C-SPAN Takes Lead in Making Video of Congressional Hearings, White House and Other Federal Events More Widely Available to the Online Community

C-SPAN Takes Lead in Making Video of Congressional Hearings, White House and Other Federal Events More Widely Available to the Online Community

Cable Network Introduces New Copyright Policy and Expanded Capitol Hearings Web Site

WASHINGTON, March 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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 http://capitolhearings.org/ Web site as a one-stop resource for Congressionally-produced Web casts of House and Senate committee and subcommittee hearings.

C-SPAN Executive Committee Chairman William J. Bresnan, CEO of Bresnan Communications said that the network's directors enthusiastically endorsed the copyright policy liberalization. "The C-SPAN board sees this as helping us carry out C-SPAN's public service mission," he said. "The cable industry created this network to allow citizens greater access to their government and this enhancement appropriately reflects the rapid changes in the online information world."

"Giving voice to the average citizen has been a centerpiece of C-SPAN's journalism since our network's founding in 1979," said Rob Kennedy, C-SPAN president and co-COO. "As technology advances, we want to continue to be a leader in providing citizens with the tools to be active participants in the democratic process."

The new C-SPAN policy borrows from the approach to copyright known in the online community as "Creative Commons." Examples of events included under C- SPAN's new expanded policy include all congressional hearings and press briefings, federal agency hearings and presidential events at the White House. C-SPAN's copyright policy will not change for the 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.

Capitolhearings.org was launched in 2001 as a public service to aggregate the Congressionally-produced live audio streams of Senate hearings. The initial build-out of the site will incorporate the rapidly increasing Web casts of House committee and subcommittee hearings.

ABOUT C-SPAN

C-SPAN, the political network of record, was created in 1979 by America's cable companies as a public service. C-SPAN is currently available in more than 90 million households, C-SPAN2 in more than 82 million households and C- SPAN3 in over 12 million households nationwide. For more information about C- SPAN, visit its Web site at http://www.c-span.org/.

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Source: C-SPAN

CONTACT: Jennifer Moire of C-SPAN, +1-202-626-8797, jmoire@c-span.org

Web site: http://www.c-span.org/
http://capitolhearings.org/

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