Newtown Parent to Give White House Address

The mother of a Newtown, Conn., shooting victim will deliver the weekly White House address in President Obama’s place, his spokesman said on Friday.

In a video message to be released on Saturday morning, Francine Wheeler, whose 6-year-old son, Ben, was killed during the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, will make an appeal for gun control legislation as the Senate prepares to debate a set of proposals next week.

“One thing that has been very clear is that nobody has a more important or powerful perspective on the issue than the families who have lost loved ones because of the scourge of gun violence,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said during his news briefing on Friday. “As you know, the president has been in regular contact this week with the families of victims of the 12/14 shootings, and he believes their voices and resolve have been critical to the continued progress we’ve seen in the Senate.”

Mr. Carney said that this was the first time in the Obama administration that someone other than the president or Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had delivered the weekly address. But the idea of inviting a nonpolitician affected by a policy to give the speech is not new. In May 2004, for example, Democrats invited Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran, to give their response to President George W. Bush’s weekly address.

“Mr. President, our mission is not accomplished,” Mr. Rieckhoff said.

New Interior Secretary Is Sworn In

Sally Jewell officially became the 51st interior secretary on Friday, taking the oath at noon from retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the Supreme Court’s West Conference Room, one of two formal ceremonial conference rooms at the court.

Ms. Jewell was sworn in on a family Bible, which was held by Hilary Tompkins, a member of the Navajo Nation and the first American Indian to hold the position of interior solicitor.

Ms. Jewell, the former chief executive of Recreation Equipment Incorporated in Seattle, succeeds Ken Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado who led the department from the first days of the Obama administration. Mr. Salazar is returning to his home state to practice law and, perhaps, resume his political career.

Ms. Jewell, 57, takes over an agency with more than 70,000 employees and responsibility for 20 percent of the nation’s territory.

She was born in England but has lived most of her life in the Pacific Northwest, where she was known as an indefatigable climber, hiker, biker and kayaker. She worked as a petroleum engineer and banker before joining REI in 2000. She became chief executive in 2005.

The Senate approved her nomination on Wednesday on a vote of 87 to 11.

At the Interior Department, she will face a number of short-term challenges, including issuing long-awaited regulations on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas on public lands. She also will decide on several pending endangered species issues and on the future of offshore drilling in the Alaskan Arctic and elsewhere.

She starts her new job on Monday.

Q&A: Respecting Copyright on YouTube

Q.

What happens if I use a copyrighted song as background music for a home video I want to upload to YouTube

A.

YouTube has various tools for protecting copyrighted material, but what happens depends on the music and who owns it. If no one lays a claim to the audio, your video is unlikely to be affected, but YouTube uses software called Content ID that scans uploaded videos and compares them to a database of music and video files supplied by copyright holders (often large entertainment companies) who own the rights to those recordings. The “content owner” here can decide in advance what to do if a match comes up between a user’s uploaded video and a song on file in the Content ID database.

The actions may vary by country and licensing laws, but a video that gets flagged by the Content ID system could be muted or blocked outright. Some content owners may opt for a “Track” setting that does not interfere with the video’s visibility or playback on YouTube, but does send them viewership statistics. Content owners can also choose a “Monetize” option that sticks ads on the video that generate payments.

If a video you upload trips the Content ID system, YouTube notifies you in the Copyright Notices area of your account. In some cases, it might be possible to remove the restricted song from the video (or replace it with another tune), as the site explains here.

In addition to Content ID database matches, YouTube also responds to specific removal requests from copyright holders. If you have used a legally protected piece of music or video in your clip and YouTube removes it after completing the request, the site slaps your account with a “copyright strike.” Getting a copyright strike may cause you to lose some YouTube perks like the ability to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. Deleting the clip does not remove the strike against your account. As in baseball, if you get three strikes, you are out â€" of YouTube, anyway. The site suspends your account and deletes your uploaded videos.

If you just get one strike, you can restore your good account standing after six months with no further violations and a trip through YouTube’s Copyright School tutorial. The site has a frequently-asked-questions page about its approach to copyright issues and a help guide to copyright and rights management that may be useful for more information on the topic.

Group Raising Funds for Obama’s Agenda Releases Numbers

Organizing for Action, the grass-roots group that grew out of President Obama’s campaign machine, raised just shy of $4.9 million during the first quarter of 2013, according to an e-mail to the group’s supporters.

The group, which began fund-raising in late January, is designed to help support Mr. Obama’s governing agenda by tapping into his list of campaign supporters. It has so far organized events and bought online ads about gun control and immigration issues.

But the fund-raising totals suggest that the organization may struggle to raise the kind of resources that Mr. Obama was able to rely on during his two presidential campaigns, when Obama for America raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Jon Carson, the group’s executive director, said in the e-mail to supporters that about 110,000 people had donated to the group in the shortened quarter. He said the average donation was $44.

“That’s incredible, and the way it should be,” Mr. Carson wrote. “People â€" especially the special interests on the other side â€" are taking notice of what this grass-roots-funded organization is up to. We’re digging in, we’re speaking out, and we’re amplifying the voices of ordinary Americans on some of the biggest issues of our time.”

The organization is not required to disclose its donors, but it has said from the beginning that it would do so. Officials on Friday said that later in the day the group would publish a link to the list of donors who have contributed more than $250.

“To anyone who thought we couldn’t do this, these numbers send a pretty clear message. It’s never been done before, but supporters like you are doing it,” Mr. Carson wrote. “Now my question to you is: Are you going to let those founding members do it all on their own, or are you going to join them It’s not too late.”