Sunlight Foundation: “C-SPAN Jumps to 21st Century for Conventions”

The Sunlight Foundation’s Paul Blumenthal makes a very good point about C-SPAN’s new Convention Hub:

This is a huge turnaround from two years ago, when C-SPAN ordered the removal of all of their clips from YouTube, claiming copyright infringement. The copyright purge began after viewers posted the Washington Correspondents Dinner notorious routine by comedian Stephen Colbert. The clips were viewed nearly a million times before C-SPAN claimed copyright. Soon after they ordered all videos removed from other content providers, including Metavid.

It wasn’t until Nancy Pelosi became Speaker and started posting YouTube videos of congressional hearings (which use C-SPAN cameras) to her blog that the controversy truly erupted. Pelosi and group of technology, right wing, and left blog activists all pressured C-SPAN to liberalize their policy. On March 7, 2007, they acquiesced, allowing for all non-commercial sharing, posting, and copying of C-SPAN videos past, present and future.

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider.

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