Congress Makes YouTube Promise To Host Representatives' Videos Sans Ads
from the following-the-rules dept
Apparently Congressman Kevin McCarthy happened to be one of a very small number of folks in Congress who actually bothered to read some of the rules that Congress is supposed to abide by. In doing so, he realized that all those Congressional Representatives putting videos on YouTube are probably breaking the rules, which say that Representatives can't be doing stuff on commercial sites. When he first brought this to the attention of other Reps, they basically told him to ignore it, since everyone else did -- but eventually Congress decided to fix the problem. Of course, they didn't fix it by changing the rules... but by putting out a request for a webhosting site to host their videos in a non-commercial manner. YouTube was the only site to agree to do so, so now your Congresscritters can continue posting to YouTube, and (apparently) you won't see ads on their YouTube pages. I can't decide if I'm happy that Congress decided to actually follow its own rules, or worried about them spending time on something as silly as this.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: congress, online, videos, youtube
Companies: google, youtube
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Vote him out of California's 22 district.
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Bits are the same as bytes... no?
My God! I'm becoming an old fogey! Thank goodness it doesn't stop me being right!
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Re: Bits are the same as bytes... no?
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I don't know
...worried about them spending time on something as silly as this."
It'll be hard to top freedom fries for wasting time.
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Yeah - great idea
They probably have plans to astroturf their page in an effort to make it look like they have a following.
These are the folks who skirt the limits on campaign contributions by writing a book. Everyone knows that lawyers can not write in a literary sense. But their books sell by the thousands. I wonder if anyone reads them.
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Re: Re: Bits are the same as bytes... no?
A byte may contain eight bits. Historically, bytes have ranged from five to twelve bits.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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YouTube videos and Congress
But, if the Government can use YouTube, sans ads and branding, then it gives a place to share our videos with the audience that we're trying to reach on the websites that they look at daily. Our outreach ability has just increase 100 fold. The "sans ads" is ideal because, in the Government, you ARE restricted from favoring one commercial vendor over another because it can be seen as endorsement.
So, why it may seem silly to some, this is actually a big deal for the government communications and outreach offices.
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Re: Re: Bits are the same as bytes... no?
--Glenn
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Re: YouTube videos and Congress
Brought to you by a DC lobbyist.
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Re: Re: Re:
The linked article only said that aids sent out a request, which I imagine could well have been in form of emails directly to the various video hosting sites. But if you have information to the contrary then please present it.
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or something like that
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I've always heard that we've got the very best politicians that money can buy.
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It was a voluntary act. They didn't have to submit any plan if they didn't want to.
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No, of course not. By the way, isn't congress looking into the issue of network neutrality as it affects sites like Google and YouTube? Yeah, I thought so. Not that YouTube would care at all about that.
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What about IA?
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