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C-SPAN Adopts Creative Commons-Style License
Trillian_1138 writes "C-SPAN, a network in the US dedicated to airing governmental proceedings, has adopted a Creative Commons-style license for all its content. This follows the network claiming Speaker of the House Pelosi's use of C-Span videos on her site violated their copyright. Specifically, 'C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency — about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks — which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.' Here is the press release. The question remains whether videos of governmental proceedings should be public domain by default or whether the attribution requirement is reasonable in the face of easy video copying and distribution."
A company owns the copyright because they're the ones recording it. The government doesn't care about broadcasting proceedings and the only difference between C-SPAN and CNN is the news they cover (maybe a sense of style too.) If you don't like the idea of a company having a copyright on the material they recorded, then you can just record it yourself (after jumping through who knows how many hoops.)
Of course, you might want to form a company, since you yourself can't cover it all...
And you'll need some way to spread the costs of operating that company. Better find some sort of advertising setup since you don't want to sell what you recorded...
And since your recording government proceedings in a droll, yet mesmerizing way comparable to public broadcasting, you'll want to get your company's name out there to show advertisers your not a government office...
Well, your already giving away all kinds of content, maybe people who use it will be nice enough to acknowledge your effort to keep the ad money flowing...
And you'll need a catch name and motto. How about "Spanning the gap between citizens and the government"? Citizen-Span?
Demented But Determined.