Smithsonian's Showtime sellout needs FOIA sunshine

Carl Malamud writes,

Cory's post on the Smithsonian sellout to Showtime got me thinking. The right of refusal is pretty offensive, but even more offensive is that the contract isn't public.

Although the Smithsonian Institution claims they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, just to make sure they aren't subjected in the future, they claim to abide by the "spirit and intent" of FOIA. So, it seemed appropriate to file a FOIA request to see if we can get that contract out in the open where we can all see exactly how big the give-away is.

Link.

And while we're on the subject, Josh Wattles says,

There is a discussion of the Smithsonian deal with Showtime on Prof. Patry's Copyright blog that augments BoingBoing's prior post on the subject — and includes a comment from Fred Von Lohmann of the EFF. This deal is very bad and needs to be stopped.

Link