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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."
Yes, government records, or records of government actions/meetings/debates etc. should be public and free. If C-SPAN spends time and resources to do the recording, why shouldn't they be afforded the attribution?
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I would say someone woke up to the danger of their position on the speaker of the house's use of their video.
They probably said "You can't do that" then realized they could lose their license to print money if they kept pushing that position.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
To put it another way, I enjoy photography myself, and if I take a picture of a public building, the choice should be mine as to whether I provide it to the world without restriction or if I try to make some money for my efforts.
IANAL, but basically if you are doing it for money, then it is commercial. If you are a non-profit organization, then even with ads it is not commercial. If you are a corporation, then you better be able to show you are not doing it for profit. Think of google news: not a single ad on the page.
Qxe4
After the $5,000 bill for a toilet seat, do you really want to know how much it would cost the government to run a television feed and pay for the air time? We've got better things to spend money on when c-span does a perfectly fine job for 99.999% of the country.
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.
Carl Malamud wrote an insightful letter which addresses this issue. Part of that letter reads:
C-SPAN could regularly upload broadcast-quality raw footage to The Internet Archive (archive.org). Archive.org could transcode the material into a variety of formats (including Ogg Vorbis+Theora which they're now doing for videos) and we can all enjoy the works we're paying for through tax relief and cable TV subscription. Certainly C-SPAN is taking a step in the right direction, but if this footage should be in the public domain, a "liberal" copyright license (as C-SPAN puts it) isn't good enough.
So long as we, the American public, are covering C-SPAN's bills (more than that, actually, as Malamud points out in his letter), we should democratically decide what to do with C-SPAN's programming—all of it, not just the Congressional hearings and floor footage. Perhaps this could take the form of C-SPAN (or their parent corporation) working for hire, thus giving us the power of copyright in all of those works. We could then decide to forgo that power, place all of their work into the public domain, and relieve ourselves of ever having to read another embarrassing legalistic threat when anyone uses C-SPAN footage for any purpose (including commercial use). But certainly what C-SPAN is proposing simply doesn't go far enough down the path they're headed on.
Digital Citizen
Not so. Not-for-profit does not imply non-commercial. Non-profits, even those classified as 501c(3), can still participate in commercial activity, provided it is not the focus of the organization. For example, PBS (a 501c(3)) cannot use copyrighted works without attribution, and even then still requires permission for otherwise-infringing use, even though they are a non-profit.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It depends on whose doing the recording. If a non-governmental entity does the recording, they own the copyright to that particular taping of the event. This means you could theoretically have CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN at a Congressional hearing, and each would own the copyright to their footage and would not have access to the other tapes without permission.
In C-SPAN's case, what they broadcast can be divided loosely into two categories: footage shot by the government and footage shot by them. The House and Senate floor coverage is shot by crews and equipment owned by the Congress; C-SPAN merely takes a feed and retransmits it with their graphics. Thus, the floor sessions are public domain.
For other C-SPAN programs, the network sends its own equipment and crews to the hearing or event. Therefore, they own the copyright.
I think this is a good step in the right direction, but I'm concerned that (1) C-SPAN will use this as leverage to get their cameras into the House and Senate so they can restrict these programs and (2) that not using a standardized Creative Commons license adds to the paperwork that potential users will have to deal with.
PBS cannot use copyrighted works in any way that infringes on the copyright law. That has nothing to do with C-SPAN, it's just the law. Allowing use for non-commercial purposes is an extra use that C-SPAN has allowed because they choose to, not because they are required to by law. So if they choose to let organizations like PBS use their materials, they can write that in to the license. If they choose to disallow non-profit organizations from using their material, they can specifically write that into the license. If they want to keep people from advertizing when presenting their works, they can write that into the license as well. Any rights they give you beyond what is required by law is up to them, just as with the GPL.
Qxe4
Correct. A non-profit often does participate in commerce, i.e. it sells things to make money. Non-profit status just says what it does with the money, which goes to some stated purpose rather than to enriching the owners of the company.
A nonprofit doesn't even have owners in the usual sense; it has a management and a document explaining what that company does. Any money it makes must go to that purpose. It can sell stuff, and hire employees. Those employees can even be paid quite handsomely, though usually not; the employees of nonprofits often see the public good as their goal and work for less money. Necessary employees, however, like skilled fund raisers, will often do quite well for themselves.
But they generally behave just like any other corporation; they get no breaks on copyrights and have to buy rights like anybody else. The uses of copyright material are with the purpose raising money for some purpose or other: using a copyrighted image in a fundraising campaign, performing a play under copyright as part of an educational mission, etc. That's very commercial activity, even if it's a noble cause.