Slashdot Mirror
Liberating & Restricting C-SPAN's Floor Footage
bigmammoth writes "C-SPAN's bid to "liberate" the House and Senate floor footage has re-emerged and been shot down. In an aim to build support a recent New York Times editorial called for reality TV for congress. But what is missing from this editorial is the issue of privatization and the subsequent restriction of meaningful access to these media assets. Currently the U.S. government produces this floor footage and it is public domain. This enables projects such as metavid to publicly archive these media assets in high-quality Ogg Theora using all open source software, guaranteeing freely reusable access to both the archive and all the media assets. In contrast C-SPAN's view-only online offerings disappear into their pay for access archive after two weeks and are then subject to many restrictions." (Continues)
"If C-SPAN succeeds, reusable access to floor footage will be lost and sites such as metavid will be forced to stop archiving. Because of C-SPAN's zealous IP enforcement metavid has already been forced to take down all already 'liberated' committee hearings which are C-SPAN produced. Fortunately, the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of 'dignity and decorum' and will be denying C-SPAN's request."
...That misread that as C-PAN, and couldn't figure out what Perl had to do with the senate. Ugh, it's far too early in the morning for rational thought.
If you've got nothing to hide...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The cantonrep.com link crashes my browser (Firefox 1.5.0.9). Must be all that ad-cruft clogging my tubes. However, the printable version works fine.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
C-SPAN bid to "liberate" the House and Senate floor footage has re-emerged and been shot down.
They only want to "liberate" it to the extent that they control ownership. They're not interested in liberation of the footage in the true sense.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Et tu, Brute?
Everything that happens on the floor ends up in the Congressional Record anyway, which is publicly available within a couple days of it happening. It's text, which means it's searchable, which makes it a ton better than video when it comes to accessing what you need. It also includes all the extraneous material that gets included in the record but is never read on the floor.
Many committees provide streaming audio of their open proceedings even if they aren't covered by C-SPAN, but transcripts of committee meetings aren't usually made. Unfortunately, the second most "closed" part of Congress is the numerous committee meetings that are closed to the public. (The first most "closed" part is all the back room dealings that result in 11th hour and 59th minute changes to bills in conference, and I don't expect that to change with the Dems in power, either.)
But the winner in openness (modulo their impartiality) has to be the Supreme Court, who, though they don't televise their proceedings, now make transcripts of arguments available within a couple of hours of the event.
The "record" is not worth much, rally. Most of them start their floor addresses with "I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend..."
This means, barring any objection (which would be rude), that the congressmember can go back after the fact and change the record of what they said and even add new material. You can actually find far more "said" in the record than could physically be spoken during the stated time period of the debate.
WTF?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
In an aim to build support a recent New York Times editorial called for reality TV for congress.
Screw so-called "reality TV."
I want "gladitorial combat" and "lion feedings" for congress critters.
This is an American site. There will be articles of interest only to Americans from time to time. Get over it.
It never occurred to me to check C-span's content use policies, which are quite bad as you said.
Thanks for making that information a lot more public.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
It is interesting to note that the founding fathers met in closed doors. It was forbidden to say what was going on until it was over. That way people weren't 'acting for the camera'.
I heard about this on NPR a couple of weeks ago. The new congress purports to be more open and honest, and c-span is calling them on it. Everybody knew they wouldn't expand coverage. If congress really wanted to open up, they'd put in a bunch of cameras, offer real-time feeds - including votes - to anyone citizen or registered US corporation who wants them, and archive the video footage in a way that could be easily retrieved by any citizen.
My question is: does the Congressional Record include all the conversations on the house floor and in the ante-chambers? That's where the real work gets done, and the real deals are made. What's in the congressional record is just the official words - primped and preened for public consumption.
I agree with another poster (who I was darned close to modding up instead of posting in this thread): If you have nothing to hide, you shoudn't fear offering up access to all of the goings on the congressional chambers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Having the video record of your government in action being controlled by a third party who wants to use it for their own commercial benefit is a good thing? Nice troll.
C-span is pointless. In this modern age, the only thing that excuses the fact that all the senate/house deliberations aren't available on the house/senate websites in a downloadable non-proprietary format is the fact that those two groups are made up of technological retards.
Seriously. There is no better definition of public domain. That content should be out there and viewable by more than just a few jaded press correspondents.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Of course you're going to have problems with the video from the floor being copyrighted if laws themselves are copyrighted!
See this article from LawMeme. A nonprofit website in Texas attempted to include area building codes that had been written by a company called SBCCI. SBCCI sued, saying that their copyright had been violated by this publication of the laws, as they made $72 per copy sold by them. A judge ruled in their favor, allowing them to restrict the public laws, saying that $72 was "sufficiently free" for citizens' access.
(This isn't the only instance, but searching for "copyrighted law" returns more chaff than wheat, thanks to arguments over copyright law in general. Bonus points for more citations, as I'm interested in this.)
I've actually called my congresspeople and asked about who is in charge of videorecording proceedings because it's not very clear. They had never had such an interesting question and it took several days to get a response (these are people who normally can send a canned response to any question in minutes). I still didn't get a very good answer from them, something about "House and Senate Media Services" but no answer about how it gets out of the building or if truly public domain (no C-SPAN logo) copies are available anywhere. As a citizen I personally feel the government should make an effort to make all of the internally produced (public domain) media it generates easily available. This means live video feeds of floor proceedings, conference proceedings (not currently public domain), press conferences (the White House and Pentagon too)should all be streamed on free-to-air satellites without any interference from C-SPAN or anyone else. In addition, all the photos from staff photographers (I'm talking specifically about congressional and internal White House photographers here, many other government agencies already do a great job of sharing photos) should be available in full resolution from a web gallery. I'm paying for all this media to be generated and I think it's important that it is generated and recorded but I want access to it as well.
Yes this happens quite often in particular with building codes. I find it rediculous, but what I believe happens is that a company hires engineers to write a book of codes publishes it and then states/counties whatever governing bodies then vote to adopt the codes in the book. Which is good if you ask me, who do you want writing building codes? engineers or politicians? The problem then comes up that yes the codes are copyrighted.
How do you solve the issue? Laws should be a matter of public record and should be freely accessible. However the people creating the codes need to be compensated. I suppose the Government could have its own engineers write building codes, I'm not sure thats a good idea though.
The real work of Congress isn't done on the Congressional floor. The real work is done in committees, and most of the committee meetings are closed, even the ones that are nominally open.
If they can't find a way to close them, they'll hold the meeting in their offices in private, come to a conclusion, and then open the meeting for a trivial few minutes to announce the results.
C-SPAN is for making speeches, not for legislating.
> Everything that happens on the floor ends up in the Congressional
> Record anyway, which is publicly available within a couple days
> of it happening. It's text, which means it's searchable, which
> makes it a ton better than video when it comes to accessing what
> you need.
Garbage. It loses every nuance of the spoken word and human gestures which betray what a representative or witness really feels about a contentious issue. I vividly recall watching the Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, transfixed by the spectacle of it all, judging the true reactions of senators and witnesses on the committee floor by their body language and intonation. The written record of those proceedings is comparatively worthless. When contentious issues reach the main floor, the written record can be equally misleading about the real tenor of the debate. As Socrates would point out, the written word is dead and misleading compared to seeing a real person.
Interestingly, I went to the C-SPAN store recently hoping they'd offer the Thomas hearings on DVD so I could replace my ancient self-recorded EP VHS tapes. Nope. Perhaps the most important confirmation heaing in a generation, one which transfixed the general public so fully that several Saturday Night Live sketches parodied it, one which is *not at all* accurately reflected by the text record--and it's been gone from public view for well over a decade.
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
Well I will say that C-SPAN does have the advantage of being publicly availible to most people. The vast majority of houses have TVs in them. If they have cable, C-SPAN allows for them to have access to some of the information of the House and Senate.
Now, I will agree that their move to privatize this SUCKS, and is wrong. I also agree that all content should be 100% publicly availible. But for now, because Joe Q. Average American is not that tech savy, I think C-SPAN has a place.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
I know you want to defend the decision of the Democrats (this is Slashdot, after all), but the record is often edited after the fact before it is given to the public. C-SPAN would have provided full, live coverage for the public to watch during proceedings.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Before election: "Republicans are evil! The Democrats will provide the most open and ethical Congress in history! Just you wait, even C-SPAN will be allowed to broadcast live (so that congressman can't edit and revise the record as they already do before it's made public)!"
After election: "Those poor Democrats! They're being bullied by another evil corporation who wants to restrict something that's oh-so-open-and-free! Who cares about live, unedited coverage of house proceedings? We want the edited tablescraps that Congress decides we're worthy enough to view. When members of Congress start their speeches asking for unanimous support to revise the record later, that's a-okay because Nancy Pelosi is super-terrific!"
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's the same as the company doing it, minus charging the public per copy, and minus profits for that company. Instead, more of the public pays a lesser amount (in the form of taxes).
Pro-privatization people would say the government is so inefficient that a company, even tacking on a profit, will do a better job for less money than the government could have. I think that's a junk argument, but there you have it. The government should have bough the rights to the book from the company, then made it available free electronically, and in printed format for a small fee.
$8.95/mo web hosting
C-SPAN asked for permission to rearrange the cameras and broadcast more material in 1994 when Republicans took over the House of Representatives (C-SPAN has been operating on the same initial rules set up in the late 70s when they were first allowed on Capitol Hill). The Republicans denied them just as the Democrats are doing now. C-SPAN uses US government equipment (like cameras) inside of Capitol Hill, and as such the House Speaker retains absolute control over it. It would make for better programming (to change the rules three camera angles, guys? 1 wide shot, one shot of the bench and one roving tight shot guys? come on...), but House Leadership wants it to remain static and "stately" for "decorum's sake."
Funny, I was able to find them (buried in a mess of useless program titles, like one called "Thomas Confirmation" which was a recording of a high school debate team's discussion of the confirmation).
g e=product_video_info&products_id=22040-1g e=product_video_info&products_id=22041-1g e=product_video_info&products_id=22095-1g e=product_video_info&products_id=21107-2
Floor Debate: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pa
Confirmation Vote: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pa
Call-in interview segment with two senators (one for, one against) following the vote: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pa
Selected Clips: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pa
The floor debate and confirmation vote are the two that are actually the confirmation process in action, the others are programs by C-SPAN (or edited bits and pieces)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There is far more in the congressional record than is ever said on the floor. There are speeches in the congressional record given by congress critters who weren't even in the building on the day the speech was "given". That's why the video record is so important.
Can you cite an instance when the House or Senate were actually conducting business on the floor and it wasn't broadcast live on C-SPAN?
They both suck.
Can you actually attribute that quote to somebody, or do you just enjoy arguing with strawmen?
Yea one of the first instances is the proposed "secrete" meeting proposed by senator Reid. http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/1641
Not sure where this becomes an ethics breach or a bit of partisan hackery...They're upholding a precident that's been in place for more than a decade.
C-Span's argument that they ought to be allowed to pan the room and take congressional "reaction shots" seems idiotic to me. Who gives a crap what their reaction is? What's important is what's going on at the damn speakers podium, and I don't want to miss any of that because some jackass producer thinks that I'm interested in what the redneck representative from Virginia is flicking at his new Muslim archenemy.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Making that content freely available is exactly what metavid is trying to do. This is important because if C-SPAN gets control of the cameras we will have to take down future floor footage as well. We have already been forced by C-SPAN to take down the committee hearings. See our most recent blog post for more info
> Funny, I was able to find them
That's a very tiny excerpt of the relatovely less impassioned floor debate--the real meat of the controversy was in the very lengthy but incredibly contentious hearings, where witnesses including Thomas were vigorously cross-examined by key senators. For what is srguably the most important confirmation hearing C-SPAN ever covered, they ought to offer a DVD set containing full, unabridged confirmation hearing coverage. As far as I can tell, they offer little.
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
Why in the world does the senate have a military guy babysitting them.
I'm not sure how Slashdotters will feel about this opinion, but I'll try not to make an ass of myself and hope for the best.
I'd rather *not* have "Reality TV for Congress". I don't want to see every last second of their proceedings and discussions, and I don't think they should be subject to constant surveillance. There's two reasons for this: one, I know *I* would perform worse if my boss was video-recording my every move at work, and I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. A person needs the leeway to relax now and again to keep their sanity, especially with a stressful job. Two, we have a democratic *republic*. We elect officials who can do the time-consuming and difficult job of running the government for us, so we can worry about other things. And, perhaps more importantly, so that we don't have an *actual* democracy, which would devolve into chaos after we had our first 'government meeting' (imagine 300 million people in the same spot, trying to decide on anything).
I'm all for being vigilant and wary of the government. Pay attention to new legislation and rulings and praise the good and kick out the crap. But let's let them do their job with some degree of civility.
A recent blog post on metavid explains the issue in more detail. For example we already can't use the footage of Alito's Confirmation until 2101 assuming copyright is not extended again.
And the wikipedia article on C-SPAN IP enforcement which documents some of C-SPAN's take down requests to people that have used legislative footage online.
Problem being that once you release the material nobody ever needs to pay again. Therefore, it is produced once, sold for a fraction of the cost because the creator knows they can sell it over and over again and released. Once released the original creator is now holding a non-asset - it is worthless.
Of course you could try to "license" it so it could be viewed by the public but not reused or redistributed. Sure. That is working really well with music and video today. So someone in a small town that would rather spend their money on the annual holiday festival just downloads a copy and says "Here it is. See what good work we did!"
Today, public access is pretty much equivalent to free redistribute and reuse. Once it gets out that is about the end of the value of the work.
I know you want to defend the decision of the Democrats (this is Slashdot, after all)
Not really. In fact, I'm hoping that the Blue Dog democrats manage to convince the Republicans to vote for one of them for Speaker, and show Pelosi that the election was a referendum against political extremism.
Most of the time, their is no audience.... most of the time, congress critters don't even show up to vote (vote by proxy).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I also read an article that mentioned that the Congresspeople add "tributes" to the Record. Entire sections honoring usually local hometown heroes with praise and thanks are added, when they didn't really say any of that at all. It sounded like it was quite common to add tributes to the record, which is fine I guess. It would be better if they actually said it. But it makes me really wonder what else they add or remove. It's much more than just correcting pronunciation errors and the like.
>> Most of the time, their is no audience.... most of the time, congress critters don't even show up to vote (vote by proxy).
That's exactly it. I'm not partisan one way or the other, but I'll bet if you analysed the attendance records you would find that more of pelosi's party are the ones not showing up.
Sure they get to film it, but it has to be constantly open to the public. On the one hand, C-Spans restrictions suck ass, on the other, the feed would actually show you everything going on, rather than concentrating only on the person speaking. For that matter, do both, and force C-Span to pay for the privilege, thereby funding the current program.
Actually, the election was a vote against political moderation. The repubs lost A LOT of votes because the whole govt. spending schtick and the fact that they did NOTHING worthwhile to back up their ideals.
Not that they deserve it, but this is necessary to help them resist bribes.
I am an architect who deals with building codes every day at work. As $1uck points out, it is far better for engineers (plus architects, fire marshals and other parties specifically interested in public safety/welfare) to write building codes than politicians, who are much more likely to be influenced by big donors and other "special interest" parties specifically interested in lining their own pockets.
Unfortunately, this means that you have a private third-party developer that is essentially writing your laws -- which is actually not much different from the way most laws are written by lobbyists anyway. But the difference here is that the group writing the building code "law" is made up of construction industry representatives and extensively peer reviewed to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the general public. Each major building code organization used to develop different building codes (ICBO, BOCA, SBBCI, NFPA, etc.). Near the turn of the century, most of them (notably not NFPA) got together to form the ICC (International Code Council), and to develop and publish the so-called I-codes, of which the International Building Code forms the flagship product. The goal of the ICC was to develop a single, unified building code that would be adopted throughout the world -- a stark contrast to the balkanized state of building regulations that existed less than a decade ago.
These codes are marketed to various jurisdictions that range in size from cities and states up to entire countries. The way it generally works is that the building code group (ICC) lobbies the powers-that-be to adopt "by reference" their publication as the official building code for that jurisdiction. Many (but not all) jurisdictions follow up the adoption of the "standard" version with jurisdiction-specific amendments. California in particular modifies a significant portion of the underlying UBC (soon to be IBC) publication -- I'd estimate somewhere in the range of 80% of the language is expanded, deleted, revised or completely replaced.
In California, the Building Standards Commission (CBSC) is given the authority to adopt and revise the varioius construction industry codes for the entire state. California law then requires each jurisdiction within the state (counties, cities, etc.) to adopt the California versions of the codes, but also allows them to make further restrictive amendments. (Los Angeles, for example, uses a much more restrictive version of the CBC.)
Okay, so what does this matter? The code organizations publish their codes and "give them away" to various jurisdictions with the understanding that their expenses will be recouped through protected retailing of their copyrighted products. However, in most jurisdictions -- I can't speak for the Texas case OpenGLFan noted, but this is the case in California -- copies of the building code are available to view for free at public depository libraries. The "copy protection mechanism" employed is pretty low-tech: You can't check out the codes, so by the time you photocopied the entire code on the library's pay-to-use photocopiers you could have purchased several legitimate copies for the same price. (I suppose you might try taking digital photos or bringing a portable scanner with you, but the CBC is something like 900 pages long... I hope you have good batteries!)
It is interesting to note that 5 of the 11 parts of the California Building Standards Code are free to download from the CBSC's Title 24 website. Granted, only errata and supplements are available for the other six parts -- including the most-frequently used
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
I don't think that's what anyone's saying. I wish idiots like you would quit trying to make everything partisan- this seems to be a simple question of whether C-SPAN should have control of the footage. Personally, I'm open to more cameras and more footage, if Congress owns the footage. If C-SPAN won't have that, then I'm fine with the footage we have.
To be clear, it was Nancy Pelosi who rejected this. Not an evil Republican. Not Don Rumsfeld. Not Bush.
The Democrats are not in power until next year.
C-SPAN is not the copyright-friendliest organization around. If you're a budget-conscious documentarian and you try to license some committee hearing footage that only C-SPAN has, get ready to pay out the wazoo and maybe be denied entirely at the whim of C-SPAN. With the House and Senate filming their own floor proceedings, you do have a chance to get footage from them at semi-reasonable rates. If C-SPAN were allowed to take over that too, then some numbskull representative would think it a brilliant budget-saving maneuver to just let C-SPAN handle all of it and to do away with the public's cameras. NO THANK YOU. Then all the footage would arguably be subject to C-SPAN's copyright and their PITA licensing procedures. (Can you tell experience is talking here?)
I agree with those who have said that what really needs to happen is that the house and senate need their own cameras covering not just the floor but every committee meeting and it all needs to be put on their (or the Library of Congress/National Archives) websites in a non-proprietary format for downloading for free. It's the public's business being filmed by public employees and needs to be made easily available to that public. One can only hope that we get some representatives that have used YouTube at least once and get a clue on this sort of thing.
most of the time, congress critters don't even show up to vote (vote by proxy).
My understanding is this was done away with some years ago. Congressmen/women, have to vote in person now.