Republicans Forced To Retract Piracy Allegations They Lobbed At Democratic House Speaker

from the forget-mugslinging,-now-it's-going-to-be-DMCA-slinging dept

Mon, Feb 26th 2007 5:27pm — Carlo Longino

You might remember a story from last month out of Virginia, where Democratic lawmakers there were videotaping legislative sessions and putting them on YouTube in an attempt to keep Republicans from engaging in what they saw as dirty politics. Republicans got annoyed, and accused the Democrats of "gotcha" politics. Now, on Capitol Hill in Washington, some Republicans are upset with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because she put some video footage of House floor debate on her blog. They accused her of playing dirty -- but not because of what the videos showed, but because they said Pelosi had "pirated" the videos from C-SPAN. They were forced to retract the allegation after C-SPAN pointed out that videos from the House and Senate floors are shot by government cameras and are in the public domain, so it's fine for Pelosi to publish them. C-SPAN did point out, however, that it had asked Pelosi to remove another clip from her site, which the network had taped with its own cameras at a committee hearing. It's really nice to see politicians catch on to the sad trend of people trying to use bogus copyright claims to attack legal speech they don't like, even when they don't control the copyright in question. It would seem that this is going to be a recurrent problem as more politicians embrace tools like blogs and YouTube, and their rivals decide that it's easier to attack them by alleging piracy or copyright infringement, rather than actually respond in some meaningful way to the issues raised.

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9 Comments

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Cable, 26 Feb 2007 @ 9:07pm

Honestly is in any surprise it is a Republican behind this again? 8-9 times out of 10, I swear it is some Republican pulling crap like this.

How do people justify voting for corrupt people like that? Amnesia, apathy, or something else....I don't quite know.
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Michael, 26 Feb 2007 @ 9:47pm

vote?
The problem is, you don't have to vote for them, they just invent the votes as they go along, all part of the "democracy myth" of America. You have less choice in who represents you than most countries...
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- WhatThe?, 26 Feb 2007 @ 10:29pm
  
  Demos dumb, Reps worthless
  8-9 time out of 10. Is that an exact figure? Can you back it up? It is very easy to use, or attempt to use, statistics with no real meaning. "79% of Democrats refuse to eat Grape Jelly, NAPA Valley lobbies for equal representation". Meaningless!
  
  Invent Votes. Again, what backing do you have for that?
  
  Politicians, either party, attacking but failing to address the issues are abhorent. The rest of what is being posted here misses this, the only, point to this story.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Feb 2007 @ 10:24pm

C-SPAN did point out, however, that it had asked Pelosi to remove another clip from her site, which the network had taped with its own cameras at a committee hearing...so there was validity or not?
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- Davey, 27 Feb 2007 @ 8:54am
  
  Re:
  It's still ridiculous for Cspan to claim copyright to public hearings and committee meetings just because they were allowed to tape them. This is public record. No one should have copyright on anything paid for by the taxpayers already. If that means government cameras, so be it.
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ScytheNoire, 27 Feb 2007 @ 12:58am

They just need to abolish the party system and make it illegal for any politicians to receive political funds from any coporation or party that may have a political agenda. Also make lobbyists illegal, and punishable by death. Outlaw e-Voting machines that do not provide a paper trail, and all votes must be counted both electronically, and on paper. If the numbers don't match, recount until they do. All votes must be made public. Politicians caught on video lying, and can be proved, are to be shot on sight.

Just start killing off politicians and all lobbyists, it's a good start.
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Cixelsid, 27 Feb 2007 @ 3:37am

YARG! Batten the hatches and hoist the sails!
First Commies, then Terrorists and now... PIRATES!
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- Anonymous Coward, 28 Feb 2007 @ 7:01am
  
  Re: YARG! Batten the hatches and hoist the sails!
  Next up... NINJAS!
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Gnome, 27 Feb 2007 @ 11:10am

The Modern Age
The idea that what they say while "crafting" legislation - supposedly for the people and in a public place - might be used against them seems to have escaped the Republicans. Whatever happened to the best and the brightest? This is obviously the not so good and the the somewhat dimmer. I don't think it's any secret that there are cameras rolling in the House, and that the members agreed to put them there. It was a forgone conclusion the day they were put in place that the footage would eventually get edited into a not-so-flattering set of frames. The great surprise is that it took so long. Time to hire their own video editing crew?
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