Congressional Rep. Webcasts Hearing With Supreme Court Justices To Show How Easy It Is

from the just-like-that... dept

Mon, Apr 27th 2009 6:47pm — Mike Masnick

After a bit of a (very public) back and forth, a district court in the high-profile Tenenbaum case was recently told that it cannot broadcast courtroom proceedings online, saying that it violated certain rules. This is something that Congress could change... and it sounds like some in Congress really are interested in doing so. Rep. John Culberson, an early supporter of using tools like Twitter and Qik to communicate with constituents, apparently pulled out his camera phone in the middle of a hearing with Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Thomas and started broadcasting live to his website, trying to show them how easy it is to do these days, and why they should allow broadcasting of court proceedings in action.

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Filed Under: john culberson, supreme court, webcast
Companies: qik

10 Comments

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Spyder, 27 Apr 2009 @ 7:00pm

Finally, a politician that gets it. Hopefully this isn't a one-time deal and we can get more like him.
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- Nathan, 27 Apr 2009 @ 10:31pm
  
  Re:
  I live in Culberson's district and he's kind of a dick, but it's guess it's good to know he got something right.
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Tgeigs, 27 Apr 2009 @ 7:04pm

And then
...And then the Justice Breyer screamed, "Witchcraft!" and Culberson was summarily burned at the stake...
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2009 @ 7:51pm

Thou shalt not photograph thy black-robed master.
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Dan, 28 Apr 2009 @ 1:01am

This idea scares the shit out of judges. It would certainly expose incompetence.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Apr 2009 @ 4:48am

Re: Dan
"This idea scares the shit out of judges. It would certainly expose incompetence."

If anyone watched, maybe. But really, aside from a few high profile cases, most people couldn't care less. Give them a headline on news.google.com and that's all they care to know.
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- Tgeigs, 28 Apr 2009 @ 6:14am
  
  Re: Re: Dan
  I agree. That's like saying CSPAN scares the shit out of congressmen. No, it doesn't.
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  - Jason, 28 Apr 2009 @ 12:49pm
    
    Re: Re: Re: Dan
    Or maybe they mean that they don't want the RIAA intimidated.
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LostSailor, 28 Apr 2009 @ 1:35pm

A couple of minor points
The issue in the Tenenbaum case was that a web cast violated certain local state rules. the U.S. Congress can't change a local state rule. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what authority a legislature has, but I believe that this is a court-made rule, not an actual law.

Finally, it's not about whether it is easy to have web-casting or not and it's never been (same for cameras for photography or broadcast in the courtroom); it's about whether judges want to allow it or not.

For the record, I fully support all forms of public access to court proceedings, broadcast, cable, web-cast, telegraph, semaphore, or jungle drums.
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Rekrul, 28 Apr 2009 @ 6:26pm

Next up: Today a judge ruled that all court proceedings are copyrighted and therefore may not be filmed or broadcast without a license. No film at 11...
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