Taking a bold leap into the 21st century and keeping with its initial mandate to bring the inner workings of government to the people, C-Span has decided to change its copyright policy — a policy modeled after the Commons. The Public affairs cable channel will now “allow noncommercial copying, sharing and posting” on the Internet of its coverage of events sponsored by Congress or any federal agency.
The New York Times reports that this decision will cover about 50 percent of its programming. This is something of a 180 for a C-Span so fiercely protective of its intellectual property that it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nancy Pelosi for posting a clip of a committee hearing speech on her Website.”Given our background and our history, an open approach is the most consistent with our mission,” said Rob Kennedy, C-SPAN’s president. “We are now saying under the new policy that that will be OK for her or any blogger or citizen journalist” to post C-SPAN video online.
C-Span’s new copyright policy makes its public affairs– as they should be — public. And C-Span has also come to a realization that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scienes hasn’t yet realized. If you have compelling video content people are going to want to post it elsewhere, even if you don’t and with or without your permission. So why not adopt the Commons approach and let the inevitible postings by bloggers, journalists and the Speaker of the House of Representatives go up, provided there is appropriate attribution.
But before you go crazy ripping and posting Congressional Oversight Hearings to your blog, keep in mind that C-Span may be willing to let its coverage of government governing go out with attribution, it’s still going to hang on to its rights for its network’s studio productions, all non-federal events, campaign and political event coverage, and the network’s feature programming, such as Book TV and original history series. C-Span has the savvy it seems to know what to give away and what to keep close.
For example, Stephen Colbert’s legendary speech at the White House Correspondent’s dinner will still be the network’s exclusive property. Some argue that C-Span didn’t go far enough, but it’s a good move for now. The Colbert link is live on Google, but C-Span has a nice little link inviting viewers to buy a DVD of the Colbert speech. And why not? Even C-Span knows when it has comedy gold and a marketable product.
Although this is one small step for Creative Commons, I think I’m inclined to agree with the The Daily Kos , who wonders if all government proceedings should be in the public domain. At the dawn of cable time, back in the 1970s and 80s, cable companies bidding for city contracts were requried to give at least one space on its line-up for a “government access channel.” Maybe its time to rethink C-Span’s mission entirely and reconfigure it for the broadband age.