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
February 26th, 2007
Here are some minor corrections to the article Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a lesson published on February 26th.
The article quotes “C-Span said that it had for first time asserted its copyright against a video-clip site, ordering YouTube to take down copies of Stephen Colberts pointed speech…” This neglects a the smaller players that have been affected by C-SPAN take down notices see the C-SPAN and intellectual property article on Wikipedia.
Additionally the articles does not address the trademark issue. Although the floor footage is public domain the only copy the public has access to is encumbered with C-SPAN’s trademark and this has provided a grounds for which C-SPAN has requested sites take down otherwise public domain footage. Our site metavid has been hosing this public domain footage with the trademark removed. Metavid’s conversations with C-SPAN in early 2006 showed that C-SPAN would leverage its trademark rights to force the removal of floor footage. The real story here is one of selective enforcement, and how citizens have no real, reusable, permanent access to committee footage.
Update: As boing boing pointed out today Carl is working to change the situation of limited archival access to committee footage. Check out what he has grabbed so far.
dale
