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."
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."
I don't see how they're avoiding they're "own poison" and "hiding stuff."
If anything, I am surprised that they are refusing to privatize this information. I would expect any congressthief to jump at the chance of private ownership of the recordings, because that's just one step away from only releasing edited footage. I guess C-SPAN just hasn't hired a lobbyist who can explain that clearly enough.
I suggest they hire George Orwell to lobby this issue, he said it pretty well:
Let's see--a company providing live, unedited footage as it happens, or a Congress that often starts its speeches with a call for the ability to edit the record later before it's released to the public ("at the expense of the freedoms of the people"). Apparently, you are 100% for the latter. They are absolutely hiding stuff. Congress edits its record all the time before it's released. C-SPAN messes that all up, and Nancy Pelosi ain't gonna have that happening in her "most open and ethical Congress in hist
If they act anything like Canadian Parliament used to, they should be embarassed. They're far too old to be acting like kindergarteners fighting over scraps of pork-barrel lunch.
Taxes from the general public pay the politicians and all government services. The people own the media, not some artificial corporation designed to get around FOI legislation.
From your usage of "lame-duck" (this word, it does not mean...), it comes as no surprise that you don't see another layer of "politician" that covers all parties. It's an old principle of power to find ways of turning the constituents against each other and it looks like you've fallen for the partisan bait.
I'm actually very comfortable trading congresscritter reaction shots and wide sweeping pans of the chambers for public domain footage that's not encumbered by copyright.
Fortunately, the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of 'dignity and decorum' and will be denying C-SPANS request."
There is nothing fortunate about this at all. The house leadership merely want to retain contol over what is recorded so the voters dont get to see their representatives asleep/absent/making complete tits of themselves, and it makes it easier to hide any dissention.
So are these videos edited, only turned on at very specific times (with C-SPAN having the option to turn them on in more times), fixed while C-SPANS' would have been rotatable?
If that's the only benefit they're offering I disagree and believe it is fortunate they didn't get control. Being able to point the camera somewhere new seems a very minor benefit compared with how much control the people would lose.
If they were allowed to point the cameras anywhere else but at the person speaking, voters might notice that the room is mostly empty. If voters knew how little time Congresscritters actually spent "in Congress" they might get upset at the ridiculus salary the goof offs get paid. All members of Congress should be paid the average wage of the U. S., they might do something to actually help people then. Remember: If you make less than $145,000, you have NO representation in Washington. They work for their tax
Right, but that benefit needs to be gained in a manner where the disadvantages aren't so large. IMO owning the copyright to the videos of your Congress in session is something you don't give away for something like that.
Congress makes their own rules which are not nessisarily the same as the ones they make for everyone else to follow. They are not going to allow something that makes them look as lazy and ineffectual as they are.
Everything that happens on the floor ends up in the Congressional Record anyway, which is publicly available within a couple days of it happening. It's text, which means it's searchable, which makes it a ton better than video when it comes to accessing what you need. It also includes all the extraneous material that gets included in the record but is never read on the floor.
Many committees provide streaming audio of their open proceedings even if they aren't covered by C-SPAN, but transcripts of committee meetings aren't usually made. Unfortunately, the second most "closed" part of Congress is the numerous committee meetings that are closed to the public. (The first most "closed" part is all the back room dealings that result in 11th hour and 59th minute changes to bills in conference, and I don't expect that to change with the Dems in power, either.)
But the winner in openness (modulo their impartiality) has to be the Supreme Court, who, though they don't televise their proceedings, now make transcripts of arguments available within a couple of hours of the event.
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.
I also read an article that mentioned that the Congresspeople add "tributes" to the Record. Entire sections honoring usually local hometown heroes with praise and thanks are added, when they didn't really say any of that at all. It sounded like it was quite common to add tributes to the record, which is fine I guess. It would be better if they actually said it. But it makes me really wonder what else they add or remove. It's much more than just correcting pronunciation errors and the like.
I heard about this on NPR a couple of weeks ago. The new congress purports to be more open and honest, and c-span is calling them on it. Everybody knew they wouldn't expand coverage. If congress really wanted to open up, they'd put in a bunch of cameras, offer real-time feeds - including votes - to anyone citizen or registered US corporation who wants them, and archive the video footage in a way that could be easily retrieved by any citizen. My question is: does the Congressional Record include all the conve
> Everything that happens on the floor ends up in the Congressional > Record anyway, which is publicly available within a couple days > of it happening. It's text, which means it's searchable, which > makes it a ton better than video when it comes to accessing what > you need. Garbage. It loses every nuance of the spoken word and human gestures which betray what a representative or witness really feels about a contentious issue. I vividly recall watching the Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hea
That's a very tiny excerpt of the relatovely less impassioned floor debate--the real meat of the controversy was in the very lengthy but incredibly contentious hearings, where witnesses including Thomas were vigorously cross-examined by key senators. For what is srguably the most important confirmation hearing C-SPAN ever covered, they ought to offer a DVD set containing full, unabridged confirmation hearing coverage. As far as I can tell, they offer little.
I know you want to defend the decision of the Democrats (this is Slashdot, after all), but the record is often edited after the fact before it is given to the public. C-SPAN would have provided full, live coverage for the public to watch during proceedings.
C-SPAN would have provided full, live coverage for the public to watch during proceedings.
C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 already provide full, live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of House and Senate floor action. The only "gotcha" is that the cameras are under the control of Congressional staff instead of C-SPAN.
Can you cite an instance when the House or Senate were actually conducting business on the floor and it wasn't broadcast live on C-SPAN?
I know you want to defend the decision of the Democrats (this is Slashdot, after all)
Not really. In fact, I'm hoping that the Blue Dog democrats manage to convince the Republicans to vote for one of them for Speaker, and show Pelosi that the election was a referendum against political extremism.
Of course you're going to have problems with the video from the floor being copyrighted if laws themselves are copyrighted! See this article [yale.edu] from LawMeme. A nonprofit website in Texas attempted to include area building codes that had been written by a company called SBCCI [ihs.com]. 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.)
Yes this happens quite often in particular with building codes. I find it rediculous, but what I believe happens is that a company hires engineers to write a book of codes publishes it and then states/counties whatever governing bodies then vote to adopt the codes in the book. Which is good if you ask me, who do you want writing building codes? engineers or politicians? The problem then comes up that yes the codes are copyrighted. How do you solve the issue? Laws should be a matter of public record and
How do you solve the issue? Laws should be a matter of public record and should be freely accessible. However the people creating the codes need to be compensated. I suppose the Government could have its own engineers write building codes, I'm not sure thats a good idea though.
It's the same as the company doing it, minus charging the public per copy, and minus profits for that company. Instead, more of the public pays a lesser amount (in the form of taxes).
Pro-privatization people would say the government i
Problem being that once you release the material nobody ever needs to pay again. Therefore, it is produced once, sold for a fraction of the cost because the creator knows they can sell it over and over again and released. Once released the original creator is now holding a non-asset - it is worthless. Of course you could try to "license" it so it could be viewed by the public but not reused or redistributed. Sure. That is working really well with music and video today. So someone in a small town that wo
I've actually called my congresspeople and asked about who is in charge of videorecording proceedings because it's not very clear. They had never had such an interesting question and it took several days to get a response (these are people who normally can send a canned response to any question in minutes). I still didn't get a very good answer from them, something about "House and Senate Media Services" but no answer about how it gets out of the building or if truly public domain (no C-SPAN logo) copies ar
The real work of Congress isn't done on the Congressional floor. The real work is done in committees, and most of the committee meetings are closed, even the ones that are nominally open.
If they can't find a way to close them, they'll hold the meeting in their offices in private, come to a conclusion, and then open the meeting for a trivial few minutes to announce the results.
C-SPAN is for making speeches, not for legislating.
"No thats not what the parent is talking about. He's "WTF"ing about how America can shout about being a great free democratic country and then not have means of freely distributing the back cataloge of recordings of their democratic process, thus hindering openness and accountability, which are quite important to democracy in most peoples eyes..."
You got all of that from "For and on behalf of Non-Americans: WTF?"
Having the video record of your government in action being controlled by a third party who wants to use it for their own commercial benefit is a good thing? Nice troll. C-span is pointless. In this modern age, the only thing that excuses the fact that all the senate/house deliberations aren't available on the house/senate websites in a downloadable non-proprietary format is the fact that those two groups are made up of technological retards.
Seriously. There is no better definition of public domain. That cont
Well I will say that C-SPAN does have the advantage of being publicly availible to most people. The vast majority of houses have TVs in them. If they have cable, C-SPAN allows for them to have access to some of the information of the House and Senate.
Now, I will agree that their move to privatize this SUCKS, and is wrong. I also agree that all content should be 100% publicly availible. But for now, because Joe Q. Average American is not that tech savy, I think C-SPAN has a place.
Before election: "Republicans are evil! The Democrats will provide the most open and ethical Congress in history! Just you wait, even C-SPAN will be allowed to broadcast live (so that congressman can't edit and revise the record as they already do before it's made public)!" After election: "Those poor Democrats! They're being bullied by another evil corporation who wants to restrict something that's oh-so-open-and-free! Who cares about live, unedited coverage of house proceedings? We want the edited t
Not sure where this becomes an ethics breach or a bit of partisan hackery...They're upholding a precident that's been in place for more than a decade. C-Span's argument that they ought to be allowed to pan the room and take congressional "reaction shots" seems idiotic to me. Who gives a crap what their reaction is? What's important is what's going on at the damn speakers podium, and I don't want to miss any of that because some jackass producer thinks that I'm interested in what the redneck representative fr
It is interesting to note that the founding fathers met in closed doors. It was forbidden to say what was going on until it was over. That way people weren't 'acting for the camera'.
What? You don't like your own poison? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've got nothing to hide...
Re:What? You don't like your own poison? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see how they're avoiding they're "own poison" and "hiding stuff."
Parent
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If anything, I am surprised that they are refusing to privatize this information. I would expect any congressthief to jump at the chance of private ownership of the recordings, because that's just one step away from only releasing edited footage. I guess C-SPAN just hasn't hired a lobbyist who can explain that clearly enough.
I suggest they hire George Orwell to lobby this issue, he said it pretty well:
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They are absolutely hiding stuff. Congress edits its record all the time before it's released. C-SPAN messes that all up, and Nancy Pelosi ain't gonna have that happening in her "most open and ethical Congress in hist
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If they act anything like Canadian Parliament used to, they should be embarassed. They're far too old to be acting like kindergarteners fighting over scraps of pork-barrel lunch.
Taxes from the general public pay the politicians and all government services. The people own the media, not some artificial corporation designed to get around FOI legislation.
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Funny how a problematic rationale sounds pretty good when the shoe is on the other foot, eh?
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Your bias is blinding you. (Score:2, Insightful)
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All members of Congress should be paid the average wage of the U. S., they might do something to actually help people then. Remember: If you make less than $145,000, you have NO representation in Washington. They work for their tax
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Furthermore, if you actually live in Washington, you don't get representation. How's that for irony.
yeah, well (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Text Video (Score:3, Informative)
Many committees provide streaming audio of their open proceedings even if they aren't covered by C-SPAN, but transcripts of committee meetings aren't usually made. Unfortunately, the second most "closed" part of Congress is the numerous committee meetings that are closed to the public. (The first most "closed" part is all the back room dealings that result in 11th hour and 59th minute changes to bills in conference, and I don't expect that to change with the Dems in power, either.)
But the winner in openness (modulo their impartiality) has to be the Supreme Court, who, though they don't televise their proceedings, now make transcripts of arguments available within a couple of hours of the event.
Re:Text Video (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
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Everything? I think not. (Score:2)
My question is: does the Congressional Record include all the conve
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> Record anyway, which is publicly available within a couple days
> of it happening. It's text, which means it's searchable, which
> makes it a ton better than video when it comes to accessing what
> you need.
Garbage. It loses every nuance of the spoken word and human gestures which betray what a representative or witness really feels about a contentious issue. I vividly recall watching the Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hea
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Floor Debate: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pag e=product_video_info&products_id=22040-1 [c-spanstore.org]
Confirmation Vote: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_pag e=product_video_info&products_id=22041-1 [c-spanstore.org]
Call-in interview segment with two senators (one for, one against) following the vote: htt [c-spanstore.org]
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That's a very tiny excerpt of the relatovely less impassioned floor debate--the real meat of the controversy was in the very lengthy but incredibly contentious hearings, where witnesses including Thomas were vigorously cross-examined by key senators. For what is srguably the most important confirmation hearing C-SPAN ever covered, they ought to offer a DVD set containing full, unabridged confirmation hearing coverage. As far as I can tell, they offer little.
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Can you cite an instance when the House or Senate were actually conducting business on the floor and it wasn't broadcast live on C-SPAN?
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Not really. In fact, I'm hoping that the Blue Dog democrats manage to convince the Republicans to vote for one of them for Speaker, and show Pelosi that the election was a referendum against political extremism.
Thanks for bringing this up (Score:2)
Thanks for making that information a lot more public.
Video copyrighted? Hell, the LAWS are copyrighted (Score:4, Insightful)
See this article [yale.edu] from LawMeme. A nonprofit website in Texas attempted to include area building codes that had been written by a company called SBCCI [ihs.com]. 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.)
Re:Video copyrighted? Hell, the LAWS are copyright (Score:2)
How do you solve the issue? Laws should be a matter of public record and
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It's the same as the company doing it, minus charging the public per copy, and minus profits for that company. Instead, more of the public pays a lesser amount (in the form of taxes).
Pro-privatization people would say the government i
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Of course you could try to "license" it so it could be viewed by the public but not reused or redistributed. Sure. That is working really well with music and video today. So someone in a small town that wo
OK for the NSA, but not OK for C-SPAN (Score:2)
Congressional video is poorly managed (Score:2)
It hardly matters (Score:2)
If they can't find a way to close them, they'll hold the meeting in their offices in private, come to a conclusion, and then open the meeting for a trivial few minutes to announce the results.
C-SPAN is for making speeches, not for legislating.
What is this rational thought you speak of? (Score:5, Funny)
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You can complain about it, or you can embrace it. But you can not stop it.
Nobody has that much karma.
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Get Over It (Score:2)
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You got all of that from "For and on behalf of Non-Americans: WTF?"
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C-span is pointless. In this modern age, the only thing that excuses the fact that all the senate/house deliberations aren't available on the house/senate websites in a downloadable non-proprietary format is the fact that those two groups are made up of technological retards.
Seriously. There is no better definition of public domain. That cont
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Now, I will agree that their move to privatize this SUCKS, and is wrong. I also agree that all content should be 100% publicly availible. But for now, because Joe Q. Average American is not that tech savy, I think C-SPAN has a place.
RonB
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After election: "Those poor Democrats! They're being bullied by another evil corporation who wants to restrict something that's oh-so-open-and-free! Who cares about live, unedited coverage of house proceedings? We want the edited t
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C-Span's argument that they ought to be allowed to pan the room and take congressional "reaction shots" seems idiotic to me. Who gives a crap what their reaction is? What's important is what's going on at the damn speakers podium, and I don't want to miss any of that because some jackass producer thinks that I'm interested in what the redneck representative fr
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I'm not implying anything, I'm curious.
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What was "it"? The drafting of the declaration? The constitutional convention? The early Senate and House?
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