Congress Gets Their Own Piece of YouTube to Host Videos

YouTube has promised a commercial-free zone in the near future to help Congress deal with the problem of hosting campaign videos that were technically breaking the rule of not redirecting constituents to a commercial site. "Within a month, the one and only responder, YouTube, should have its commercial-free zone up and running, Capuano said. Republicans on the commission still fret that with only one such site, the House could be seen as picking winners and losers on the Web. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), another commission member, said the panel's Republicans want to keep the new rules fluid enough to use any future Web site that comes forward with a better plan. 'Technology moves fast. Congress moves slow,' he said."

Where do I opt out?

YouTube will have a channel dedicated to campaign videos. The videos will not link to "commercial" sites after being played.

How is this newsworthy?

A dedicated channel for lies, and shitty political commentary by youtube users? Where do I opt out?

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Good question.
Remembering that this site is USA centric, I would contend the voting is important enough that it goes here. Especially considering the need to get younger voters involved.

You can, of course, choose not get any politic information with a quic

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Don't be such a nay-sayer. This could be pretty radical.

Does anyone know of another country that's done something like this?

Re:Where do I opt out?

Estonia. A lot of the congressional meetings are held online, bills are not printed out, the president signs bills with the click of a mouse. Citizens even vote on the internet.

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Ah, I was wondering how the goatse guy got to become the vice-speaker of their Parliament.

Re:Where do I opt out?

...the president signs bills with the click of a mouse.

Sorry, but someone already has a patent on the "Buy It Now" feature.

Better than that!

The congress part does not have a reviews. Instead you can bribe^h^h^h^h lobby the congressmen.

Part of Obama's plan

View this ahem, youtube video about his "interview" at Google [youtube.com]

In it (can't remember where it was) he talks about going around the media going directly to the people to bypass the corrupt culture in government... and mentions he will make transparency a big part of his platform, and youtube all white house meetings.

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I have to be honest here that is part of the reason why I am even thinking about voting for him. Even though I have more republican views. I also like him because of his more moderate views so it is more of a balance then many of the extremists are and in

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For those interested, his response is at the end of the video, when he responds to the last question. Around 61 min, but the video is worth watching overall.

Obama is anti-NASA

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1100/1 [thespacereview.com]

He wants to cut the VSE budget to use the money for education.

If this happens then the VSE will flounder and it will be the end of human spaceflight. Some of you may think that's a good thing. If you are not one of these people, please, STOP OBAMA.

Why youtube?

If I can host flash video and a simple player on my £30/year web host, is there any good reason their in house tech is 'slow and cumbersome'? Flash video is not rocket science.

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Why youtube?

Youtube is all the rage in today's youth, they are just trying to take advantage of that.

If I can host flash video and a simple player on my £30/year web host, is there any good reason their in house tech is 'slow and cumbersome'?

Think about how many people connect to your server. Now think how many per second connect to the youtube servers.

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Yeah, I once embedded my video in a myspace page and watched my bandwidth disappear down a black hole. However if they can handle the web traffic, adding flash video is not as huge extra.

Republicans...

Republicans on the commission still fret that with only one such site, the House could be seen as picking winners and losers on the Web.

Every time I see popular political videos on You Tube it looks to me like Republicans are the losers on the web.

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Ron Paul didn't come out looking like a fool? That's news to me.b Except for Nader, he is the biggest joke of the '08 Presidential campaign, especially on the web. Even Huckabee did better.

Capuano

I've had the good fortune of being represented by Capuano in Boston. He's great, because he maintains an electronic newsletter detailing issues faced by the House and his rationale for voting. Regardless of where you're from, I recommend visiting his site and taking a look at his "e-updates" to get a sense of the political process.

http://www.house.gov/capuano/ [house.gov]

Awesome, awesome congressman.

Leave Hillary alone!

I can't wait for that video to get released.

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It might assuage your anger somewhat to know that very few candidates running for national public office in the United States take the public or so called "hard-money" anymore because of the restrictions attached to accepting such funding. One simply canno

Re:Better solution...

"Hard" and "soft" money has nothing to do with opting out of public funding. In fact, the record amounts of money raised in the primaries HAS been "hard" money -- or money raised under the ~$2,000 per person limit to candidates.

Soft money refers to ulimited donations to interest groups that, because of free speech laws, are able to run ads and perform other activities to support particular ideas and parties (which may just happen to align perfectly with one candidate).

The reason the candidates aren't accepting public funding is that while it gives candidates a bonus per dollar raised, it also limits how much they can spend. The amounts a major national figure can raise today is actually larger than the most they can collect under public funding plus the government subsidy.

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You are quite correct, I had two separate but often associated concepts intertwined. Thank you for clarifying.

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Agreed, but only if every cent a campaign spends is from named sources and any fraud results in the removal of the candidate.

(Not, of course, that it is anywhere near above board currently.)

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So, RIAA and friends hand over 2-3 million dollars to their favorite Congress-Critter. Now he happily obeys his new corporate overlords.

Then the EFF, DefectiveByDesign, etc. donate to his opponent. This is called "pluralism" and the American founding fathers predicted it. They believed that special interest groups would do just what they are doing, trying to promote their special interest

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Since congress has realized this, it only mean technology is slowing down.

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Yeah, obviously he meant 'slowLY'.

He's probably just a simple Apple user.

Furthermore, is that a correct use of 'fast'? He probably should have used 'quickly', but I'm not sure anymore, since I myself own and use several Apple products.