[IP] Congressional streams mirrored

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Carl Malamud <carl@media.org>
Date: February 27, 2007 6:11:24 AM JST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Congressional streams mirrored

Hi Dave -

Many congressional committees provide webcasts of their hearings.
In all cases, the streams are based on a proprietary streaming
format, with no download.  In many cases, the streams are only
available "live" and no archive is maintained as a matter of policy.
In some cases, the committees even put copyright "all rights
reserved" stamps on their data (even though there is no copyright
in the hearings, therefore no rights to reserve).

As a service to the committees, I've started ripping all the
streams and placing them on both Google Video and the Internet
Archive:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=malamud%20behalf%20house
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=malamud+behalf+house

On these sites, you can tag, annotate, and review the hearings.
Hopefully, the congress will see what great fun this is and
start providing a permanent archive in a nonproprietary format
with much better resolution.  Until then, if you're looking
for congressional hearings, I'm happy to be their proxy.  :)

Regards,

Carl Malamud


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