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A Good Step: House Oversight Committee Puts Hearing Archive Video Online

from the nicely-done dept

Mon, Jan 9th 2012 3:28am — Mike Masnick

The House Oversight Committee in Congress has done a cool thing that pretty much every committee in Congress should have done long ago: put a ton of its archived video of Committee hearings online. You can see them all on YouTube. The actual project was done by Carl Malamud -- and as we've noted in the past, if Malamud is involved in a project, it's almost certainly a good thing. Malamud is a leading force in terms of open government and government transparency, and it's great that Rep. Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee worked with him on this project. All in all, they put up 1,139 videos, ranging back as far as March of 1993 (and right up to December 16th of 2011). This is a "pilot project," so hopefully it means the same thing will be done with other Congressional video as well.

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Filed Under: carl malamud, congress, darrell issa, government, open access, oversight committee

14 Comments

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cofiem (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 3:39am

Are there transcripts too? Is there an easy way to create a transcript?
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 6:08am
  
  Re:
  There might be transcripts of what they talked about, we just need to lobbyists to turn over their talking point memos.
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anonymous, 9 Jan 2012 @ 3:42am

anyone know when the RIAA/MPAA are going to force youtube to take this lot off line over copyright infringement issues?
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- Rikuo (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 4:31am
  
  Re:
  more than likely if/when one of their signed artists (or someone whom they think but won't bother to actually ensure, is signed to them) just so much as appears standing in the background silently.
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  - That Anonymous Coward (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 4:49am
    
    Re: Re:
    You mean like the MegaVideo where they claimed an artists who was not actually involved in the final product was being abused? Then they went on and behaved like the artists had no right to have contracts independent of them and claimed ownership over their work?
    
    I mean they are paying for alot of Congresscritters, so they could just use their special secret takedown channels with YouTube.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 3:52am

And then it hit me...
The reason none of the Congresscritters didn't object to this is...
They think the internet is just a fad and so few people actually use it. YouTube is just a massive front for stealing money from their corporate sponsors, so this worked on 2 levels.
No real people would see the petty bickering videos, and they are flooding that den of piracy with boring content which will force all pirates to give up and run out and buy more movies.
How long until they have an Oprah AHA Moment?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2012 @ 4:49am

Perhaps someone (or some group) will go through the footage and compile "highlights" videos of the most childish and petty behavior for various congressmen. Then we can all have a laugh as DMCA takedown notices show up and the videos just get reuploaded anyway.
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Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 5:53am

Quick question.
Will any of these representatives be interacting with amusing and/or extremely cute cats?

Followup question: Were the Megaupload videos removed to make room for these Congress videos?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2012 @ 6:00am

They need to use the web to show what the government is doing ...while they still can.
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Jay (profile), 9 Jan 2012 @ 7:04am

Another question
Is there any chance that the oversight committee has old decisions made by the FCC? The reason that I ask is because Michael Powell made a decision that was disagreeable in the 90s that comes back to haunt us in the form of consolidation in the broadband marketplace.
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�erkezk�y satılık arsa, 22 Jan 2012 @ 5:30pm

ataklar emlak
�erkezk�y satılık arsa
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2012 @ 8:48am

Iam agree. But you know that volcano vaporizer was invented by Storz& Bickel Company.
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Cool T-Shirt, 18 Jul 2012 @ 7:59pm

reply
This is a "pilot project," so hopefully it means the same thing will be done with other Congressional video as well.I hope it will be a well-developed beneficial to the people!
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Goyard Store online, 16 Jul 2013 @ 3:14am

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But unstable arc brought visual sense will affect our vital to wear, easy to increase the arc of instability to wear fatigue, and even damage to eyesight health and therefore the stability of curvature of the lens with the vital interests of our consumers relevant, can not be ignored
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