Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Malamud and House Leadership Team Up to Make Congress's Videos Über-Public

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, January 6 2011

One of the first acts undertaken by newly-minted Speaker John Boehner and House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa on their first day as leaders of the 112th Congress? Making public a letter thanking Carl Malamud for his decades of service. The occasion: an agreement that provides for House leadership and Issa's committee to release to Malamud, a private citizen and fierce advocate for the public record, high-quality video of the past and future goings-on going on before the Oversight Committee, the House's watchdog.

Under the new agreement, Malamud is putting the hearing videos up for bulk download on his site, House.Resource.org, where they can be pulled down in raw form (for you technical folks, via three different protocols -- HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC). He's pushing them out to public spaces, like nearly ubiquitous YouTube platform and the Internet Archive. In short, Malamud's lodging the congressional video as firmly as possible in the public domain, and attempting to remove any logistic obstacle to people make the most possible use of the footage. As Issa goes, it's part of this "transparency through technology" mission, as he says in the video above, all in the hopes of shaping a system where "you can see -- hassle free -- what government actually does with your money." Malamud has been working for years on this and similar efforts, and sees it as the possible start of a cascade of license-free, high-quality video to pour from Capitol Hill. He has a track record of given government a taste of what freed information makes possible, and then encouraging them to do it on their own. (The history of the SEC's Edgar database is one such example.) The agreement between Malamud and Issa's office includes a provision where the latter agrees to push the powers that be in the House for a link from House.gov to House.Resource.org, for a year at least.

Malamud reports over on O'Reilly Radar that he should have all of the videos from the 111th Congress served up on the bulk site by the end of this money. The project, he writes, is scheduled to be full operational by the end of February.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

GO

Motion Picture Association Names Marc Miller As Its New Online Copyright Cop

The Motion Picture Association of America on Monday named Marc Miller its vice president of online content protection. Miller comes to the MPAA from Nintendo of America, where he was the company's anti-piracy counsel for the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. GO

friday >

Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) might be facing particularly challenging reelection odds this year, at least acording to Google: based on its new Knowledge Graph interface, the search engine says that the very-much-alive Congressman died on November 20, 2004, as Colin Campbell first reported for Politicker via Azi Paybarah and Anthony Adragna. GO

Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway

Americans Elect announced recently that it would suspend its online candidate selection process, leaving organizations in several states with an open slot on the ballot. Naturally, potential candidate Buddy Roemer is not enthused. "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here," he says. GO

Chris Anderson Says That Nixed TED Talk Was Rated "Mediocre," Links To It Anyway

TED's Chris Anderson responds to criticism of how his idea-spreading operation handled a talk about inequality — and posts video of the talk online. GO

Was the "Ricketts"/Fred Davis Obama-Wright Ad Pitch a Good Deal?

As if the content of the now-discarded plan for a new Super PAC-funded attack campaign against President Barack Obama wasn't controversial enough to grab attention — it would revive attempts to link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright just before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention this summer — the now-discarded plan featured a two-page pitch for a pricey social media component meant to boost its exposure. GO

Facebook's Growing Political Importance, Visualized

To commemorate Facebook's impending IPO, the Sunlight Foundation's* reporting group has a new story chronicling Facebook's increasing political spending. Accompanying the story, though, is an instance of their Capitol Words tool that shows Facebook's increasing relevance in Congress as well. GO

More