Etherplex

I got into a conversation recently about the events surrounding the liberalization of C-SPAN’s policy regarding the use of their videos on the internet. This initially became an issue in early 2007 when speaker Nancy Pelosi purportedly violated copyright law by posting a video of a committee hearing (not congressional footage, which would be in the public domain) to her blog, The Gavel.

During the conversation, the point was made that C-SPAN does not take any funding from the government, a notion even Wikipedia says is “contrary to popular perception”. Of course, the point is correct: C-SPAN does enjoy the right to film Congress, but is indeed a non-profit organization. Nevertheless, they have a history of guarding their copyright on the videos they produce of events in Congress. In December 2006, Brian Lamb wrote a letter, available in PDF from C-SPAN, requesting a number of limitations be lifted on the footage gathered during House sessions, and also promising to “to make our floor coverage fully available to accredited news media following established pool practices”, read: the coverage will not be made available to the public for reuse without restriction. Pelosi later denied the request.

In a widely reported switch, C-SPAN was lauded for their press release of 07 March 2007 stating a change in their policies. Most coverage of the event makes note of the temporally proximate controversy surrounding the use of C-SPAN video on the speaker’s blog, but few, if any, note Carl Malamud’s letter to Brian Lamb on 27 February 2007, a mere eight days prior to C-SPAN’s announcement. In it, Mr. Malamud makes a compelling argument that while C-SPAN does not take funding from the taxpayer’s directly, “C-SPAN is the primary beneficiary of considerable public largess.” And his point is well taken, and may have directly caused C-SPAN to change their licensing terms. As Lawrence Lessig points out, this all relates to the fundamental question of how we handle copyright on the internet, particularly when it relates to political speech. To leverage outdated copyright laws to stifle political commentary may be a new low. After all, C-SPAN has no way to financially leverage people wanting to see Colbert roast Bush.

This may be more than a year late, but as I had the conversation, I struggled to recall the important events that surrounded the issue, and I thought it would be good to capture them here. In particular, I wanted to document the failure of the mainstream media to capture Mr. Malamud’s role in the license change at C-SPAN.