Congressional Video Flap Continues
Remember a few weeks ago when the Republican Study Committee claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pirating C-Span content by posting video of floor debate on her blog?
Well, techie Carl Malamud used the uproar as inspiration for a hack that might ruffle some feathers in Washington. According to Malamud, Congress largely offers webcasts that are "live only" and in many cases archives of the stream are not provided. In some instances, committees put a "copyright, all rights reserved" notice on the video.
He considers this "really dumb" and has started ripping all congressional streams starting with the House and posting them in a nonproprietary format for download, tagging, review and annotation on Google Video and placing another copy at the Internet Archive.
Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig says the topic raises larger questions. On his blog, Lessig wrote: "As more and more 'notice and take-downs' get directed at people doing political remixes of candidates and their speeches, it's time for a candidate to take the lead to assure that the Web can be used for politics (without the mess of copyright)."
Read more about it in Technology Daily's PM edition on Friday.
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