Thursday, March 1, 2007

Dear CSPAN: you're not Disney, Congress isn't Mickey


Carl sez, "Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi posted a minute of video of herself testifying on her blog. C-SPAN sent her a take down notice and she caved in complied. The Speaker should have stuck to her guns and told C-SPAN to fuck off that she was asserting her fair use rights to that material. C-SPAN told the New York Times that they were simply protecting their copyright "like CNN." But, C-SPAN is not like CNN or Disney. In this open letter to C-SPAN's CEO, I submit my purchase order for 6,251 congressional hearings and assert my fair use rights.
If C-SPAN were Disney, I might understand (though I would not sympathize with) a desire to milk an asset for every penny allowable by law. But, C-SPAN is not Disney and you should not treat the U.S. Congress like Disney would treat Mickey Mouse.

C-SPAN is a publicly-supported charity. Your only shareholders are the American public. Your donors received considerable tax relief in making donations to you. You and your staff were well paid for your excellent work. Congressional hearings are of strikingly important public value, and aggressive moves to prevent any fair use of the material is double-dipping on your part. For C-SPAN and for the American public record, the right thing to do is to release all of that material back into the public domain where it belongs.

Link

See also: Ripping (off) the Congressional video record



posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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