Fwd: News from C-SPAN

[Matt Stoller]

>X-eSCM-MailFrom: <JMO...@c-span.org>
>Subject: News from C-SPAN
>Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 14:45:05 -0500
>From: "MOIRE, JENNIFER" < JMO...@c-span.org>
>To: "Noam Cohen" <no...@nytimes.com>
>
>
>
>C-SPAN TAKES LEAD IN MAKING VIDEO OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS, WHITE HOUSE
>AND OTHER FEDERAL EVENTS MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE TO THE ONLINE COMMUNITY
>
>Cable Network Introduces New Copyright Policy and Expanded Capitol
>Hearings Website
>
>(WASHINGTON) Wednesday, March 7, 2007- Advancing its longstanding mission
>of bringing government closer to the people, C-SPAN announced today two
>major initiatives designed to greatly expand citizen access to its online
>video of federal government activities, such as congressional hearings,
>agency briefings, and White House events.  These actions are intended to
>meet the growing demand for video about the federal government and
>Congress, in an age of explosive growth of video file sharers, bloggers,
>and online 'citizen journalists.' The policy change is effective immediately.
>
>·       C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current,
>future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and
>any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN
>television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and
>posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.
>
>·       In addition, C-SPAN also announced plans to significantly build
>out its capitolhearings.org website as a one-stop resource for
>Congressionally-produced webcasts of House and Senate committee and
>subcommittee hearings.
>
>C-SPAN Executive Committee Chairman William J. Bresnan, CEO of Bresnan
>Communications said that the network's directors enthusiastically endorsed
>the copyright policy liberalization.  "The C-SPAN board sees this as
>helping us carry out C-SPAN's public service mission,' he said.  "The
>cable industry created this network to allow citizens greater access to
>their government and this enhancement appropriately reflects the rapid
>changes in the online information world."
>
>"Giving voice to the average citizen has been a centerpiece of C-SPAN's
>journalism since our network's founding in 1979," said, Rob Kennedy,
>C-SPAN president and co-COO. "As technology advances, we want to continue
>to be a leader in providing citizens with the tools to be active
>participants in the democratic process."
>
>The new C-SPAN policy borrows from the approach to copyright known in the
>online community as "Creative Commons." Examples of events included under
>C-SPAN's new expanded policy include all congressional hearings and press
>briefings, federal agency hearings, and presidential events at the White
>House. C-SPAN's copyright policy will not change for the network's studio
>productions, all non-federal events, campaign and political event
>coverage, and the network's feature programming, such as Book TV and
>original history series.
>
>Capitolhearings.org was launched in 2001 as a public service to aggregate
>the Congressionally-produced live audio streams of Senate hearings.  The
>initial build-out of the site will incorporate the rapidly increasing
>webcasts of House committee and subcommittee hearings.
>
>ABOUT C-SPAN
>C-SPAN, the political network of record, was created in 1979 by America's
>cable companies as a public service.  C-SPAN is currently available in
>more than 90 million households, C-SPAN2 in more than 82 million
>households and C-SPAN3 in over 12 million households nationwide. For more
>information about C-SPAN, visit its website at www.c-span.org.
>




--
Matt Stoller
http://www.mattstoller.com

[Micah Sifry]

Looks like a clear win. Aphid, others, any comments?

Micah

--
http://www.personaldemocracy.com
http://www.techpresident.com
http://micah.sifry.com

The fourth annual Personal Democracy Forum is happening May 18, 2007 in NYC. Register now: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/conference/2007

[Liza Sabater]

On  07.Mar.2007, at 03:26 PM, Matt Stoller wrote:

 non-commercial copying, sharing, and
>posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution

Herein lies the problem : Bloggers who function as corporations and take in advertising would not be able to use the footage. That includes sites like DailyKos, MyDD, Crooks and Liars, culturekitchen. If I wanted to use content for parody or a mashup I would not be able to use it because of the little detail of for-profit incorporation. 

We need someone from Creative Commons to help out in clarifying the ways for-profit political blogs would be penalized for using commercially what should be public domain content. 

On the flip side, C-SPAN looks to be quite scared with the possibility of losing their monopoly. I like that. 

Liza Sabater, Publisher

www.culturekitchen.com

www.dailygotham.com

TEL - 212.254.1740

MOB - 646.552.7365

AIM - cultkitdiva

SKYPE - lizasabater

[Gary Bass]

I just sent to David Bollier for his comments.  David is a leader in the Creative Commons movement.  I also sent Liza Sabater's response to him.

---

From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Micah Sifry
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 3:46 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Fwd: News from C-SPAN

---

Combined Federal Campaign #1308

[Gary Bass]

A few follow-ups:

 

1.  The Creative Commons website is at http://creativecommons.org.  There is a CC blog post  explaining the new features of the 3.0 licenses at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7249. And the user template for choosing and using a CC license is at http://creativecommons.org/license.

 

2.  As someone at OMB Watch noted, this is an abrupt policy change from C-SPAN’s order that Pelosi’s website take down their video of a hearing, see: http://public.resource.org/dear_brian.html.

 3.  David Bollier was passing on the C-SPAN announcement to those engaged in the Creative Commons.  David's response included the following:

However, just because someone has for-profit incorporation doesn't mean they can't make a fair use of a work (such as C-SPAN footage), as Liza Sabater suggests. It just entails a bit more legal risk. (Fair use determinations are guided by four statutory guidelines, but are judicially determined. But there is little consistency in court rulings, and who wants to mount a lawsuit in order to make fair use determinations, anyway?)

CC licenses eliminate a lot (but not all) of the legal uncertainties and risks of using the fair use doctrine. Unfortunately, they haven't *fully* surmounted all the problems, including a well-accepted definition of what's commercial and what's non-commercial.

---

From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Liza Sabater
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 3:45 PM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Liza Sabater

Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Fwd: News from C-SPAN

[Liza Sabater]

On  07.Mar.2007, at 05:34 PM, Gary Bass wrote:

3.  David Bollier was passing on the C-SPAN announcement to those engaged in the Creative Commons.  David's response included the following:

However, just because someone has for-profit incorporation doesn't mean they can't make a fair use of a work (such as C-SPAN footage), as Liza Sabater suggests. It just entails a bit more legal risk. (Fair use determinations are guided by four statutory guidelines, but are judicially determined. But there is little consistency in court rulings, and who wants to mount a lawsuit in order to make fair use determinations, anyway?)

CC licenses eliminate a lot (but not all) of the legal uncertainties and risks of using the fair use doctrine. Unfortunately, they haven't *fully* surmounted all the problems, including a well-accepted definition of what's commercial and what's non-commercial.

Gary, thank you so much for this. 

So, in effect, the risk of fair use falls on the blogger --thus making the risk far too great for a lot of bloggers who are functioning now as small media business owners. 

We're talking about the cable companies here. They can choose to look the other way until they see fit to pepper the net with lawsuits. Especially if they have an unexpected network effect and this competition. 

May I then suggest we get from them a clarification? In this case, I believe public domain content should be made available no matter what people intend to use it for --for profit, non-profit, artistic, education etc. Look at the case with the documentary Eye on the Prize. A masterpiece that was pulled out of circulation because they could not pay for the copyright licensing of footage that due to their historic importance ought to be in the public domain. 

There are many points we could go after but I feel that the clarification would serve one main purpose : To define what is public domain (and thus open and free to use) content within the context of C-SPAN.

Best, 

liza

[aphid]

Great news and a big step in the right direction.   We've very eager to get a look at the license to see the details.  I'll work on getting the Alito hearing coverage taht they made us take down up! :D

Floor proceedings of full US House and Senate, as broadcast by C-SPAN, are public domain.  Everything else the carry that is filmed with their cameras -- presidential, state dept, etc., press conferences, committees, protests, book TV, washting journal.. is all subject to copyright.  Most of the above (not bookTV/wash. journal, etc) will be under these new relaxed rules.

My initial response is that we should celebrate this as a victory for opening access to this content, but that we should still work on getting enabling greater access to Public Domain feeds.   A better assessment will be possible once we know the details of the license - 'borrows from "Creative Commons"' is pretty vague - it sounds like cc-attrib-nc, but "what is/is not commercial" is an important question.

-aphid

[Greg Elin]

I'm with aphid. This is a big announcement. 

C-SPAN's approach gives them a great deal of flexibility.

>·       C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current,

>future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and 

>any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN

>television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and

>posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution. 

C-SPAN is recognizing it is in its interest to share and perfectly compatible to share their data widely. It is how they can best protect their franchise. (Micah accurately pointed out) they risk Congress doing going around C-SPAN and they were probably going to have an uphill battle keeping things off of youtube and the cost of trying to explain why floor speeches were public domain but hearings were not. There's real-head count involved in educating people on such fine distinctions. 

The language in noteworthy "will will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution."

My bet is C-SPAN will interpret non-commercial broadly. Again, it is too expensive to pursue every blog site that has adwords on it. But if your traffic is significant, or you are incorporating video clips into a service that you sell as a subscription to lobbyists -- well that is a pretty obvious commercial *use* of the footage.  

If C-SPAN is smart they will provide people with i-frame based links to their video snippets, thereby making it easy for bloggers to use snippets while simultaneously keeping control of the video player like youtube does and thereby having the option to tack-on a little advertisement of their own at the start or end of the video. 

Greg

[John Wonderlich]

Some thoughts on C-SPAN's policy announcement:

I'm surprised by their announcing changes to the capitolhearings.org:

In addition, C-SPAN also announced plans to significantly build
out its capitolhearings.org website as a one-stop resource for
Congressionally-produced webcasts of House and Senate committee and
subcommittee hearings.

Until now, that website has offered only live streaming of audio from Senate committee hearings.  Switching to archiving footage from committees is a jump from both chambers.  They also mention that they're offering an archive for congressionally-produced webcasts, so I presume that they're putting together footage from the separate committee feeds that Aphid has said aren't accessible through the normal press gallery hub.  In that case, they're either getting access to the house feeds (not using their own cameras) and making their own data feeds, or compiling the data streams after the committees have processed them.

I'm interested in access point for their video feeds because I'd still like to see other groups gain similar access to the raw video feeds.  C-SPAN's mission statement says "Our mission is to provide public access to the political process," and that's a function they perform well.  They are still, however, funded by "fu nded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming." Whether or not that fact will ever influence their coverage or policies, I wonder if it makes sense for an organization created by television to end up dominating internet coverage of Government video too. 

Regardless of whether we trust them to provide objective coverage of political events where a possible conflict of interest might arise, such as net neutrality, we shouldn't have to.  Their solid funding and credentials and history should get them our respect, especially in the face of this adaptive move.  It shouldn't, however, get them privileged access.

John


C-SPAN's move is certainly in the right direction.  I wonder, however, if it makes sense for an

[Micah Sifry]

AP's report is pretty screwed up...I don't see how they can say that Pelosi's office violated C-span's copyright!

Associated Press
C-SPAN Alters Copyright Policy
By KASIE HUNT 03.08.07, 8:16 AM ET

Popular Videos A Tour Of The World's Most Expensive Home Playboy Living In Pricey Penthouses Posh Crosses The Pond The Wonder Of Wonder Bread From Kitty Hawk To The Moon Most Popular Stories The Achievement Gap Confessions Of A (Recovering) Overachiever Remarkable Posthumous Achievements One-Hit Wonders Whiz Kids

It turns out that Republicans were right: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did violate C-SPAN's copyright by using its televised footage on her blog promoting Democrats.

Officials for the cable TV network that provides daily gavel-to-gavel coverage of House and Senate proceedings at first said the blog was in violation, then announced it wasn't. On Wednesday, they said that it was but that they're changing their policy so that it won't be in the future.

The new copyright policy will allow non-commercial Internet users to share and post C-SPAN video as long as they attribute it to the public service channel.

"Given our background and our history, an open approach is the most consistent with our mission," said Rob Kennedy, C-SPAN's president. "We are now saying under the new policy that that will be OK, for her or any blogger or citizen journalist" to post C-SPAN video online.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker's office took down copyrighted C-SPAN video when the network asked that it be removed.

Kennedy said that C-SPAN had been considering the new copyright rules for more than a a year but that "there were several incidents that brought the issue into relief with us." He mentioned last spring's flap with YouTube over C-SPAN video of comedian Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and the brief furor over Pelosi's blog.

Last month, the channel insisted that Pelosi, D-Calif., wasn't violating C-SPAN's copyright by posting its video of House proceedings on her blog, The Gavel. On Wednesday, Kennedy acknowledged there was a violation.

That's not what Bruce Collins, C-SPAN's general counsel, told Republicans last month when a group of conservative House members accused the speaker of violating copyright law by posting C-SPAN video on her blog.

On Feb. 15, the House Republican Study Committee issued a news release in which its spokesman, Brad Dayspring, Pelosi's blog violated copyright and trademark law by posting C-SPAN video online. Hours later, Dayspring retracted the release after Collins called him and said there was no violation.

A C-SPAN statement Wednesday said the network is implementing a "liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency ... which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution."

Dayspring said Wednesday that Republicans are "pleased that C-SPAN has set the record straight and ... is proud to have been a small catalyst for this long overdue improvement."

Pelosi's office also issued a statement saying she was pleased that C-SPAN is expanding access to its video coverage of federal government activities.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

[Paul Blumenthal]

This is outrageously bad reporting.

---

From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Micah Sifry
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:35 AM
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Fwd: News from C-SPAN

[Steven Clift]

Are House committees required to audio record their own hearings?

If they do, what kind of equipment do they use? Where do they store
the tapes/files?

While live webcasts are nice, an interim step might be the quick
coordinated release of their audio (with podcasts feeds available by
committee) of meetings within 24 hours of being held.

Steven Clift

P.S. If the Minnesota House itself can do this -
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/audio/default.asp - why can't the
House?

They even have committee podcast feeds:
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/rss/committees.asp

And member by member podcast feeds through a universal member
directory. Example:
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/members.asp?district=39B
^ ^ ^ ^
Steven L. Clift - - - W: http://publicus.net
Minneapolis - - - - E: cl...@publicus.net
Minnesota - - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA - - - - Skype/MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift

Join Democracies Online: http://dowire.org
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[Micah Sifry]

Um, I may have made a mistake. Reading back through the coverage, there is mention of one video clip placed on the Speaker's blog that was of a committee hearing (on global warming, I think)...So hence, technically, C-span could have claimed a copyright infringement on that. Still, it's hardly the lede.

[Gary Bass]

Bad article, but generally good news.  Definitely a step forward.

At the same time, David Bollier and I put together these thoughts:

 

It seems to us that C-SPAN should be committing its video of House deliberations to the public domain, which is now possible using a CC license. (Copyright law still has no way to commit something to the public domain.) There's no reason that C-SPAN should claim copyright control (the basis for CC licensing) and retain commercial rights. The footage should be available for any purpose, non-commercial OR commercial. That argument ought to be put forward, not just to C-SPAN but to Pelosi.

There appears to be some ambiguity about whether C-SPAN is in fact using a CC license or whether it is using some self-created license "inspired" by the CC licenses (see press release). The new COO of CC, Francesca Rodrieguez, is checking into this. Frankly, we should be following the lead of the BBC, which is making its stuff openly accessible under some pioneering licenses. (Imagine if PBS did that!)

---

From: openhous...@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhous...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Micah Sifry

Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 11:59 AM

[Liza Sabater]

(((( CLAPPING FURIOUSLY ))))

PREACH!

And calling for the to be public domain falls into the mission of this group which would be to take the simplest, less technologically onerous road to reform, n'est pas?

/ liza