[IP] Re: Congressional streams mirrored

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma@u.washington.edu>
Date: February 27, 2007 8:18:08 AM JST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Congressional streams mirrored

Greetings Dave,

Steve brings up a good point about copyright of C-span's
non-congressional programs.  However, Carl's excellent contributions
involve transcoding and archiving of the original Congressional
webcasts provided by some committees.  Congressional hearings recorded
by congressional committees are NOT copyrighted, and are NOT
copyrightable.  They are works of the US government, and so, as a
matter of law, receive no copyright.

See  http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105

For an example of these committee webcasts, see one Senate committee
that actually DOES stream and archive them (at least since 2005,) the
Senate Commerce Committee:
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? 
FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=1779

Without this important service, we'd not have records of such stellar
moments as Senator Stevens' "the Internet is a series of tubes"
preserved for posterity.

-Ethan


On 2/26/07, David Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
> Date: February 27, 2007 7:31:32 AM JST
> To: dave@farber.net
> Cc: ip@v2.listbox.com
> Subject: Re: [IP] Congressional streams mirrored
>
> The issue of C-Span videos is more complex than it would seem.  Per an
> article in today's NY Times
> (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/technology/26cspan.html?
> ref=washington)
> some C-Span videos are copyrighted and not freely postable on the Net
> by others.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------