onto this tag and a base station somewhere else so how are printed the RFID chips is that like is that how most of the RFID chips are made right now currently most RFID chips are still from semiconductor big wafers right and so they take that little chip out and then they place it onto a print so with uh with a high-speed pick-and-place machine and actually an ink like this would be would be used for for RFID so this is a screen print it's a thicker film of silver and what you have here is is some lines of course to test through the resistance but these kinds of applications would be used for RFID it could be used even for lighting even to carry a small amount of power right to make some leds blink or some even some lights go but you're able to do that with your machine you can you do every kind every type of printer electronics or is this specific for conductors yeah usually the the pulse forge has applications to each and the reason is for that we have a lot of control right we have a very intense pulse of light it's short but that the the height and the width of that pulse we can control very precisely we can change it only by one microsecond if we want it usually ranges something from 50 microseconds to 10 milliseconds right and if we wanted to be 521 microseconds we can do that so in this case the other key feature is to keep the bulbs cool right there's a lot of heat inside of this system right and in order to keep it cool we have a system that's over here which is a water cooler and the water cooler is flowing over the bulbs this is a water cooler exactly it's not a server farm or something this one is the power right this is the power supplies each one of these is a capacitor bank to send a pulse of energy into the bulbs right you have the charging power supplies to fill up the capacitor banks and here you have the water cooler right and the water cooler is keeping the bulbs cool you keep them at room temperature then they last a lot longer right and I can predict when they'll fail so I can have a common maintenance cycle so everybody can shut down at the same time and make sure that we don't suddenly break and lose some money right how much are the bulbs so a bulb is maybe costing I don't know $500 or something like that and so you know this should last for a long time in this application the one that we're running right here it's infinite life I don't even know infinite maybe yeah it could be it's a very long time because it's only using about two percent of the bulbs capacity right so we actually haven't had an application where you've had to change the bulbs with that one for screen printing it takes more energy I have to make a longer pulse more intense and so I have to change the bulbs more often maybe 10 million cycles how can you company figure out how to make so precise and powerful lamps how does that work well there's a lot of there's a lot of existing technology and lamp design right so this we're benefiting from from years and years of research of uh in designs of lamps so we're we're basically just making improvements on on those little lamp designs little tweaks here and there but then we're also doing something really unique which is in the water cooling right so water cooling but also particular types of switches you have semiconductor switches that can be very efficient and very precisely tuned is this an example of what people do with your machine this is which part of this is printed in this case you have these lines here on this is actually silvering same as what you have right here so this ink is going in there and they're making a shirt yeah in a t-shirt so I was telling you earlier making lights blink so here you go this is done by Sotemsa which is a research group over in Spain and they're researching how to do wearable technologies right wearable printed electronics but your machine over there it mostly it's printing on plastic right on the often but in the case of something like this we may also use paper right this is a paper roll can go through yeah right of course we can use paper we can use plastic and even sometimes we use glass especially for for screen printing and all right so so this is which generation is this so this one is the is the 3200x2 x2 is meaning that the bulbs are six inches long so that's the length of the bulb and then you stack them side by side to make the width and in this case it has a nine inch wide width so every time we pulse we are pulsing six by nine inches right next pulse six by nine inches is this uh you've done several generations before or yeah well and so the way it kind of turns out is if you want to get started in this kind of processing you start with the 1000 series machines right we have two levels of this machine which is the 1200 and the 1300 and and so the but this this is a different machine but so so what's it called uh this is just smaller prototyping bigger prototyping right right so for batch processing right so you it's drawn out the table here you put your sample on to the table and then it moves in flashes and moves back out right so you the only processing a single print one or two prints uh every minute or something like that so it's a much slower process but what that means is that you get to see okay is this process right for me because I get to test just one or two pieces or even 10 pieces if I want to make 10 000 pieces I need to move to the web and so your customers mostly have both many customers start with this machine and then they move to that machine so you start with the research and then you move to the production this is mass production no this is a mass production machine yeah that's three thousand series yeah enough for the demand for the whole planet but that's the idea yes absolutely you get a lot of density of manufacturing power right and that's the idea you want to buy a machine you can make a lot of parts with and that's exactly the intention of building a machine like this over a web so your customers need to have very attentive engineers also measuring how much light intensity for how long you need all that kind of calculation is so all that's something that they have to one thousand level right they figure out there what they need exactly figure out everything you need to do define your process the one thousand level and of course the machine is also watching how the bulbs doing is is the process correct are the bulbs doing what I think they should be doing so we have this qc using photobolometry right we look at the actual output coming from the bulb and we display it under the screen we say okay that looks good right and then once you have the process to find then you move over to production and in production we have many of the same qc factors going on all the time right every time the pulses fire we look at them and make sure are they okay yeah okay so we move on and it said things from there are exactly compatible over there exactly in fact the same calibration all that stuff are doing their their research and development on one side of the planet they find a series of conditions they send them over to the other side of the planet for production but we can send conditions back and forth and how long does it take to put another design in there and start making it something different it just depends so you're already doing some research based off of the one thousand series and maybe it takes you a week or something like that to define your process and then you send it over here and you get the the mold done right for the the the head and stuff exactly right right well so we're not changing anything about the design of the machine only little digital conditions that the machine uses to create the pulse of light right so for every process if it's screen printing or if it's inkjet they're using the same machine they're just putting in different conditions are you also training the engineers that that that use this machine absolutely so this is the basis of my job one is to define applications for the processes and the next one is to move and install the machine and actually train the engineers how to operate it around the world yeah absolutely so this is uh this has been quite popular absolutely it's quite uh yeah we were installing special machine but i'm guessing you're you're making a bunch yeah well we're basically united states and we're installing machines in germany in uh japan and just recently even in china and other places like that as well so it just depends on where the manufacturing is happening cool


And you're live. Welcome back to part three of the Vermont House Human Services Committee on Wednesday, February 9, and first on our agenda is to talk about I believe there is a. An amendment to age 628 that was discussed. Yesterday, the day before it was discussed earlier. And I imagine. Tucker will you be walking us through the amendment. And I believe the amendment is on our committee web page. And if everyone can just pull it up on their. Computer so that we can see. Tucker well. While you go through and report that. It would be draft 1.1 you may just have to refresh the page. Oh, there we go. So then if you scroll down should be under there. So we're refreshing. We're refreshing our documents and for anyone who is. Okay, and scary exciting for us we have two visitors and so I just want to, we're not used to having visitors. So I want to. review the fact that visitors are observers and. Thank you. Okay, Tucker, we're ready for you finally.  Thank you everyone good afternoon Tucker Anderson office of legislative council, you should have in front of you draft 1.1 of the committee strike all for age 628. So there's quite a bit of text here there are really only three changes from the bill is introduced, and I used my handy dandy and convenient digital highlighter to highlight those changes for you. We will begin on page three. And that is section two in subsection a online 16. The first request to change was to make a should a shall. So that the second sentence and subsection a now reads that the state shall adopt a simple process by which an individual may amend the marker on a birth certificate to reflect the individuals gender identity. The second instance of amendment here is the clause that immediately follows, which states that the ability to amend a marker on a birth certificate to reflect the individuals gender identity will include a third non binary marker to make this clear that is not a limitation on the property of the department that follows to add pronouns to the list of gender markers, but it does require that when the department goes rulemaking that at minimum a third non binary marker will be included. And the final instance of amendment is a new subsection D, which you can find on page four starting online seven, and this subsection brings a public records act exemption to the records that are created through the process here. Subsection D states that accept is otherwise required by law records relating to the amendment of a birth certificate pursuant to this chapter shall be confidential and shall be exempt from public inspection and copying under the public records act. There is an existing exemption in this current statute. I'm joining many of these records, and I'll give you some details within the subsection D that will help you understand the confines of this public records act exemption. First, the words in the opening salvo there in subsection D records relating to the amendment of a birth certificate. It would cover not only the records that would have historically been exempt from copying under the public records act which would include for example, the execution that's issued by the court related to the amendment of a birth certificate. But it would also now cover the request that is submitted to the Department of Health, and any other records that are created or acquired in the process of requesting a change to a birth certificate. This year committee is not overly familiar with some of the very discrete components of public records act exemptions. The phrase shall be confidential is mandatory, which means that the public agencies that hold these records would not have the discretion to release any of these records, it would be mandated to keep them confidential from public inspection and copying. Those are the changes within the strike all amendment. Happy to answer any questions you might have. We have a bunch of questions we will start with representative would then we'll go with our representative a frozen quiz and present. Thank you Mr Anderson. I just want to confirm these all look like the same recommendations that we received from the health department. When we discuss when we last discussed this bill so just confirming that this is really just putting them into the statutory language within the bill. Is that correct. All of the initial recommendations that were contained in the bill is introduced are brought in here with the three highlighted changes that I discussed and yes this would be incorporated into title 18. We will be hearing from the Department of Health and David and Glinder. Yes, I just was wanting to. We have discussed these three things previously I was just wanting to make sure they were the same three things they appeared to be but didn't know if you snuck any little thing in there and on it didn't look like you did. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just curious like on this confidentiality issue. If I went to public records and said I wanted to change the. So I wanted to change the child's birth certificate to reflect that I were their parents, even though not biologically. Would that record be confidential by virtue of what you just said or is that exempt from confidentiality and what defines what is confidential and what it's not. But it's an excellent question. So your specific question, the adoption act actually has very specific requirements for confidentiality that are contained in title 15 a chapter six, I believe, the article six sorry 15 a uses articles. And the confidentiality provisions within those statutes would still apply. This is not going to affect those if you take a look at the language in subsection D it states that the records relating to the amendment of a birth certificate pursuant to this chapter. And what is interesting about this chapter is that it is only this section. So really we're just talking in this instance about amending a birth certificate to reflect a change in gender identity. Those are the records that would be exempt. Okay. You will follow up. Well, this is a separate question. Okay, so thank you. And my question actually was around the wording of the records related to the amendment I just wondered if that meant that birth certificates in general would be confidential now but what I think what you're saying is that birth certificates that have been amended in this way would be confidential. Is that right. Right. The records that relate to the actual amendment process of the record, such as older records that might conflict with the current birth certificate, or the request itself. So remember that records under the Public Records Act means anything that's recorded on any surface digital otherwise. They include for example of email communication to the department to initiate the process would be confidential, but the actual final record would be a public record that's available. Okay. Thank you. Representative McFawn.  In section D. Except as otherwise required by law. What is required by law. That is an excellent question that may be better answered by David Englander. There are requirements that birth certificates under certain circumstances and official copies of birth certificates even are shared between state agencies for specific purposes in law. And maybe you can get more detail on what those purposes might be, and whether that would be inclusive of information about an amendment to a birth certificate. Thank you. Representative McFawn, if you would keep your question and Mr. Englander, if you could keep the answer to that when we finish questioning Tucker will get to you. Thank you. Because we have the top or representative McFawn your hand is still up. Is that a legacy. Okay. Representative Rosenquist. Thank you. I would verify if I heard it correctly. The markers relative to sex. Okay, or gender. There are three of those that are now acceptable on that certificate is that is that already in place or is that what this thing accomplishes and to to that same question would be. Other pronouns could be added at a later time at the present time I don't know that any pronouns are associated with with the current person to get a gender. So why would we be adding different pronouns that in the future. Two questions. The your first question sounds like a legal question, which I'll answer the second question sounds more of a policy issue that I probably should not wait into. I definitely should not wait into. So for the first part, think of the construction here as floor and ceiling. The floor minimum requirement that this is going to stand on the department will have to have three. The non binary marker is mandated here. Part of this process they're going to have to use that third marker. The ceiling, the maximum potential amount of other markers that might be used will be determined by rule. And as you correctly stated that delegated authority reads that the department may its discretionary adopt rules to add gender pronouns to the list of markers on a birth certificate. The mandatory requirement the department shall incorporate the third non binary marker ceiling discretion is that the department may adopt additional gender pronouns. Thank you. Good. I have one more. In our discussion earlier, it seemed like the main reason for the cell attestation for a gender change was because the non binary marker was one that people self attested to.  I'm going to make myself clear there or not. Okay. That's what I understood that the reason that we're allowing self attestation was because that's essential it happens with somebody that says they are non binary or non budget, etc. They're non binary. But to say that, if that self attestation because there's no other proof required. So a gender change operation. There are states I know that require that you bring bring in documentation that shows the operation that they have my understanding this bill says that it's not required. And the underlying reason is it would sound discriminatory and non binary person would just be able to say they are non binary. And that would change their agenda would have to prove it would. In other states would have to prove it in this case, we're saying they don't have to prove it. They are going to self attest to it also. So there are two components that I could respond to within your question. So for the first self attestation is listed as one of the methods that the department may adopt as a simple process for the individual to request a change. And that's one of what you were getting at, I think actually came from the department's testimony about how this issue came up, which was a potential inequity between self attestation for the purposes of using a non binary marker, versus the current statutory requirements for a change, for example, from male to female female to male, it would require court involved process along with documentation and attestation. If you need clarification on that I would suggest hearing the history from the department instead of my potentially fumbled explanation of how this came to be. It's a great memory because it was during David's testimony and this came up and I appreciate that. Thank you. I think you've answered it. Must David wanted to explain it a little bit earlier. That's fine. Thank you. And do we have at this point additional questions for legislative council. Okay. I would appreciate if the health department senior policy analyst. If David will. I'll get your title right sometime. Good afternoon. My name is David Englander. I'm the senior policy policy and legal advisor to the commissioner of health. For you for the record also for the record I've never heard Tucker Anderson stumble once so Madam chair where would where would you like me to, what would you like to hear from the department. Representative McFawn had a question and that legislative council thought would be better addressed by you. And then representative would had a question, which wasn't quite her question was are these the three things that we talked about before. My question, drawing from that will be the Department of Health. I understood had no problem or supported the bill as introduced and so with these amendments is that position the same. As a representative McFawn's question, we were primarily thinking of a court order that these aren't that these aren't that that if the department received a court order we would have to produce the documents, but that they would not be available to members the public under an excellent documents request. My question goes further now. Could the adopted parents get access to the birth certificate. It would depend on the circumstances from for a minor chop for a minor child. The child was an adopted child whether they're a minor or the 20 21. So I think. So I think the answer would be let's see if a child had, if a child had changed their gender and that and the birth certificate and there's a new birth certificate. If the, if the, if the adopt, if the adoptive parents my using that term correctly adopt the adopting parents request that their birth certificate they would get the birth certificate that reflected the gender that reflected the gender change. So they would get the birth certificate. That's in place after the agenda, gender change. Correct. The child, I mean, I haven't thought too much about this to be frank. The child could that the individual could get access to their earlier document. But I'm just thinking through this I don't I think that if a if an adopting parent was seeking the birth certificate will be the birth certificate of record, and that would reflect the gender change. Right, you still, you have a crinkly forehead. All right, well, what about the mother and father. biological mother and father. Either one of them could they get the birth certificate. If they wanted. They. Well, they do it. Can they do it now. They do, can they do what if, if, if, can my, if, if my biological mother and father wanted to get my birth certificate, can they get it today. They, they could, they, they could get your birth certificate today. If they were, they would be a certified birth certificate if they were your, they were your biological mother and father, so long as their parental rights had not been terminated. Okay, so my parental rights are terminated. I can get the birth certificate. The mother and father can get the birth certificate reflecting the reflecting the gender. I mean we're talking about after somebody has changed their gender is that right. Yes, they would say they would still get the current birth certificate which would reflect the gender change. Okay, today, could the adopting mother and father get it. I think Tucker may disagree. I think that any person seeking a pre gender change on a birth certificate, other than the individual would not would only receive the document that was later in time. Okay, and let me let me just play this thing out right. Representative McFawn, representative McFawn, it looks like legislative council was going to say something. Why, let's say if council if you don't mind, why don't you keep your not be on mute so that we can have a conversation because it's sounding like the three of you and we'll be listening need to have a conversation. So, David is is mostly right here and representative McFawn I will say that the public records law and the intersection with vital records, and very particularly because you've brought it up adoption records is endlessly complicated and getting through it requires a game of thrones level of malevolent patients. Any, any person can request a copy of a birth certificate, they can get an unofficial copy. After a change has been made under current law to the markers on that certificate. The new certificate replaces it for all official purposes. Whether you're requesting an unofficial copy or an official copy, you're getting the amended the amended new version of the certificate, you're not getting any of the old versions. Where that gets a bit more complicated is that this system is somewhat new, and there are quite a few original records that are likely still kept in places and David correct me if I'm wrong, such as the town clerks offices throughout the city. And for a brief moment in time as the vital record system was being updated in statute there was a requirement that after an amendment was made the original birth certificate would be destroyed by the town clerk if they had an original registration that was in conflict with the state system. But that was removed a few years ago because there was an extreme level of discomfort at the local level and the state level with having official documents even if they've been replaced being destroyed by the state registrations agents the town clerks. Another really complicated aspect of this is the adoption registry and what information is available from original birth certificates under the adoption act, because much of that information is confidential to begin with. So for example information about the birth parents is rarely if ever released, sometimes even to the adopted child in the future. So you are navigating with your questions a very complicated road. The easiest answer is to say that in most circumstances, and I'll go as far as to say 98 to 99% of the time. If a request for a birth certificate is made, it will be the newest version of that birth certificate that is released to the requester. Now I'm going to tell you why I asked that question. One of the reasons is there's a life that took place before that birth certificate was changed. There's a lot of things that happened in that life, like maybe somebody had a will drawn up. And the name is changed on the birth certificate and the sex. I was just wondering how the individual then could claim that inheritance. That's one thing. There's police records is all kinds of stuff. I thought that I was okay on this. But now wonder. So Representative McFarland, I'm not sure what was there a question in there. No, I'm just, I just explained why I asked that question because I thought I was pretty clear on that. That If, if, if say I left an inheritance to Bobby Jones. But now all of a sudden, we have an individual named Mary Jones. That took place in the life before Mary Jones was created on that birth certificate. One thing that I would know if you representative McFarland is that these particular records relating to the amendment of a birth certificate and the issuance of a new certificate are already confidential currently under law. They can be released to the individual who requested the changes who petitioned the court, that person can get their own records or I think even in some cases get a confirmation from the state registrar about any changes. Let me just confirm that. Yes, may authorize the state registrar to confirm the issuance of a new birth certificate. So the, there's no regime change here in the confidentiality of the records. So as things are currently operating, they will continue to operate with respect to the confidentiality of amended birth certificates. Representative small. One thing I will just add is that the bill before us today is really only focusing on the gender market changes. So name changes on birth certificates will will not be changing the process there. And I, I think I can speak for the trans and non binary community and recognizing that when a name change happens there is a lot of processes that go into place where you have to credit cards through social security through birth certificates through wills, etc. So it's a it's a complicated process overall and I think the hope with this bill is to make one piece of that process easier. Yes, one thing that I forgot to mention representative McFawn from some of your examples, many of the things that you brought up could be acquired and likely will be acquired through a court process. And you brought up, for example, last wills and testaments and trusts. The probate court could request any documentation or records that have been preserved, for example by the state registrar related to an amendment if they had questions about the identity of someone in an older will, comparing it to identity documents that existed a later period in time. And as David so eloquent. So that would happen only if you went through probate court. Correct. Correct. And you would likely go to probate court if there was any question as to your qualification to receive something through the will. Thank you. Thank you. Representative question. Did you have your hand? I did, but I'll defer to James first. Okay. I just want to clarify what I believe what was being said to clarify for representative McFawn if this is the case. If somebody in the example of, you know, name change, identity change, whatever you would say, the person who did so still has access to the records. So they're going to be able to prove, hey, listen, this is me. It's not like they're cut out of the process and not being able to say, you know, they're like, well, this isn't Johnny. Mary, whatever. And they have, they have that document. They have access to it. So like they're not cut off and so the evidence is still there. Thank you very much, James. I appreciate that. Things happen in life. And a person could be incapacitated. And maybe can't for the moment. I know a friend of mine that can't speak right now. But has an inheritance. So he can't. Someone's going to help him get it. But, you know, it's, and then to somebody that's helping them, can they get these records. I just want somebody get in a position where they can't get with students. You know, bring out life insurance policies and somebody's name. Taylor just talked about we're not changing the name here. But a lot of times when the birth certificate is changed, the name is changed too. That's what I'm, I'm less worried about it now. We're not talking about was all set, but I'm less worried about not being a. Okay. I mean, I mean, I was just going to say I'm not, I'm struggling as to why this is an issue when this bill doesn't cover that. Yeah, because this bill does not cover name change. But I think the crux that represented prevar highlighted is that access from the individual is always granted. Right. Right. Okay. I'm sorry. In the news these days, there's a lot of talk about people on one gender that want to play sports with a different gender, because of the change in body strength or whatever. Okay. So my question was the that, let's say, I'm a pretty good basketball player, but I'd rather become a better basketball player playing in a female league. I mean, can I go and change my, myself at a station, just get my name, my name, my, my sex change through the process of leave out line here. Having no thought that I would ever want to really do a gender change, but that I just wanted to play basketball on a female team. So what would prevent me from doing that, given this law, because of the self habitation. Okay, or whatever. I am not immediately aware of a Vermont law that regulates gender based participation in particular sports. So I would prefer from my personal experience as a runner who runs in a lot of competitions that self attestation is the basis at least for United States track and field association meets, and for any of the long distance races that I've ever participated in. So self attestation is, is what's required, you wouldn't have to show a first, I mean, a first certificate or anything like that. I'm saying that I'm not aware of a law that governs participation in sports based on gender, but that's not my area of expertise so I may be woefully uneducated on the matter. I don't shed any light on that. I share in Tucker's observation. I'm sorry, I share Tucker's observation I'm unaware of anything. Okay, represent, represent and smell. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean that was my question. Okay, pretty much a hypothetical question, but I just was curious, as you probably gathered the self that is one of my hang ups. And sort of my final question on that aspect. Yeah, I think what comes up most for me in this policy is that it is specifically impacting trans and non binary people and I think to your example it would be rather extreme for someone to go through the process of amending their birth certificate solely to participate in a sport and a gender that they are actually not aligned with I think we've heard this rhetoric come up across the nation but I don't. There's no specific examples that have come up except for preventing trans youth from playing sports with the gender that they identify and understand themselves as There is not a prohibition. There's just a lot of national discourse about preventing trans youth from participating in sports that identify or that align with their gender identity. But there's this, the rhetoric comes up of what if a guy wants to participate in and women sports and they go through this process and I would say, there are many examples like that. And often, I would even argue it doesn't exist now and it would be a rather extreme example of the word to come up. And I think that is example of this. I think of the University of Pennsylvania swimmer, who is breaking all the swimming records through his prior male, but now identified as a female swimmer with a female team. So, and whether they have the transitional surgery or whatever I don't know, but my point was that if it's just self attestation what prevents somebody from understanding what I'm saying. I do I do. And I would say we're even seeing it in the Olympics right now where someone who is assigned female at birth has known themselves to be a woman. Also was disqualified because her testosterone levels were higher than what we identify for someone who's assigned female at birth so they accused her of doping. When in all actuality she just naturally produces higher testosterone levels because our bodies are just as type versus we are. So I don't think there is a specific biological lever that we can say at this point you can participate in the sport or vice versa. And I would say that the birth certificate in particular would not prevent or offer that opportunity for someone to participate in the sport I think that falls into the agency of education if we're talking about use sports and falls into the other arenas for various other sporting events as I think Legislative Council has highlighted in their own participation in sports. Thank you, of course. I was just going to say that we don't we're careful in this building not to make legislation that has maybe just one or two odd. Odd things that could happen. It's really about the majority of the work the important work that this. I see the discriminatory aspect of this for transgender people versus people that just declare themselves non violent. I understand that and so that would make me vote for it based on just a discriminatory aspect. But I'm still concerned about the. When you call it out. Self had a station. Because of how it possibly could be computers. I would say that self had a station is the norm in American life. I'm sorry to say that last part again. The actual requirement that a birth certificate be produced is actually extremely unusual. I don't mean that the legal sense I mean that in the practical sense it's very unusual that we actually have to produce our birth certificate or the birth certificate of our, our spouse or offspring to actually achieve something. It's just, it's very unusual. The much more usual, and I say this in the legal in the legal sense the much more the norm is self attestation. Are there other questions right now. No question but one, one more piece that I will highlight is just looking at the work that was done around drivers licenses and how that is that it essentially would be a same similar process to self attestation for someone to declare their gender on their driver's license and we would have the same process for birth certificate and I would say driver's licenses of course are more often presented in work and being over, etc, a more common identification that we would use. And we have moved in a way to make that an easier amendment. We have made it an easier amendment if you want to change your gender marker on a license, we added that X gender marker and then even it's the same process if you want to go to an X gender marker or from M to F or F to M on the license as well. It's the same process for any of those changes. So attestation. My, my question to the committee is are we, are we ready to make to move forward on this. Okay. I would entertain a motion. I do that we find favorable draft number 1.1 of each 628. There's been a motion on the floor to accept or. Yes. Oh, first we have to do it two times. We have to vote on the bill. The strike all. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. That was my understanding. Okay. Representative small is there a second. Second. Second by representative McFawn. Is there any further discussion? And if the clerk. Is ready to call the roll. Senator McFawn. Before I vote, Madam chair, I want to thank the witnesses for the amount of information that they brought to us. And I'd like to thank. Taylor for the bringing the bill forward. Thank you. For the information that he's provided the committee as well. My vote is yes. I imagine that Taylor is very appreciative of that. She is very appreciative. Please continue to call the roll. Representative McFawn. Yes. Representative Wood. Yes. Representative small. Yes. Representative McFawn. Representative McFawn. Yes. Representative Garfuno. Yes. Representative Whitman. Yes. Representative payala. Yes. Representative grid war. Yes. Representative noise. Yes. Representative Bromstead. Yes. And representative Pew. Yes. 11 zero zero. Okay. We may, we probably will not put this on the calendar for. notice because we don't in general, as a process, don't like to split up a bill. So it would be a notice, I guess on Tuesday and be ready to vote on it Wednesday and Thursday. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much all of you and I'm going to wish you good luck. We are five minutes late for another topic.


Hey, Psych2Goers. Are you having a difficult time telling if someone genuinely likes you or if they're faking their friendliness? Something may just seem off and you have a hunch that they don't have your best interest at heart. How do you know that they actually care about you and like you? How do you know if they're inauthentic with you? Well, here are a few tips to help you out. Here are five signs that can help reveal if someone genuinely likes you. Number one, they cancel plans versus they often hang out with you. Does your new friend cancel plans right before you're headed out the door to meet them? Do they do this often? People who don't genuinely like you often don't care if they cancel at the last minute because they may often not care about your feelings or about keeping their promises. Now, if you have a friend who is often there for you and loves to follow through with their promises and spend time with you, then that's a sign that they do actually like you.  Does your friend bring you down? Does he subtly criticize you? This is a common sign they don't care much about you. Why else would they be trying to tear you down? Friends wanna cheer each other up and support each other. Good friends are often each other's biggest fans. So does your friend cheer you up or tear you down? Number three, they seek attention and brag versus they're humble and themselves. Does your friend often overly seek out attention and brag to you? Or are they often humble and authentically themselves? An authentic friend often won't feel the need to make themselves seem better than you. They just wanna be themselves around you and have a good time. Good friends don't judge each other harshly. So an authentic friend may feel as if they can be vulnerable and open with you, true to themselves. Authenticity often brings positive attention anyway. Number four, they're judgmental versus they're open-minded. Have you noticed that your friend is very judgmental over any action you do? Or are they open-minded and listen to you before jumping quickly to harsh, negative conclusions? Psychologist Guy Winch, PhD, explained in their Psychology Today article that being honest about their own faults and embracing individuality and differences leads genuine people to be less judgmental and more accepting of the people around them. Hmm, it seems like genuine friends won't feel the need to judge you harshly and instead keep an open mind, especially if they like someone and wanna hear them out. And number five, they're passive-aggressive versus they're communicative, direct and honest. Do you know someone who is constantly passive-aggressive or are they communicating well with you by being honest and direct instead of sneaky and untruthful? Kate Ballesterie, a psychologist, told Bustle in an article that when people speak directly, they're less invested in impression management or passive-aggressive behavior, both of which ultimately lead to inauthentic interactions with others. So do you know someone who is often passive-aggressive? They could be hiding their real feelings about you under the disguise of inauthentic kindness. They may not wanna flat out tell you that they don't like you, so instead, passive-aggressiveness is the best they can do. Who needs a friend like that? So look out for the communicative friends who are truthful, kind and respectful.  So did you notice any of these signs? Which ones? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to click the like button and share it with a true friend. Subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell icon for more content like this. As always, thanks for watching.