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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."

3 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
  3. 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.