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Liberating & Restricting C-SPAN's Floor Footage

Posted by timothy on from the bye-bye-insomnia dept.

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."

6 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. What is this rational thought you speak of? by aussie_a · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ugh, it's far too early in the morning for rational thought. And yet not too early to post on slashdot. This says a lot.
  2. What? You don't like your own poison? by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Insightful
    the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of 'dignity and decorum'


    If you've got nothing to hide...
    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say
    1. Re:What? You don't like your own poison? by aussie_a · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Err... they're videotaping anyway. The only difference is who gets to own the tape afterwards. The public or some private company that's seeking to maximize its own profits at the expense of the freedoms of the people.

      I don't see how they're avoiding they're "own poison" and "hiding stuff."

  3. yeah, well by macadamia_harold · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  4. Re:Text Video by hazem · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Video copyrighted? Hell, the LAWS are copyrighted by OpenGLFan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.)