Posts filed under 'Institutional'
April 12th, 2007
I’m very pleased to announce that Metavid has been awarded a grant by Sunlight Foundation. This grant will fund full-time development on this project for a year in addition to expansion of hardware infrastructure. We’re very excited about what this means for the project: more stability, new features and better accessibility.
We’re happy to continue our cooperation with Sunlight, whose mission is, “to use the transformative power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparence and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy.”
Watch this space for announcements of what we are (and will soon be) implementing.
Update: Also see UCSC coverage of the announcement
aphid
December 26th, 2006
A few days ago, the NY Times editorialized in favor of relaxing the rules regarding cameras on the floor of the US Congress. This comes on the heels of an open letter (PDF File) by C-SPAN president Brian Lamb calling for independent media cameras (particularly C-SPAN’s) on the floor of the House. In addition to editorials on his behalf, Lamb appeared on numerous media outlets including this interview on NPR’s Talk of The Nation to lobby for these changes.
Much of the discourse around these proposed changes is a critique of the cinematography of C-SPAN, particularly on the head-on closeups that the House Rules require. Furthermore, Lamb suggests that relaxing the rules would be more consistent with House Speaker Pelosi’s “most open, honest and ethical congress ever,” with an implication that the government may be covering something up through these tight controls.
On Friday, Pelosi rejected these proposed changes and will leave the House in charge of the cameras. There are a few issues at work here, I’ll address them briefly and what they mean for this project. More after the fold.
Metavid is able to re-use the video footage of the House and Senate floor that C-SPAN airs because it is a government work. When a government employee creates something as part of his or her job, the resulting content is public domain. As Lamb’s letter references, C-SPAN already has its own cameras in committee chambers. C-SPAN’s coverage of committee hearings, such as the Alito nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, is perhaps more nuanced than the head-on shots found in floor proceedings. During some of the tougher questions, cameras captured the reactions of his family — that would not be possible under the current house rules. I would love to link to a clip in our archives illustrating the difference, but the fact that the cameras are privately held has another effect; the footage is copyrighted.
Under current copyright law, C-SPAN’s recordings of the Alito hearings will not enter the public domain for 95 years, meaning January of the year 2101 assuming there are no further extensions of copyright term (an unsafe assumption in the current IP climate). Until that time, C-SPAN exerts their authority over this footage by applying these restrictions (from c-span’s archive):
A license is needed for: Public Performances (Showing in a group or unrelated individuals with or without a fee); Documentaries, films or television programs; Multimedia applications; Corporate video uses; Presentation at association or corporate meetings. C-SPAN does not permit the following uses: Duplication licenses (ask about bulk copies fees); Any posting or streaming from an Internet site; Airing on public access or local cable television channels; Fundraising Use; Commercial/Advertising.
In an age of YouTube and video blogging, it’s absurd to restrict access to video documents so central to public policy. Allowing a century of monopoly over congressional footage to media corporations goes against the very notions of public accountability and political sunshine that brought the cameras to the floor in the first place.
aphid
December 5th, 2006
The Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC has issued its call for applicants for the 07-08 term. I thought I would point out some of the participatory culture project groups. People interested in a MFA graduate program and participatory culture should take a look 
Over the next two years two project groups will take place under the Participatory Culture focus area in the DANM program. One focusing on tools for media activists and the other focusing on technologies for civil society & democracy.
Professor Sharon Daniel’s project group for the 07-08 term is titled “Digital Inclusionâ€: Creating tools for citizen media activists. The group will focus on adapting technologies for “self-representation” in marginalized communities. She mentions the palabrastranquilas project which we worked on in the Summer of 04.
Professor Warren Sack’s participatory culture project group for the 08-09 term is titled Public Media: New Forms of Democratic Participation. This group will explore Democratic Participation in the context of participatory culture via invention and experimentation. I recommend reading the proposal (here is a snippet)
Free, participatory culture is a bubbling, productive realm of invention and discovery, but its biggest successes have largely been in the construction and distribution of open source software alternatives (e.g., Linux) to commercial products. Can participatory (i.e., non-broadcast), public media be invented that inspire and facilitate new forms of democratic participation and the reinvigoration of civic society?
dale
August 21st, 2006
The Sunlight Foundation has given metavid a small grant to continue development on the metavid project. The funds will be used to support software development and buy computer hardware for a new capture system capable of real-time broadcast and archival.
About the Sunlight Foundation:
The Sunlight Foundation was founded in January 2006 with the goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy. We are unique in that technology and the power of the Internet are at the core of every one of our efforts.
dale
June 28th, 2006
The metavid project thesis papers are now available online. Dale’s paper gives a detailed account of the metavid project its motivations and methodology.
The paper publishes details of C-SPAN’s take down request. The requests details are published to illustrate how C-SPAN blurs the line between government produced public domain material and C-SPAN produced content. C-SPAN restrictions on content are shown to limit citizen’s ability to techno-mediate these public media assets.
In this context mediation or the negotiation production of meaning is restricted to officially sanctioned mediators. Established news media transform and compile public media assets through segmentation, story selection and editorializing into consumable proprietary encapsulations.
Metavid addresses the status quo of contemporarily legislative archives by doing the following:
- Metavid returns trademark encapsulated media assets to the public domain, indexing metadata and provides a freely re-usable online access to the entirety of the archive.
- The Metavid code is open source and it’s implemented with entirely free and open source software, making it freely contestable, transparent, and improvable.
- Metavid implements the basis for a participant remediation system where mediations of public media assets are made open, transparent and contestable.
Watch for a link to aphids paper (on the same topic)
dale
April 16th, 2006
We recently relocated the code base to UCSC’s dFroge code management system. This will make code management a bit easier on the metavid developers. The dforge system is analogous to sourceforge in function, but is being hosted by UCSC. The underling source code for the UCSC system is gForge which is also open source. The site primarily hosts university projects but is open to collaboration from other non-university participants and the source code is publicly available for many of the projects hosted on UCSC dForge.
In this context the university institution is creating a space for public knowledge exchange and production. This is in contrast to the university institution being treated as a government subsidized research lab for development of exclusive IP for interested corporate parties.
dale
April 16th, 2006
We recently relocated the code base to UCSC’s dFroge code management system. This will make code management a bit easier on the metavid developers. The dforge system is analogous to sourceforge in function, but is being hosted by UCSC. The underling source code for the UCSC system is gForge which is also open source. The site primarily hosts university projects but is open to collaboration from other non-university participants and the source code is publicly available for many of the projects hosted on UCSC dForge.
In this context the university institution is creating a space for public knowledge exchange and production. This is in contrast to the university institution being treated as a government subsidized research lab for development of exclusive IP for interested corporate parties.
aphid
