C-SPAN takes a Gavel to the head

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been under intermittent fire since she started up a Speaker's blog to detail events in the House. It is called The Gavel.

On the blog, she is placing stories about events, and also video. This lead the House Republican Study Committee to declare that Pelosi's office was pirating video of Congress, from C-SPAN. They then suggested that C-SPAN should go after her for this "crime". C-SPAN demurred form doing so. And the Republicans backed off, having failed to provoke and looking ridiculous for even suggesting recorded government business is in anyway a product to own. It is the people's business.

All is well...Oh wait.

From the New York Times:

But last week, as it happens, C-Span did contact the speaker’s office to have it take down a different clip from her blog — one shot by C-Span’s cameras at a House Science and Technology Committee hearing on global warming where Ms. Pelosi testified, Mr. Daly said. (The blog has substituted material filmed by the committee’s cameras, he said.)

...

“We are structurally burdened, in terms of people’s perception, because we are the only network that has such a big chunk of public domain material,” said Bruce Collins, the corporate vice president and general counsel of C-Span. He estimated that 5 to 15 percent of C-Span’s programming is from the House and Senate floor, and thus publicly available.

“It is perfectly understandable to me that people would be confused,” he said. “They say, ‘When a congressman says something on the floor it is public domain, but he walks down the street to a committee hearing or give a speech and it is not public domain?’ ”

The issue is of recent vintage for C-Span. In May, 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 Colbert’s pointed speech in front of President Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Clips of the speech had been viewed 2.7 million times on YouTube in the 48 hours before it was taken down.

“What I think a lot of people don’t understand — C-Span is a business, just like CNN is,” Mr. Collins said. “If we don’t have a revenue stream, we wouldn’t have six crews ready to cover Congressional hearings.”

Without use of C-Span’s material, members of Congress will have to rely on government cameras to get their message out.

Mr. Daly said that the speaker’s office had its own camera operator and that 11 of 21 House committees can Webcast their hearings, with the goal that all will be able to do so.

So how much control can C-SPAN have over these public events? If they want to clamp down on use, and, as a result, its viewing, perhaps the government needs to increase the number of cameras used by it. Or perhaps remove C-SPAN, and sell it footage to show on it's network.

I do enjoy C-SPAN sometimes, and appreciate they have business problems, and a need to protect networks. They are a curious construct. But in trying to control the recording of the government's business...we aren't talking about the latest episode of Heroes.

It is the people's business, it should be spread far and wide. They need to tread lightly and think carefully.