Liberating & Restricting C-SPAN's Floor Footage

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."

What? You don't like your own poison?

[A beautiful mind]

the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of 'dignity and decorum'

If you've got nothing to hide...

Re:What? You don't like your own poison?

[aussie_a]

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."

Your bias is blinding you.

[Timesprout]

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.

yeah, well

[macadamia_harold]

C-SPAN bid to "liberate" the House and Senate floor footage has re-emerged and been shot down.

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.

Re:yeah, well

[Lumpy]

Exactly like how accuweather wants to liberate the NOAA weather information into their bank accounts.

Re:What? You don't like your own poison?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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:

Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.

Re:Your bias is blinding you.

[BCW2]

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 bracket and the higher ones they aspire to.

Re:Good !

[SatanicPuppy]

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 content should be out there and viewable by more than just a few jaded press correspondents.

Video copyrighted? Hell, the LAWS are copyrighted

[OpenGLFan]

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.)

Re:Your bias is blinding you.

[lysdexia]

It is completely obvious (to me at least) that all recorded media in open sessions of congress should be recorded at taxpayer expense and entered into the congressional record. (How much would you pay per diem to see your congresscritter behaving exactly as s/he behaves? I'd rather pay for an AV record of congress than for a strategic helium reserve ...) The precedent is there with our existing "paper" congressional record. (Of course, it might be a little different if the affected official would like to go back and "amend" their recording ... those of you old enough to remember the "We Are the World" video might want to ponder Michael Jackson's soft-focus glitter edits that stuck out like a necrotizing 'hroid).

Of course, I'm a big, fat, hippie loser who thinks that all electronic voting machines should have their source code and schematics made public for a reasonable period before being implemented, so feel free to mock.

Re:Text Video

[SirWinston]

> 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 hearings, transfixed by the spectacle of it all, judging the true reactions of senators and witnesses on the committee floor by their body language and intonation. The written record of those proceedings is comparatively worthless. When contentious issues reach the main floor, the written record can be equally misleading about the real tenor of the debate. As Socrates would point out, the written word is dead and misleading compared to seeing a real person.

Interestingly, I went to the C-SPAN store recently hoping they'd offer the Thomas hearings on DVD so I could replace my ancient self-recorded EP VHS tapes. Nope. Perhaps the most important confirmation heaing in a generation, one which transfixed the general public so fully that several Saturday Night Live sketches parodied it, one which is *not at all* accurately reflected by the text record--and it's been gone from public view for well over a decade.

Re:Good !

[Overly Critical Guy]

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 tablescraps that Congress decides we're worthy enough to view. When members of Congress start their speeches asking for unanimous support to revise the record later, that's a-okay because Nancy Pelosi is super-terrific!"

Re:What? You don't like your own poison?

[ravenshrike]

The difference is that technically we PAY THEIR SALARY. Why shouldn't the bosses know what's going on in the main center of the workplace?