C-SPAN Details Future Online Video Plans
Reprinted from Monday's Technology Daily PM Edition:
More details emerged Monday about a new plan by the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, to greatly expand public access to its catalog of digital video from federal government activities.
The cable industry-financed nonprofit revised its copyright policy last week to allow "non-commercial" copying, sharing and posting of congressional hearings, agency briefings and White House events with attribution -- and more changes are on the way.
Confusion over the network's intellectual property provisions came to a crescendo recently when House Republicans questioned whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had illegally used C-SPAN clips on her Web site. A network spokeswoman insisted that the policy shift was "a year in the making" and was not in response to the flap.
In an interview with Technology Daily, C-SPAN President Rob Kennedy said liberalizing the policy was the first step in an ongoing process. In coming months, he said C-SPAN will "do some things on our site and on the Internet that make our video easier to find and use."
First, the network will open up its 20-year-old vault of digitized recordings so users can search for and stream hundreds of thousands of hours of footage. The streaming video will be technologically protected to prevent viewers from "ripping" directly from the site, Kennedy said.
But on April 1, C-SPAN will unveil new, lower prices for ordering digital videodiscs of the content. Currently, some videos cost more than $100, but prices could plummet to as low as $19.95 or $29.95, Kennedy said. The purchased DVDs will let users clip, manipulate and post content online in a noncommercial way with attribution, he said.
Kennedy said the "vast majority" of C-SPAN footage that Internet users want to post and share will be "programming from this point forward," rather than old events on DVD. Under the new rules, they are free to personally record and post those new clips online, he said.
"Non-commercial" users include people who write Web logs and other "citizen journalists" whose sites accept advertising and other forms of revenue, Kennedy said. "'Commercial' means a direct connection between revenue that's produced and our video," he said. Subscription or pay-per-view sites, for example, still could not use C-SPAN video.
Down the road, C-SPAN wants to make direct video downloads easier for users. The question is whether to partner with YouTube, the Web's most popular video-sharing site, or a similar site, or for the network to offer downloads itself, a spokeswoman said.
C-SPAN has had preliminary discussions with several major players in the online video market, Kennedy said. He would not reveal whether YouTube is a contender.
The network's new policy borrows from an approach popularized by the San Francisco-based Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and CEO of the commons, called C-SPAN's change of heart "critically important" to "support the spread of political commentary and speech.
"The commons hopes it can work with C-SPAN "to assure interoperability of this important content with other valuable free content," he said.
Other coverage from Tech Daily Dose:
-- Congressional Video: A 'No Brainer'
-- More on C-SPAN's Changes
-- C-SPAN's Change Of Heart
-- Picking A 'Fair Use' Fight With C-SPAN
-- Congressional Video Flap Continues
-- Congressional Video In Vogue
-- GOP Retracts Pelosi Piracy Claims
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