CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Rob Bluey
TECHNOLOGY
New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Friday, Jan. 16, 2009
Some high-tech watchdogs are worried about a relationship unveiled this week between popular video-sharing site YouTube.com and Congress. The Google-owned site launched two new platforms where people can watch videos uploaded by members of the House and Senate. The pairing was endorsed in a welcome message by House Speaker Pelosi, House Minority Leader Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Minority Leader McConnell that has been viewed more than 230,000 times since Monday. The announcement, however, is prompting questions about the propriety of lawmakers singling out a commercial Web tool. Critics also cite privacy concerns -- namely, what happens to data collected about users who view lawmakers' videos.
The project was made possible by changes to outdated House and Senate rules last year that clarified the circumstances under which members are allowed to place content on external Web sites. Steve Grove, head of YouTube's news and political content, said in a blog post that the service has "the potential to make Congress more transparent and accessible than ever before." But the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester warned Google is "taking a lobbying tactic developed in part by C-SPAN years ago -- offer members of Congress a free service so they can be seen by the public." On his Web site, he warned that such an "electronic or digital campaign contribution helps insure that Congress will think twice about biting -- or regulating -- the video hand that feeds [it]."
Chester and other critics are asking whether Google will be able to incorporate data gathered about those who watch the videos for its growing political online advertising business -- and whether Congress should be endorsing a for-profit enterprise as a principal access point for official government content. Chester also suggested the YouTube union might create a conflict of interest for those charged with regulating Google and other Internet firms. The company came under fire on Capitol Hill in 2008 for its plan to partner with rival Yahoo on an advertising venture. The proposal, which was also the subject of a Justice Department probe, was eventually shelved. Google executives have been grilled by lawmakers on other topics, including behavioral targeting and consumer privacy, and have lobbied on issues like what should be done with spectrum freed up by the upcoming nationwide digital television transition.
Congressional aides familiar with the deal said there was no monetary agreement involved and there is strict separation between official and campaign content on the YouTube channels, just like there is between member's official and campaign Web sites. The rule of thumb, one aide said, is members can use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services as long as they think of them as extensions of their official Senate sites and not post materials deemed inappropriate for government Web sites. YouTube's arrangement was "an extraordinary accomplishment" because it managed to make a platform that generates money for Google and advertisers but seem like a "free, public utility," an official with another major high-tech company said.
by Andrew Noyes
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David Weller
Something to think about,
David Weller
www.AllThingsReform.org
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Jones, Tom (Commerce)
"taking a lobbying tactic developed in part by C-SPAN years ago -- offer members of Congress a free service so they can be seen by the public." --- Yeah and we all know what kind of damage C-SPAN has done to democracy.
Chester’s post (http://www.democraticmedia.org/jcblog/?p=716
) could be one of the dumbest pieces of dribble I’ve read in ages –
and I read a lot of crap.
This nugget is a personal favorite: “That kind of electronic or digital campaign contribution helps insure (sic) that Congress will think twice about biting (or regulating) the video hand that feeds.”
Yeah – a member’s really going to kowtow to Google because they’re worried about getting their videos taken off of YouTube. Ignoring the fact that there are a fairly large number of members who disagree with Google -- on say net neutrality -- and have huge YouTube channels, it would be a public relations DISASTER for Google if it started censoring content on YouTube. 1) its customers would revolt – 2) we’d move to another site – it’s not like video hosting sites are hard to find.
But no-good deed goes unpunished.
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
I think the feds are paying Google the same amount we are paying to use this list-serve and about the same amount as you pay for your gmail.
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Weller
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 4:14 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
David Weller
I think the feds are paying Google the same amount we are paying to use this list-serve and about the same amount as you pay for your gmail.
Who said that my using Gmail for free was right? The federal government is a much larger order.
David
Peggy Garvin
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=169&sid=1574583
Unless anyone has an update?
Peggy
On 1/16/09 4:17 PM, "Jones, Tom (Commerce)" <Tom_...@commerce.senate.gov> wrote:
I think the feds are paying Google the same amount we are paying to use this list-serve and about the same amount as you pay for your gmail.
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Weller
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 4:14 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Why doesn't the feds pay Google for its services? If it's treated like a government contract, it will be an arms-length relationship. Should I rent my garage for free to the city police department, then make money selling police-related novelties? Why not keep an inventory of motor oil in case the police want to buy any while they're at my house's garage?
Something to think about,
David Weller
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Rob Bluey <rbl...@gmail.com> wrote:
TECHNOLOGY
New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Friday, Jan. 16, 2009
Some high-tech watchdogs are worried about a relationship unveiled this week between popular video-sharing site YouTube.com and Congress. The Google-owned site launched two new platforms where people can watch videos uploaded by members of the House and Senate. The pairing was endorsed in a welcome message by House Speaker Pelosi, House Minority Leader Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Minority Leader McConnell that has been viewed more than 230,000 times since Monday. The announcement, however, is prompting questions about the propriety of lawmakers singling out a commercial Web tool. Critics also cite privacy concerns -- namely, what happens to data collected about users who view lawmakers' videos.
The project was made possible by changes to outdated House and Senate rules last year that clarified the circumstances under which members are allowed to place content on external Web sites. Steve Grove, head of YouTube's news and political content, said in a blog post that the service has "the potential to make Congress more transparent and accessible than ever before." But the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester warned Google is "taking a lobbying tactic developed in part by C-SPAN years ago -- offer members of Congress a free service so they can be seen by the public." On his Web site, he warned that such an "electronic or digital campaign contribution helps insure that Congress will think twice about biting -- or regulating -- the video hand that feeds [it]."
Chester and other critics are asking whether Google will be able to incorporate data gathered about those who watch the videos for its growing political online advertising business -- and whether Congress should be endorsing a for-profit enterprise as a principal access point for official government content. Chester also suggested the YouTube union might create a conflict of interest for those charged with regulating Google and other Internet firms. The company came under fire on Capitol Hill in 2008 for its plan to partner with rival Yahoo on an advertising venture. The proposal, which was also the subject of a Justice Department probe, was eventually shelved. Google executives have been grilled by lawmakers on other topics, including behavioral targeting and consumer privacy, and have lobbied on issues like what should be done with spectrum freed up by the upcoming nationwide digital television transition.
Congressional aides familiar with the deal said there was no monetary agreement involved and there is strict separation between official and campaign content on the YouTube channels, just like there is between member's official and campaign Web sites. The rule of thumb, one aide said, is members can use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services as long as they think of them as extensions of their official Senate sites and not post materials deemed inappropriate for government Web sites. YouTube's arrangement was "an extraordinary accomplishment" because it managed to make a platform that generates money for Google and advertisers but seem like a "free, public utility," an official with another major high-tech company said.
by Andrew Noyes <mailto:ano...@nationaljournal.com>
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
1) The post wasn’t about the federal government it was about the leg. Branch. regardless.
2) This is a portal to distribute information to the public. People watch YouTube. I suspect it’s because they have a saturation of the market, they made a good product or they have a catchy name. Who knows, but they’re the way to get information out. More information to more people is good. When YouTube ceases being the way to get the word out, we’ll go somewhere else. Politicians like having people listen to them.
3) If the idea of Google finding out that you watch videos of Jim DeMint, often search for the term “freedom”, have bought 5 guns and prefer boxers over briefs and therefore serves you an ad for the latest camouflaged underpants emblazoned with elephants on it gives you the oogly-booglies I suggest you do the following:
a. Download AdBlocker, block cookies, anonomize (I know its spelled wrong I’m too lazy to look up the correct spelling) your IP address, and maybe work from a library
what I don’t suggest you don’t do is:
b. Advocate mandating that Congress post video content in some format and on some website that no-one accesses so that the citizenry ends up being less well informed.
We use YouTube for a reason – same reason bank robbers rob banks. YouTube is where the eyeballs are. Members of Congress could attempt to get word out about their policy positions with a town crier in the city square, but we’ve generally found that radio and TV are better.
J.H. Snider
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Tom Jones’s ridicule of Jeff Chester’s comment. In particular, Mr. Chester’s comment about the relationship between C-SPAN and Congress is 100% accurate. The cable industry funded C-SPAN to curry favor with Congress and better compete with the local broadcast industry which uses its airwaves in a similar way to curry favor with members of Congress (for details on how this works, see my book: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power).
To be sure, C-SPAN provides a wonderful information service. But it is not at all the vehicle for democratic accountability that Brian Lamb often likes to make it out to be. The deal Congress made with C-SPAN was that Congress would let C-SPAN tape its proceedings if C-SPAN ensured that no opposition candidate would be able to use any of the footage against an incumbent member of Congress. This was a very clever arrangement because under the Copyright Act of 1976 Congress was not allowed to restrict access to government records in this way. By giving C-SPAN the copyright, C-SPAN would be able to enact and enforce all the undemocratic rules that Congress couldn’t do itself.
If you chart the growth of C-SPAN since the 1980s and the declining competitiveness of Congressional elections, you’ll see a remarkable correlation. I don’t think there is a significant causal connection because C-SPAN just isn’t that important. But I’m quite certain that Brian Lamb’s cable bosses would have fired him if they thought C-SPAN would damage rather than strengthen their relationships with the incumbent members of Congress whose favor they seek to curry.
As for the relevance of the Comcast analogy to Google, I’m not in a position to say. The details will matter a lot. I would agree that control of YouTube per se doesn’t give Google much leverage with members of Congress—certainly not in comparison to the leverage the broadcasting and cable industries have been able to exert on Congress. But I can imagine that Google could use the YouTube relationship to do a lot of little favors for members of Congress that won’t show up in any financial disclosure form. Moreover, I know from personal experience that Google, like any highly skilled lobbyist, can be quite adept at exercising influence below the public radar.
Mr. Jones is 100% right that Google wouldn’t blatantly censor a member of Congress. But that’s a straw man argument. That type of blatant quid pro quo isn’t the way anyone competent in Washington works. To find the potential problems, it is necessary to investigate much more carefully.
J.H. Snider, MBA, Ph.D.
President
iSolon.org
Josh Tauberer
before. I haven't followed all this very carefully.
First, I think the move to use YouTube is, on balance, *great*.
But it would be nice to see a plan that considers ramifications of
making YouTube the only access point for these videos, which include:
* Archival access issues. Because YouTube is the only access point,
access to footage is at their discretion. It would be very unlikely that
they would hinder access to the latest videos, but what about archival
videos 2 or 10 years down the road? Will it still be available? Will we
be able to find it? I can tell you that this may be actually an issue
already. GovTrack pulls in the latest videos using a YouTube RSS feed.
However, my impression is that once Member's channels have more than,
say, 20 videos, the feeds will only have the latest postings and it may
become impossible to get a complete index of a Member's videos in a
structured data format that makes reuse and dissemination at a large
scale possible.
* Copyright/trademark/TOS issues. Because YouTube is the only access
point, they are in a position in the future to alter the footage so that
they can assert IP rights over it, or to modify their Terms of Service
so as to prevent certain uses of the footage. This is what has happened
with C-SPAN --- they overlay their trademark on their broadcasts, which
poses problems for sites like Metavid (or research institutions which
capture the video) which must figure out how to block out their
trademark in order to disseminate the remaining public-domain part to
the public. (I'm assuming I don't need to justify why a site like
Metavid is useful and important.) There is no public outcry over CSPAN's
bug because it doesn't affect normal people directly --- but normal
people also don't know what they're missing by sites like Metavid being
difficult to create.
* Remixing-access issues. The decisions YouTube makes at a technical
level for how to distribute the videos may impact whether the footage is
available in such a way that remixing is technically possible. Remixing
is an important part of journalism --- broadly speaking, including clips
in a newscast is remixing. Currently (or last I checked) there was no
sanctioned way to download the raw footage of these videos from YouTube.
That is, you can only watch the video *on* YouTube. You can't get it so
that you could broadcast it on TV, or combine it with other video, or
simply make it available unaltered but on a site that does not track
users' comings and goings. (There are technical means around this, but
it may violate YouTube's terms of service -- I haven't checked.) Now, I
think I read earlier today that YouTube is making downloads of raw
footage available for some videos, which might address this problem. But
if this issue wasn't on the radar when the decision was made to go with
YouTube, we shouldn't think that if YouTube changed their mind that
there would be much of an outrage. I should note that their technical
choices may also invoke software patent issues, which could lead to
other legal restrictions on distribution.
* And the privacy concerns, which have been raised.
All of this isn't to say that YouTube was in any way a bad decision. But
it should be the first of several innovations to go about this the best
way. I am sure many people on this list can offer cheap/efficient ways
to address the problems if they were asked.
--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
Robert Millis
CapitolHub.com. Any professional user can upload to YouTube using the
Capitol Hub system and the content will go to both a focused, non-
partisan political content site as well as the more popular YouTube.
It still takes just one upload.
- Rob
Hudson Street Media
http://www.CapitolHub.com
http://www.HudsonStreetMedia.com
Greg Elin
I'm with Josh T (overall this is good) and J.H. Snider (there are influence issues/risk...they are plain yet subtle).
On the whole, the web has a given all of us a model and a mean for exchanging information and innovating far greater than previous gatekeepers.
Youtube is what, 3+ years old? Psshaw...let's figure out how to fix this. This is a great time for change and this group can move forward to address the challenges.
Is this agreement even exclusive? Maybe John Wonder-Finder can get us info? (I, er, "googled" a bit for the agreement and just got news articles. Which itself is pretty interesting: (a) no Google press release shows up on first page of results—is that good (no bias) or bad (hiding)? (b) none of the people writing describe the basic terms of document or give a good link—in a world of infinite page length and iPaper embeds.)
Since 2007 this very *very* crowd—a unique mix of tech practitioners, Congressional staffers, and engaged citizens—has helped changed rules/practices in Congress, C-SPAN's copyright policy, and gov't websites. Furthermore, we are doing this against a background of emerging but tested social contracts of open source, open standards, and creative commons. We have unbelievably powerful search tools, organizing tools, and new peer-to-peer means for bubbling up information that route around the previous gatekeepers of advertisers or government or editorial boards. We are in a great position to *continue* innovating and changing and improving. Thank goodness Congress is starting to use these tools. We have new institutions like the Internet Archive. And most importantly, we have the increasing value of *this* network that we are weaving. We have a vocabularly of practices now. We have public testbeds. And we even have lessons learned from other media/technology revolutions.
We are still in transition. We are not *done* with our work, merely better positioned for next steps. YouTube has no requirement for disability access as federal websites do. Flash video has shortcomings. There are legitimate issues around who gets access to usage logs.
I'm looking forward to the next two years as I think they will be great ones for implementing and innovating on the technology and policy fronts simultaneously.
I remember *very* clearly in 1980s, in college, going to downtown Philadephia to flip through three-ring binders of franchise proposal from cable companies, the *huge* promises they made of wiring classrooms and e-democracy if they were the ones to receive the exclusive geographic cable monopoly. J.H. is right, but the nature of the Internet makes exclusive elusive and creates a better (not perfect) relationship between popularity and merit. Just as people moved from AOL to the web, and from MySpace to Facebook, videos could migrate from YouTube to something else *much* easier than a city can migrate between cable company franchises.
Greg
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Greg Elin
After reading the article which takes a long time to say things but has interesting facts in the second half,I think there's still something to "path dependence" though it might better be described as "preferential attachment" found in scale-free networks.
Further makes me think Google or YouTube is not *real* issue, but how we bake-in a path dependency of easily adopted innovation so we continuously address shortcomings.
Greg
Clay Shirky
Oh, don't pshaw YT -- network effects of adoption mean that there is
incredible path dependency set up early on, path dependency that will
be incredibly hard to alter.
I love the idea of releasing .gov videos in open formats from .gov
sites -- let Google, and whoever else wants them, write the spider to
get them, which would I think create all the current value, but at
arm's length. The larger point, though, is that recency of invention
doesn't mean flexibility -- YT's forward momentum is extraordinary,
and will be hard to alter without fixing it at the source of the
videos themselves, the only real control point in the system.
-clay
PS> Greg, you were terrific this morning on "On the Media" -- congrats!
Greg Elin
Oh, don't pshaw YT -- network effects of adoption mean that there is
> Youtube is what, 3+ years old? Psshaw...
incredible path dependency set up early on, path dependency that will
be incredibly hard to alter.
Definitely. But at least it's not a path that has been pre-selected by politicians via a lobbied process. That's something new IMHO compared to giving out broadcasting licenses and cable franchises on promises from the company of what they will do in the future.
So, I'm pshawing in terms of the path is already fixed with this announcement. This group, via policy and technology, can pursue exactly the idea you like below of a publishing video via a .gov and YouTube picking them up along with others. Can't we help show MoC how to do what you are suggesting? How can we be the people to make that happen?
I love the idea of releasing .gov videos in open formats from .gov
sites -- let Google, and whoever else wants them, write the spider to
get them, which would I think create all the current value, but at
arm's length. The larger point, though, is that recency of invention
doesn't mean flexibility -- YT's forward momentum is extraordinary,
and will be hard to alter without fixing it at the source of the
videos themselves, the only real control point in the system.
Or spider YouTube. High speed modems and PPPOE hacked digital computer communications on top of instransient analog phone system. Creative Commons is hacking remix culture on top of instransient copyright culture. Josh is hacking much needed functionality for reading bills on top of existing Thomas and GAO systems.
As identities get more portable driven by competitors (currently) wanting/needing to make sure others can't use a login/identity as a lock-in, a person's content is likely to get more portable as part of person's identity/content cloud. Apple made it easier to migrate content to a new computer (even from a PC). What can we do -- technology-wise and policy-wise -- to make sure government/reps can migrate their content (including links)? This I think is the real challenge.
-clay
PS> Greg, you were terrific this morning on "On the Media" -- congrats!
<blush>.Haven't heard it yet.
Jay dedman
> sites -- let Google, and whoever else wants them, write the spider to
> get them, which would I think create all the current value, but at
> arm's length.
To me, this is the solution,.
Though, I don't see any nefarious conspiracy....Why should Congress
just publish on Youtube?
Seems kind of lame considering the scope of the web.
Congress should publish all these videos to a .gov site....and then
create an API so any site (youtube, Internet Archive,"myblog", etc)
can suck in those videos to be displayed anyway we want. I really like
how Josh pulls in Youtube videos on Govtrack....but it is concerning
that Youtube is the only source for these videos.
I think CSPAN has done great things by broadcasting congressional
meetings on radio/cable.
BUT it is a bitch to try to get access to the archives and get the
video in a format where I can manipulate.
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/ is doing a good job scraping CSPAN...but this
functionality shouldn't be a hack.
If Congressional staff are now able to produce the videos, then
creating a hosting/transcoding system is a breeze.
You cant tell me that the US govt cant hire a development team. This
would take what a month or two to build from scratch?
Jay
Perla Ni
I think this announcement still doesn't address the issue of availability of committee hearing content in their full, non-edited form. Right now, the videos being uploaded by Pelosi and other members are edited videos - usually of just that member speaking. It is a snippet of what goes on and edited to put that member in the best light.
CSPAN at least is in a position and has the mission to film entire committee hearings and make them available in their whole. CSPAN is being limited by their budget to film and make all these available. By our surveys, they only film about 25% of committee hearings. However, their copyright on committee hearings video are loosening and they have made it affordable to sites like ours to re-distribute their video.
The Library of Congress is also supposed to making available congressional videos. We spoke with them last year and they were waiting on the audio/video departments of the Senate and House to start providing those videos to them digitally.
We can be supportive of these multiple sources for congressional video.
Perla Ni
VoterWatch
J.H. Snider
The various comments on the need for open video standards and how to reduce Google’s market power are excellent and go to the heart of the problem. Nevertheless, they miss important ways that Google could secure political advantage from its position as a way for members of Congress to get their message out to constituents.
My questions here are old-tech; they relate very much to the tried and true practices old media have used to leverage for political gain their position as a Congressional message outlet.
1) Google will acquire valuable political knowledge and access as a result of this relationship. One source of local broadcasters’ power, for example, is that the local TV sales manager knows opponents’ attack ads and media plans hours or days before they run on TV. Those sales managers are often very involved in various candidates’ campaigns and on some occasions even serve as media managers for the campaigns. Google has started to develop a database of extraordinary value to campaigns about web usage of their opponents and constituents. A close, legally sanctioned relationship between Google and members of Congress will facilitate Google trading this information with key members of Congress in a very convenient and subtle way that existing campaign disclosure systems cannot possibly track.
2) A major reason people are posting videos on YouTube is because that is where they can maximize their online audience. Similarly, members of Congress find YouTube appealing partly for its audience. Getting full access to this audience, however, is not a simple matter of posting a video. The interface Google sets up to access those videos can make a big difference. This sets up Google to have gatekeeper power like the old media. In many local (mostly rural) congressional districts, members of Congress will practically kill to get a regular spot on their local TV public affairs programs. It’s free media, not subject to campaign finance disclosure, and places them in a position of authority. This, in turn, gives the local TV broadcast lobbyist (often the station general or sales manager) a lot of political leverage. I don’t expect Google to be able to acquire this same degree of leverage but even if it acquires a small fraction of it the result would be harmful for our democracy.
None of this comes even close to exhausting the ways Google could leverage its new position as Congressional message outlet for political gain. What I’d like to see in the new rules, at a minimum, is that all contractual agreements and contacts between members of Congress and Google must be online and in the public domain, even if there is nothing obviously political about the contracts and contacts. With today’s online world and Google’s normally online way of doing business, such a rule should be easy to implement. There also needs to be an absolute firewall between Google’s lobbying apparatus and its YouTube service support staff (roughly equivalent to the old firewall that was supposed to exist but often didn’t between the news and general management/sales/lobbying staff at local broadcast TV outlets).
If all the video is fed through an open, .Gov website, many (but not all) of these issues will go away. This is all the more reason for preferring a .gov-based solution to the YouTube-based solution Congress seems to be pursuing.
--Jim Snider
John Wonderlich
I'm not sure how the concept of exclusivity has come up here.
It is extraordinary that the party leaders from Congress have been featured in the introductory youtube for the Congress portal, but this seems entirely proportional to the extraordinary service that youtube has provided. Remember, many people refer to all online videos as "youtubes".
The video, and the portal, however, need to be understood for what they are. I think the criticisms overblow the sense in which this portal creates "exclusivity" or a "unique access point". The development of this portal doesn't restrict anything, unlike the agreements and procedures surrounding access to raw video feeds that have empowered network TV and C-SPAN.
In this discussion, Congress has been repeatedly treated as a single entity. For Congress to act, qua Congress, they would have to pass a sense of the Congress resolution (which they haven't, and wouldn't be binding anyway), or pass a rules change (which they did, but only opening possibilities, without even whitelisting anything). Remember, that's why the franking rules were so good -- they're agnostic to the context, and focused solely on content, as they should be, in the same manner as traditional media communications have been for a long time.
"Congress" hasn't acted here. Members of party leadership have acted, to make it easier for Members of Congress to do whatever they want. It so happens that the "whatever they want", in this case, is to post youtube videos. This isn't being done instead of many other things -- planning for raw public access to video, opening access to ALL online interactions through franking reform in both chambers, wiring committee rooms for video, etc.
There are legitimate concerns about Google's growing market share of our vital public information. I don't see them here. Congress hasn't made youtube the official anything, in fact, they probably couldn't if they tried.
It sure seems that way, given the promotional video, but again, I see that video as proportional to the popular praise given to youtube. Party leaders acted to fulfill a clear need that has been repeatedly expressed by their Members, and haven't restricted anything.
If we're going to be concerned about what "Congress" is doing, we should act with a full understanding of what they've done. In this case, what have they done? Individual party leaders have worked with the single biggest video provider to make it easier for their members (Members of Congress) to post videos online, which they've been asking to do for a long time. The work they've done doesn't restrict anything at all, and should, in fact, make it easier for other similar services to create TOS or pages that are appropriate for government employees or representatives. Google has even repeatedly hosted public conversations about this adaptation.
If we're going to fear their influence, we need to be very clear about what it is we're fearing.
Greg Elin
John Wonderlich
The other changes, as far as I can tell:
Google made access points for finding representatives with channels:
http://www.youtube.com/househub
http://www.youtube.com/senatehub
The youtube watermark doesn't appear on MoC's videos.
Members' pages have no ads.
If they're controlling links auto-generated for relevant videos, they're not doing a good job of it, since this video is linked from a congressmanaltmire's page.
If I interview a Member of Congress, and both parties know that I won't release their quotes until I'm payed to do so (as, say, an article writer), is that wrong? Clearly, no one objects to that. (As long as no similar condition applies to the speech of the Member.)
If a media outlet makes some change, perhaps announcing a new Congress-themed show, or announcing a new moderator (Meet the Press?), and Members of Congress wholeheartedly congratulate them, that's ok too.
If the House stationery office buys mostly UniBall pens, because they're the most requested, and because they've got limited space, that's ok too, right?
Well, as long as no one's telling Members what kind of service they can use, pays them for an endorsement, or tries to limit their speech, then how is this different than any other kind of enabling activity that Congressional leadership or institutions perform for Members?
John Wonderlich
Think of the terms negotiated for an interview that a Member might do with some journalist. They might agree to do the interview only if all questions are submitted beforehand, only if it's aired commercial-free, or whatever. Conditions are normal for these appearances. If the agreement has poor terms, then that's the Member's fault for signing it.
As long as entry into the agreement is voluntary, then who cares what members are agreeing to? It can (obviously) only apply to videos that are voluntarily posted on youtube, and if it is poor, then Members can use Vimeo, Hulu, or whatever.
If, however, there's a MOU between youtube and HIR or the Seargant at Arms saying that IF youtube makes a channel, then HIR/SAA will create some inside uploading tool, then that's a bit more interesting. But I still fail to see how that's any different from setting up an interview room on taxpayer dollars to be used only by credentialed media, something that we're apparently all fine with.
John Wonderlich
That doesn't affect my views, but is probably right to bring up in a discussion about Google.
sto...@gmail.com
Matt
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
From: "J.H. Snider"
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:16:26 -0500
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com<openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Jay dedman
> pays them for an endorsement, or tries to limit their speech, then how is
> this different than any other kind of enabling activity that Congressional
> leadership or institutions perform for Members?
John, Im glad you're putting this in the proper perspective.
Only two years ago, it would have been inconceivable to me that
members of Congress would be embracing online video so readily.
If we see Youtube as just another outlet like the NYTimes, Washington
Times, NBC...then you are totally correct.
BUT since we're here to push the edges, what if I own
Republicanhosting.com and ask Pelosi if she will put her videos on my
site.
If she says "no"...then I guess we'll start having video hosting wars.
Similar to how Bush/Cheney mainly appreared on FOX for much of their
administration since they knew they could trust Fox's framing. Youtube
will have to deal with any issues of allowing this or not allowing
that. Members of Congress will make friends/enemies based on who they
choose to host them...though it seems dumb to not out your propaganda
everywhere.
Now we're just talking a matter of access, not Transparency.
Congressional members should be able to put their edited videos
anywhere they want.
I guess this group will much more concerned about getting unedited
coverage of hearings in the most open format possible.
John Wonderlich
coverage of hearings in the most open format possible.
totally agreed.
Hackbarth, Sean (Republican-Conf)
So many Senate offices are on board w/ their channels is because of YouTube's large audience and because their player is easiest to use. A YouTube failing is how cumbersome it is at times to upload and manage videos. If a new service comes around easing that while at the same time making it dead simple for webloggers and website editors to post video then Senate offices would use it. I care about Senators using more online video period. Right now, YouTube is the beneficiary.
Sean
---
Sean Hackbarth
Online Communications Adviser
Senate Republican Conference
sean_ha...@src.senate.gov
http://republican.senate.gov
----- Original Message -----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat Jan 17 13:13:53 2009
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTube Partnership Raises Questions
Josh Tauberer
> manage videos. If a new service comes around easing that while at the
> same time making it dead simple for webloggers and website editors to
> post video then Senate offices would use it.
But let's take that seriously. If I told you I would make you a system
where you could upload the videos easily and it would automatically post
them to popular sites like YouTube, and at the same time it would
address section 508 issues, privacy, the technical concerns I mentioned-
would you use it? Honestly?
If any staffer says yes, I am confident someone will build you the tool
(for free) and we will all win.
Jay dedman
> where you could upload the videos easily and it would automatically post
> them to popular sites like YouTube, and at the same time it would
> address section 508 issues, privacy, the technical concerns I mentioned-
> would you use it? Honestly?
> If any staffer says yes, I am confident someone will build you the tool
> (for free) and we will all win.
Hell, sounds like Congress staffers are coming to the party late.
For videobloggers, this issue is so 2007.
Videobloggers who want to upload once, but send their viudeo
everywhere use sites like http://tubemogul.com//
J.H. Snider
Matt, you’ve nailed it on the head. The FCC at Congressional request requires that political buys be made public because members of Congress are afraid of the power that this information can give local broadcasters who choose to use it for political gain. But laws per se don’t mean as much as you seem to think. There are loads of FCC laws on the books that are rarely or ineffectively enforced. For example, the FCC mandated that broadcasters speed the digital TV transition by broadcasting their second digital channel at full power (as opposed to partial power). But this could cost a local broadcaster up to $100,000/year in energy costs for no financial gain, so it was widely ignored with little if any FCC enforcement. When was the last time the FCC revoked a broadcast license for a station not acting in the “public interest,” including ignoring one of its legally mandated obligations?
Sure, the FCC political disclosure law acts as a deterrent for outrageous local broadcast station abusers. But a member of Congress who understands the weakness of this disclosure law and that, in any case, it will only be enforced AFTER the next election, will still think twice about alienating his local broadcaster who has wide discretion on when, exactly, political ads run and how they are placed in relations to other ads and programming.
I’d also like to comment on John’s disclosure about Google’s funding of Sunlight. A major source of leverage in the DC non-profit world is not just cash contributions but the control of favorable publicity. I can tell you from personal experience that this is almost an obsession in the non-profit think tank and advocacy community because of the way that donors score non-profit outcomes for funding determination. When Google hosts a major highly publicized event at its headquarters and features Sunlight as a leader of the open government movement, that’s a very valuable perk. Indeed, I know many non-profit groups that would practically kill for such recognition and all that it brings.
This type of influence by favorable publicity is both far more common and powerful than many people recognize. It would be nice if LittleSis and other web-of-influence transparency systems could include this type of disclosure for power players such as Google. But I cannot think of any reasonably easy and automated way to do so. One exception is the Hill database of Congressional sponsors for use of Hill rooms for PR events. This is a very valuable perk that members of Congress hand out to friends and allies. Any organization that receives this perk will think twice about biting the hand that gives it such publiclity and Hill clout. There is no good reason why the public shouldn’t have access to this information.
--Jim Snider
J.H. Snider, MBA, Ph.D.
President
iSolon.org
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
Sorry I haven’t responded to this thread earlier – my basement/first floor flooded last night so I have been digging out from that. Fortunately a dove brought back an olive branch earlier today so all is well.
Anyway, there are a number of things in this post and others that are worth addressing.
First I think John’s post a couple posts hit most of the points great – well until I found out he was bought and sold by Google. Now I think he’s on the take and trust nothing he says. Shill. (I’m kidding)
The comments re: rooms is just preposterous. I’ve gotten rooms before and I’ve helped outside groups get them. It’s nice to do an event on the hill – folks from out of town think that your organization has its act together and if you’re doing a lobby day its hugely convenient. The comment that “This is a very valuable perk that members of Congress hand out to friends and allies. Any organization that receives this perk will think twice about biting the hand that gives it such publiclity and Hill clout“ though just doesn’t get it. Look, if you’re working in Washington and doing a halfway decent job you’re probably advocating for some kind of policy that someone likes (and one that someone else doesn’t like.) Again if you’re doing your job correctly you’ve hopefully developed a relationship with some offices as an expert or a good organizer or whatever. If you want to do a Hill event you’d call that office an say “hey could you sponsor a room for me so I can do a public policy forum six months from now.” If you’re good at your job, not a pest and your association with the Member wouldn’t embarrass them they’ll probably get you the room. The idea that it’s a “huge perk” is absurd. 1) the food sucks and its expensive (particularly on the Senate side – even though I’m not allergic to shellfish, crab meatballs make my throat close) 2) pretty much any member can put in a request for a room for you (i.e. if Rep. Smith won’t do it Rep. Jones probably will and 3) if for some reason you can’t scare up someone to get you a room in the bowels of Rayburn you can do an event/dinner/whatever within 500 yards of every Senate building with better food and service without a problem. (and btw: if you can’t scare up a room, you might want to reexamine how much impact you’re having on the debate.)
Now if you shit all over Member Jones and call him an jerk will he stop getting rooms for you? Yeah probably. But here’s the thing, again if you’re good at your job, you’ll think long and hard before you get cross-ways with a member and you will think long and hard about how you do it. And again if you’re good at your job, room access will likely be pretty far down the list of reasons not to crap all over an office. Of course lobbyists et al want to cultivate good relationships with offices because you want folks to listen to your point of view – at the very least return your phone call, they want the staff to tell the member that here’s what such and such community is thinking when they consider a vote, and you want to be part of the discussion. These are the reasons you might not poo all over Rep. Smith – sometimes you have to poo on them, but hopefully you’ll do it in a way that doesn’t screw relationships.
This gets back to the Google/YouTube thing. Looking at Google’s policy preferences there are things that my boss agrees with them on and things he disagrees with them on. Those decisions turn on the degree to which Google agrees with the boss’ free-market approach to technology policy (I’m not going to get into specifics because I don’t really feel like discussing the specific issues) But the idea that somehow Google has stroke with the office because they organized some portal where we put videos is just stupid. YouTube is great. People visit there and if Google can make it easier for their customers to find out how awesome Jim DeMint is, all the better. But trust me when I say being able to post YouTube videos has no bearing on any of the considerations we make on technology policy.
Which brings me to a third point. This portal is more about YouTube’s viewers than it is about us. Being someone who works in public policy I can understand why people might like to spent their spare time watching videos from politicians. Policy interests people. I suspect that YouTube has figured this out and they’ve developed a mechanism to make their users experience more enjoyable – and get them to spend more time roaming around Google/YouTube. I suspect they want to cultivate a perception that Google makes great useful stuff and it’s the first place you should go for great useful stuff. Good for them. Maybe they’re doing it because they’re good hearted souls who think people need to pay more attention to Washington. Awesome. Either way, Google has built a pretty good mousetrap that makes getting information to the public easier. As I’ve said before – Good stuff.
And one last thing – and maybe the only thing that’s actually worth-while in this post. If you’ve built a better mousetrap that makes it easier for Congressional offices to communicate with the public than the status quo. Awesome. Let me know and I’ll pass it along to our media office. I suspect they’ll be interested. It of course needs to make less/not more work for the office and should at the very least be just as easy if not easier than the status quo. And again, it needs to reach more not less people. Confining something to a website that is in cool open formats that are great but is on a website no one reads doesn’t help us.
Anyway, I’m going to take the kids to chick-fil-a. apologize for any grammar/typos.
Tom
J.H. Snider
Two points of clarification. First, I think being able to host an event on the Hill is great. I have nothing against it. I’ve been to a ton of Hill events and know they are extremely useful and often help move the policy debate forward. My point was only that the taxpayers pay for the use of this extremely valuable Hill space and have a right to know how that scarce resource is allocated. If I reserve a conference room at the Ritz or Mayflower hotels, I’m paying thousands of dollars and not even getting a room that is half as good as the Hill room I can get for free. For these types of events, it’s often location, location, location. An off-Hill location often just cannot get the same turnout and visibility. Admittedly, the private off-Hill venues may have better food. But as a busy staffer or journalist, I’m likely to decide that a decent sandwich at a convenient Hill location is far more attractive than a great sandwich at an off-Hill location. In short, I’m all for these types of government subsidies to the various advocacy groups—I’d just like them to be publicly disclosed.
Second, I love Google’s current policy agenda (especially its mission to make it possible to Google government), and I’m pleased that it is mobilizing its considerable resources to pursue that agenda. But history demonstrates that great power is liable to be abused. As political communication shifts to the web (e.g., YouTube), there will undoubtedly be many new types of abuses of power that it is hard for us to envision today. I think it’s prudent for us to brainstorm what those abuses might be. It is in that spirit that I suggest people think carefully about all the implications of the YouTube arrangement. My personal preference, as a number of people in this group have suggested, is to have all the video come out of a .gov portal that uses open standards, makes it easy to download data for third parties such as YouTube, is subject to the copyright exemption for government information, and will be archived by the National Archives (none of these conditions have historically applied to C-SPAN and only recently, decades after these conditions were created, is the public interest community beginning to understand its loss). There may be good reasons why, in the long-run, this .gov approach is a bad idea. If so, I anxiously await to hear them.
--Jim Snider
Josh Tauberer
> And one last thing – and maybe the only thing that’s actually
> worth-while in this post. If you’ve built a better mousetrap that makes
> it easier for Congressional offices to communicate with the public than
> the status quo. Awesome. Let me know and I’ll pass it along to our
> media office. I suspect they’ll be interested. It of course needs to
> make less/not more work for the office and should at the very least be
> just as easy if not easier than the status quo. And again, it needs to
> reach more not less people. Confining something to a website that is
> in cool open formats that are great but is on a website no one reads
> doesn’t help us.
There are several issues here, and I want to separate myself from some
others (which I think are valid concerns but not my concern at the moment).
We don't talk about open formats on this list because we have a
political goal to promote open source. It's because we have concerns
about things like archival access, wide dissemination, and *legal*
freedom to use public, taxpayer-funded, and crucially important records
to *improve the country*.
Let's just take an example. The Bush administration didn't take archival
issues seriously and now a) NARA has a lot more work to do than they
should have, and b) we've probably lost some very interesting historical
records that we otherwise would have had. Without history we're doomed
to repeat it (or insert some other cliche here).
If taking data seriously was somehow impossibly expensive, then there
would be something to debate about. But it's not. And it's just really
unfortunate, a real shame, when choices are made that forfeit low
hanging fruit that are beneficial to society. When we forfeit the
progress that technology can give us.
(In my last two posts I noted some problems and suggested that they
could be solved cheaply.)
Jon Henke
1. Bureaucracies don't evolve quickly, and they don't try new things often. If the people aren't used to the technology - or if the organization itself is already used to other technologies - then inertia wins. They have to have an incentive to change. The transition to more open-access technologies, more ecumenical distribution, has to benefit somebody (or the organization), or else it just isn't a priority.
2. The individuals who work in Congressional offices have a lot of skills. I'm sure they're very competent at what they do. But the communications people (who probably distribute the videos) aren't technologists, and the IT people have other priorities (security, doing it the way it's always been done, etc).
These more open practices may be perfectly normal to any of you/us, and we may understand that changing is a fairly trivial thing. But it's alien to the Hill. It would be like asking my mom to switch to a Mac. We all understand it's simple enough to do, but she'd feel like we'd asked her to whip up a Dyson Sphere.
My point is, people respond to incentives. Right now, I'm not seeing a lot of clear incentives for them to change.
------------
(via Blackberry)
Jon Henke
Strategic Consultant
202-595-4323
New Media Strategies
----- Original Message -----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTubePartnership Raises Questions
tim.ra...@gmail.com
steak. Propriety is one thing, and admittedly an important thing, but
we are all still talking about canned content that a M.C. wants to use
to put his or her best foot forward. It's often a video version of
constituent "news"letters, with their requisite addressing of pressing
issues like ribbon-cuttings and meals-on-wheels photo-ops.
As Perla reminded us, and John, Josh, and others touched upon, let's
remember the importance of securing open access to prime choice
content -- hearings an markups. Any consistently accessible
clearinghouse of committee video of any quality is better than nothing
at all. Even low-res beats no-res. CSPAN covers a tiny fraction of
hearings/markups, and committee self-broadcasts and archivings form an
inconsistent hodgepodge. (Remember chapter 11 of the Open House
Project Report at http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/the-open-house-project-report/11-congressional-video/
)
With this week's latest development, 535 Hill offices may now start
dribbling out YouTube video to see if anyone's interested. Perhaps
there would be a way to encourage or incent committees to do the
same. (They'd probably get more hits anyhow.) While I believe it
would be better for such content to come on an independent platform
that the Hill itself controlled, maybe committee proceeding video
content parked on a well-known commercial platform would be as good as
we're going to get for now.
----
Tim Ransdell
California Institute for Federal Policy Research www.calinst.org
On Jan 17, 1:18 pm, John Wonderlich <johnwonderl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess this group will [be] much more concerned about getting unedited
> coverage of hearings in the most open format possible.
>
> totally agreed.
>
Dan Manatt
This is a classic don't-snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory/look a
gift horse in the mouth/glass-is-half-full/seize the opportunity
moment –
We're 2/3 of the way through a 3 part story –
Part 1: The House/Senate franking rules etc. have been changed (kudos
to Karina & Murshed);
Part 2: They launch an initial web video program with the biggest
player (YouTube)
Part 3: Open House/Sunlight seizes the opportunity to
A) Congratulate Congress on its actions
B) Urge them to "Finish the Job" by making all congressional,
floor, press conference, etc. video available via open source web
video
C) Get some press for it
D) Hold their feet to the fire re:same.
Obviously there have been recommendations like this before. But in
advocacy, timing is everything, and NOW is the time.
Now, let it be admitted, there will be winners and losers in this, and
it explains the politics of it. C-SPAN/the press gallery/c-span knows
its fighting a closing cause, but they will continue to fight.
Indeed, reading the writing on the wall, I have thrown the towel in on
my Hill web video initiatives, CapNews.Net/CongressionalVideo.com,
because the Hill's new policy clearly mooted them. Others will not
give up so easily.
But the Hill has the right intentions - of course some will want only
self-serving highlights, etc. But, to paraphrase a popular line, the
arc of Congressional web video is long, but it bends toward total
availability/transparency.
So let's go do it.
Dan Manatt
PoliticsTV.com
d...@politicstv.com
On Jan 17, 11:23 pm, tim.ransd...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hear, hear. The YouTube partnership is more about sizzle than less
> steak. Propriety is one thing, and admittedly an important thing, but
> we are all still talking about canned content that a M.C. wants to use
> to put his or her best foot forward. It's often a video version of
> constituent "news"letters, with their requisite addressing of pressing
> issues like ribbon-cuttings and meals-on-wheels photo-ops.
>
> As Perla reminded us, and John, Josh, and others touched upon, let's
> remember the importance of securing open access to prime choice
> content -- hearings an markups. Any consistently accessible
> clearinghouse of committee video of any quality is better than nothing
> at all. Even low-res beats no-res. CSPAN covers a tiny fraction of
> hearings/markups, and committee self-broadcasts and archivings form an
> inconsistent hodgepodge. (Remember chapter 11 of the Open House
Josh Tauberer
> My point is, people respond to incentives. Right now, I'm not seeing
> a lot of clear incentives for them to change.
What kind of incentive can you have for open data when even if it is
improving people's lives they don't even know it? (I'm not talking about
GovTrack. The first thing that comes to mind is that probably Google
Maps wouldn't be possible or free if the Census Bureau hadn't gone to
great lengths to share all of their work with the public. The fact that
there isn't as much corruption as their could be in government is in
part due to the FEC sharing their campaign contribution data. Open data.
This seems like it could be a whole new thread, hang on...)
Jon Henke
This is where Obama's CTO could have a profoundly positive spillover effect. If he can institutionalize open standards in Executive agencies, there will be two positive effects on Congress:
1. These new norms - code, formats, access - will seem less alien. It won't be a Brave New World, but something that the government is already doing, already fleshing out.
2. Congress would look dated, user-unfriendly in comparison to the Executive branch/agencies. That would provide a powerful incentive to Keep Up With The Joneses.
But "maybe Obama's CTO can initiate the change" is hope, not strategy. I guess the key to that would be to figure out whether that would be part of the new CTO's job description. Perhaps people here know that? If so, we could use that forthcoming evolution to bring pressure on Congress to keep up.
---------
Jon Henke
Strategic Consultant
New Media Strategies
-----Original Message-----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Josh Tauberer
Sent: Mon 1/19/2009 12:55 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTubePartnership Raises Questions
Clay Shirky
Depends how much effect that CTO can have on perceived career path.
Back In the Day, joint operations among the armed forces had exactly
the same issue. The brass all began praising "jointness", gave lots of
nice speeches, had lots of meetings, and so on, but no real jointness
actually happened until the promotion path was changed so that you had
to serve 2 years in a joint command to rise to a certain level
(two-star, i think.)
Then things actually began to change.
If the new CTO can make convincing distinctions in the career tracks
of those who work to provide standard data and open, well-documented
APIs vs. those who only pay lip service to those things, we'll get
somewhere.
-c
Thomas Lord
> It is extraordinary that the party leaders from Congress have been
> featured in the introductory youtube for the Congress portal, but this
> seems entirely proportional to the extraordinary service that youtube
> has provided. Remember, many people refer to all online videos as
> "youtubes".
What does "proportionality" or the fact that many people understand tech
poorly have to do with the use of taxpayer money and facilities to
produce a commercial for YouTube in exchange for personal consideration
to the congressmen in question?
-t
Thomas Lord
> Congress should publish all these videos to a .gov site....and then
> create an API so any site (youtube, Internet Archive,"myblog", etc)
> can suck in those videos to be displayed anyway we want.
And additionally there should be a voluntary peering protocol so that
MyTube and AlicesTube and BobsTube and on down the line don't all have
to hit up the .gov servers. The same peering protocol can also be used
to create a lot of robust .gov replication of content.
But, shoulda' coulda' woulda' but just plain didn't. Instead, the
leaders chose to break the law. At least this time we have them on
tape doing so.
-t
John Wonderlich
produce a commercial for YouTube
to the congressmen in question?
Micah Sifry
I can't help but note, impishly, that it is highly ironic that we're engaging in this thread on a Google Group.
Cheers to all.
Micah
http://www.personaldemocracy.com
http://www.techpresident.com
http://micah.sifry.com
http://www.twitter.com/mlsif
Clay Shirky
> MyTube and AlicesTube and BobsTube and on down the line don't all have
> to hit up the .gov servers. The same peering protocol can also be used
> to create a lot of robust .gov replication of content.
I'll take Internet Protocols for four hundred, Alex. "What is BitTorrent?"
-c
Clay Shirky
Contrast this:
> The comments re: rooms is just preposterous.
with this:
> Look, if you're working in Washington and doing a halfway
> decent job you're probably advocating for some kind of policy that someone
> likes (and one that someone else doesn't like.) Again if you're doing your
> job correctly you've hopefully developed a relationship with some offices as
> an expert or a good organizer or whatever.
In my experience, this is one of the largest disconnects in "inside
vs. outside the Beltway" conversations.
You regard "doing your job correctly" as a de minimus threshold, not
realizing that most citizens not in DC have *no idea* what constitutes
a correct vs. incorrect approach to the job of contacting a
Congressional office, much less reserving a room. Similarly, the
assumption that you have to have developed a relationship as "an
expert or good organizer" means that the "Mr. Smith goes to
Washington" scenario, where a well-meaning group with absolutely zero
experience of DC workflow nevertheless gets their say, is off the
table.
Now its easy to note that the Mr. Smith scenario is a naive fantasy,
because the workings of DC prevent it for all sorts of reasons, but
that doesn't change the fact that many citizens resent competence at
lobbying as a minimum threshold for access.
So the use of YouTube, while it was both expedient and, as I
understand it (IANAL), legal within the new franking rules, looks like
it suffers from the same bias towards competence, a bias which
necessarily excludes most citizen groups, as the majority of them will
be, by definition, below average on that scale. A better approach (and
I use better here in a normative way: 'fairer to all citizens') would
be to make the video equally accessible to all participants, and let
the market sort out winners from losers far way from Congressional
agreements or behaviors.
-clay
David Weller
"...A better approach (and
I use better here in a normative way: 'fairer to all citizens') would
be to make the video equally accessible to all participants, and let
the market sort out winners from losers far way from Congressional
agreements or behaviors."
David Weller
Hitch your wagon to a star. -Emerson
David Weller
email, gtalk: poets...@gmail.com
diigo: bit.ly/dw-d
politics: bit.ly/dw
John Wonderlich
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10147726-46.html
The YouTube related text in the new White House privacy policy implies that not all users will be tracked by YouTube. The policy notes that:
"If you would like to view a video without the use of persistent cookies, a link to download the video file is typically provided just below the video."
As of Thursday morning, this statement is false.
Martin Bosworth
The problems with WhiteHouse.gov (robots.txt, lack of blog comments, lack of transparency features, slowness of posting items) are probably attributable to the difficulties of getting all this material on the Web in a timely fashion while using the arcane and ancient processes of federal regulations. That's all fine and dandy, and to be expected.
But getting around those rules by outsourcing more and more of the functions of government to private companies just because they're faster ignores the spirit of the law while maintaining the letter. Any YouTube video on a government site should have persistent cookies permanently disabled.
Martin H. Bosworth
Managing Editor, ConsumerAffairs.Com
(http://www.consumeraffairs.com)
Blog: Boztopia.com (http://www.boztopia.com)
LinkedIn Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/martinbosworth
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/martinonfacebook
Plaxo: http://martinbosworth.myplaxo.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/martinboz
John Wonderlich
Heather West
Heather West
Program Associate
Center for Democracy & Technology
1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
202 637 9800 x315
fax 202 637 0968
hea...@cdt.org
http://www.cdt.org
Dan Manatt
Greg Elin
Really liked CDT's below referenced blog post.
I think if this community wants to get the changes it desires, we need to acknowledge the positive steps the Whitehouse and other government agencies take. And you did.
In that same vein, I think *all of us* need to adopt a language of expecting iterations and patches in the same way we expect iterations from software applications. As with any new web site/application, it's going to have bugs and missing features. And these are BIG changes that are being implemented for the first time. Any developer--and that includes government--has to ship at some point. We are putting a lot of pressure on the new Administration to ship quickly.
The CDT's rightly points out some short comings...and not overly harshly. I guess I want to encourage us to put in that extra effort to treat website releases from the government as iterative. To talk about them with the same terms we'd apply to commercial sites.
I think it is going to be easy for us on the outside to fall into our own familar habits of thinking that once government does something, it's going to be eons before the matter is revisted...and thus have to pile on to get exactly what we want with the first (and feared only) release. I think as users we can create our own incentives around a culture of interation and support that.
Just a thought...
Greg
Greg Elin
Chief Evangelist for Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com)
Sunlight Labs (http://sunlightlabs.com)
ge...@sunlightfoundation.com
gr...@fotonotes.net
http://twitter.com/gregelin
skype: fotonotes
aim: wiredbike
cell: 917-304-3488
Clay Shirky
> guess I want to encourage us to put in that extra effort to treat website
> releases from the government as iterative. To talk about them with the same
> terms we'd apply to commercial sites.
But Greg, the way you get commercial sites to change is to complain in
public. Releases are only iterative if the people doing the releasing
see the gap between the actual and the possible.
-clay
Greg Elin
Let's remember that Mr. Smith *went* to Washington. Over and over again.
Almost every system gets professionalized over time for efficiency reasons, even more so when there is a competitive component. The web is a fascinating place because it is has been generative and seems to continually create new access points for newbies in new and old areas. But just as 15 years after the Web hit we've moved way beyond HTML 1.0 to HTML 4.0 and Javascript and CSS (and on our way to SVG and HTML 5.0), Federal government has moved away way beyond aye/nay votes of landowners around a tree.
Part of the power of the Internet, IMHO, is to create various circles of meaningful participation that help people have an impact even while on the learning curve.
And to credit Clay here, his writings span both the reality of power curves ("There is an A-List and you aren't on it."); and Everybody is still coming. In droves.
The Internet blurs, changes, and sometimes erases lines between pros and amateurs, insiders and outsiders. But nothing is permanent. The best we can do is bake into our systems more, rather than less, opportunity for new opportunities.
Greg
Greg Elin
Absolutely. But how do we a complain in a way that gets us increasingly interative and ever improving government? There's a bug with the implementation of the privacy policy. OK. CDT's feedback is useful to that end. We need to go further. If we are to move toward collaboration, we need to help help guide the change that's needed even as we did when making the initial recommendations. For example,
1) Do we want more video's online and then fix this bug with the persistent cookie issue?
or
2) Do we want to see the persistent cookie issue resolved before more videos at the whitehouse.gov or other agencies are posted?
That I think is an interesting question for this group. It also provides feedback that moves toward further a culture of collaboration. (My vote is #1: more videos, ideally with a stated time frame of when the bug issue will be addressed. But there's something to be said for #2, too.)
I saw a lot of complaining yesterday that the executive orders weren't up on the web as fast than the order was released to the press. And complaining today that the print journalists but not television crews saw the second swearing in. Can I just say, "Geezh...." The executive orders are online today. Were the executive order put up today only b/c we complained?
Here's another reason I fear only two days into this that we might be over reacting. Google hasn't sorted out it's whitehouse.gov links yet. Google the phrase "whitehouse.gov executive orders". The first link is "Executive Orders Issued by President George W. Bush". Ok...that's probably what page rank says should be the top link, but I think Google knew whitehouse.gov would change. Next, follow that link "www.whitehouse.gov/news/orders/" and you get "http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/executive_orders/" which are Obama's orders. Hmmm... What should be happening here? Should the link go to Bush's orders or to Obama's? How many other links are "breaking" around the web right now b/c of issues like this? Or are they "still working" b/c of the decision to handle that re-direct thusly? This web and government stuff is new to all of us. We only have some experience. There are going to be miscues.
CDT's blog post ends with:
"...it may be unreasonable to expect the site's privacy protections to be perfect from the outset. But we expect both of these issues to be dealt with promptly if we are to believe that President Obama's commitment to privacy is more than mere rhetoric." (Emphasis added)
"May be unreasonable?" It is unreasonable. Heather's comment in this thread, "Hopefully, we'll see these issues resolved soon" feels more attune to the moment than Alissa's line-drawing phrase "... we expect both of these issues to be dealt with promptly if we are to believe that President Obama's commitment to privacy is more than mere rhetoric."
What kills me about writing this email, is that I don't want to seem overly critical of CDT, whose done some thoughtful posts on tech and government articulating the challenges. It's the combination of the criticisms around the executive order yesterday, the press kerfuffle, then seeing such an omnious sounding last sentence to CDT's post makes me hold up a cautionary flag lest we slip into old habits unthinkingly and start posturing before it is necessary.
I'm Jewish. I believe in complaining. But how we complain impacts the nature of response. The rules and regulations that make government bureaucratic are not whimsy; they came from people complaining about government errors and wanting to proactively *prevent* government errors, to make sure everything is "perfect" before any action taken. Once bit...twice shy. What about that Internet refrain "Fail fast"? If we want government to be more agile, more innovative, more like the Internet and the Wikipedia---than we need to be more ready to embrace and live with the false-starts, errors, and bugs of the kind we encounter on the Internet and Wikipedia. We--non profits, think tanks, media--have all discussed the change we want. But we've barely discussed how to respond to change if we get it. Or get some of the change we want. Gov't can't be Wikipedia, but government and citizens do need to reconsider where and how we newly set the bar for flexibility.
Greg
jonh...@gmail.com
I'd argue that there are three necessary steps we need to watch for.
1. Basic implementation. (which they genuinely seem on the way to doing in some areas)
2. Posting material that is embarrassing or caudses them problems.
3. Posting the embarrassing/problematic material as a matter of routine process.
If they take all three steps, applaud. Long and loud. And then our job will shift from "more transparency, please" to "better information organization and presentation, please."
Jon Henke
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
From: Greg Elin
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:14:12 -0500
To: <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: CongressDaily: New Congress-YouTubePartnership Raises Questions
Heather West
David Moore :: Open Congress
Hi everyone, this is a v. interesting conversation, lots of nuance &
insight. Agreed on the need to clearly lay out pro's and con's, praise
& criticize the new moves from the Executive & Legislative branches,
carrots & sticks.
But I mentioned to John W. yesterday & wanted to jump in here with my
vote, though much of this has been articulated well already -- this is
far too much parsing. The YouTube - Congress partnership, informal as
it may be, in the end is not up to our own principles of openness, and
deserves to be loudly criticized as such, full stop. I find it greatly
dismaying (though not unpredictable) & I'm willing to say even
dangerous.
With the Participatory Culture Foundation a few years ago, I worked on
outreach for open-source, open-standards tools, and would often run
into walls with people & organizations who otherwise shared our
principles of openness -- they wouldn't publish an RSS feed of,
say, .mp4 videos because uploading to (at the time greatly less
popular than now) YouTube was seen as less difficult or having a
greater potential audience. This puts me, I believe (at first
reading), firmly with Clay & others on the weighty significance of
path dependence & the real-world dangers of early precedent for media
distribution systems w/r/t corporate or other gatekeepers.
Understood that YouTube is just one optional avenue of distribution
for Congress -- but for anyone outside of this list, my take is that
the Congress Hubs on YouTube will seem pretty darn official, vaunting
well over the low threshold of what counts as de facto endorsed &
cooperation. We can't underestimate the implications of this & how
hard it makes it to push through to a working & vibrant video platform
that meets fully with our own 8 Principles of Open Gov't Data.
This broad parallel seems straightforward to me: to date, Congress has
stubbornly chosen not to make video of greatly important proceedings
primarily accessible to the public except on broadcast C-SPAN and the
C-SPAN website. This has been a gaping, head-shaking, almost-hilarious
detriment to democracy & transparency & much more. Now they're making
semi-proactive forays into closed-off streaming online video through
YouTube. The equivalent would be if they restricted legislative data
to THOMAS and actively discouraged sites like GovTrack from making
bill data more accessible. Even if Congress then moved to publishing
bills on, say, Google Documents, with a silly-hypothetical real-time
XML & revision control & other sweet features, this would be a clear
violation of our principles. After making the content open, let it
trickle through channels across the web, but not as a primary
distribution point, that's just not a good or acceptable solution.
(Aware that making a point with analogies often just unintentionally
highlights the discrepancies, but forging ahead.) A similar point goes
for this first highlighted push into publishing of video -- it's
simply not open and won't ever be through YouTube. Let's not build on
a sub-optimal foundation when a better one is still available.
In my view, there's nothing radical or better-wait-and-see or
impractical about creating an open hub of Congressional video that
meets or surpasses the 8 principles -- technologically it's cake, if
the political will is there. It could and should have existed a decade
ago or more. I see it as my role in the discourse (or "the game", if
you will) to make sure we don't at any point imply (not validity but)
soundness to solutions that are less than open. I'd hope that many of
this list's engaged members would feel the same, though understood
there are many angles here.
Thanks for reading, following with interest,
-David
http://participatorypolitics.org/
> > skype: fotonotes
> > aim: wiredbike
> > cell: 917-304-3488
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Heather West
> Program Associate
> Center for Democracy & Technology
> 1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
> Washington, DC 20006
> 202 637 9800 x315
> fax 202 637 0968