Open letter to C-SPAN's Brian Lamb

C-SPAN issued a take-down notice to Nancy Pelosi (see details in this BoingBoing posting), and Carl Malamud has something to say about that.

He takes C-SPAN to task on its dubious use of the term "non-profit" and its perceived failure to acknowledge its place in the American media business landscape. Basically, they got upset at Nancy Pelosi for using their "copyrighted" material.

Lots of angles on this one. Is C-SPAN obligated or allowed to protect its assets in this way? Does being non-profit mean we must value its product differently? How would this situation work in Canada?

On a personal note, I respect Malamud's conviction on this issue. He was so sure that using C-SPAN video should fall under fair use, he bought some of their taped material, "ripped more than one minute of video from the disc, and used it for the creation of a news and satirical commentary of compelling public interest and then posted the resulting work at the Internet Archive. I did not ask C-SPAN for a license and I assert fair use of this material."

So he did what he thought was right and was unafraid to tell the big boys about it.

You can find his work here at archive.org. Gotta respect a man who puts his money where his mouth is.

Edit: A related story about C-SPAN freeing up its footage.

Advancing its longstanding mission of bringing government closer to the people, C-SPAN announced today two major initiatives designed to greatly expand citizen access to its online video of federal government activities, such as congressional hearings, agency briefings, and White House events. These actions are intended to meet the growing demand for video about the federal government and Congress, in an age of explosive growth of video file sharers, bloggers, and online 'citizen journalists.' The policy change is effective immediately.

· C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency-- about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks--which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.

· In addition, C-SPAN also announced plans to significantly build out its capitolhearings.org website as a one-stop resource for Congressionally-produced webcasts of House and Senate committee and subcommittee hearings.