George Bush Video Archive

Meet politicalvideo.org

The Whitehouse has a huge amount of video available on its website.

Jay Dedman and others have built the George Bush Video Archive. It stores no less than 1695 videos and 495 hours of video.

And it has all been done without a cent of public funds - voluntarily.

One thing the USA has got right is that all national and state government publications are in the public domain by definition:

Any documents produced by local, state and federal government are by law in the public domain (after all, we Americans paid for them). And almost any other video clip used in a critical context falls under fair use. But video from sources like the White House site is in RealVideo format — making it a chore to save locally and even harder to work with in editing.

The amount of video available is also staggering, so Shawn Van Every and Eric Zimmerman helped out by automating the site scraping, downloading, transcoding and uploading process. The video on the site is now avaible in Quicktime format, making it easier for users to edit and republish.

Importantly, Politicalvideo.org is also archiving the related transcripts, making it much easier to scan and search for specific phrases. The team has archived over 500 hours of video total dating back to 2001, all of which should be uploaded and available by Wednesday.

Why are the British so Precious?

Now, the big question. Why are the British Government and the Westminster (and other) British Parliaments so defensive (read “anal”) about video recorded in our National Parliament. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish regional Parliaments are just as bad. Here are some examples:

Westminster Parliament

From here:

© Parliamentary copyright

All Parliamentary copyrights are reserved. The material listed may be reproduced without formal permission for the purposes of non-commercial research, private study and for criticism, review and news reporting provided that the material is appropriately attributed. For any other re-use of the material you are required to apply for a Click-Use Parliamentary Licence from the Office of Public Sector Information. The use of images and broadcasts of the Proceedings of Parliament fall outside the scope of the Parliamentary Licence.

A Click-Use Parliamentary Licence covers - material produced by the House of Commons and the House of Lords of the Westminster Parliament which is subject to Parliamentary copyright protection. Only one Parliamentary Licence is required to reproduce Parliamentary copyright material. The use of images and broadcasts of the Proceedings of Parliament fall outside of the scope of the Parliamentary Licence.

You can apply online for a Click-Use Parliamentary Licence or visit the Office of Public Sector Information website to find out more about Parliamentary copyright or about Click-Use licensing.

Scottish Assembly

From here:

Parliamentary copyright

© Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body 1999 - 2007

All Scottish Parliamentary copyrights are reserved. Individuals are authorised to view video images for their own private use. Individuals and organisations can link to the website subject to the following conditions:

* No distortion or alteration of images in reproduction
* No use for satirical purposes
* No use in caption type competitions
* No use in connection with advertising endorsement
* No use in connection with party political purposes

In terms of further conditions you also agree to correctly acknowledge and identify the link i.e. © Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body - 2007. Failure to adhere to these conditions will lead to the withdrawal of authorisation.

Any other proposed use of Scottish Parliament video images requires the assent of the Copyright Unit of the Office of the Queen’s Printer for Scotland, which is administering the copyright on behalf of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.

Welsh Assembly

The copyright page should be here, but the website is broken.

Wrapping-Up

Why all the buggeration?

Just put it all in the public domain and have done with it. The present setup (UK, Scotland, Wales *) is ridiculous.

Cut the crap. Cut the the control freakery. Cut the red tape. Cut the Parliamentary Copyright and let us be FREE.

Perhaps the reason we are so far behind in Blogging and Online Video in Politics in this country is because we are being strangled by unnecessary red tape. National documents should be public domain. Period.

Perhaps we need to start writing to our MPs about this.

* Note: The Welsh link is dead. Website update needed.

Tags: iptv, parliament, parliametary copyright, george bush video archive, white house, jay dedman[tags]iptv, parliament, parliametary copyright, george bush video archive, white house, jay dedman[/tags]