C-Span is loosening their copyright policy.  Nancy Scola gives today's news on C-Span some context.

So what C-SPAN has done today is to decide that as long as two important conditions are met -- (1) C-SPAN gets credit, and (2) no money is made off of their work -- this footage is free to be used far and wide.

It's important to remember that, when it comes to C-SPAN, we're really talking about two kinds of content. One is the "official events" mentioned above -- that's the stuff recorded by C-SPAN-owned cameras. This includes congressional hearings, press briefings, that sort of thing. What's still a bit unclear today is whether the rules of the game have changed at all for the coverage of the House and Senate floor that C-SPAN also distributes. As we've talked about before, what C-SPAN is doing there is packaging and branding the public domain feed shot by government-owned cameras. More clarity on that content would indeed still be welcomed.

All in all, today's news is fairly remarkable. The dust-up between Speaker Pelosi and the House Republican study group that raised attention on C-SPAN's control issues occurred just three weeks ago tomorrow. The concerted push to comport C-SPAN's policies with the modern use of online video only really ramped up in the last two weeks. What does that mean for the Open House Project? Only good things, I think. Seems as if this is a propitious time to be in the open-government business.

It really is a remarkable time to be in politics and governance right now.  C-Span is a cable-backed business that has traditionally maintained aggressive control over its copyrighted materials.  This is not unusual.  What is unbelievable, and it really is quite remarkable, is how quickly they changed their policy in response to public debate and discussion.  I honestly don't know if they are doing this in good faith or not, though I do feel that Brian Lamb should be commended for his willingness to take public input and work with it.

I'm also not sure if the non-commercial restrictions on C-Span content mean that people can or can't load video clips onto Youtube, Google video, or sites with advertising.  The point is not to loosen copyright restrictions for its own sake, after all, the point is to give citizens the tools we need to debate politics unfettered by pointless restrictions.  The acid test is whether C-Span actually will allow citizens to debate political content on sites like Youtube and the Dailykos, sites that make money through advertising but that do not specifically sell copies of this content.  I'm also not sure why C-Span decided to keep half its content restricted; even though the closed programming is produced by C-Span, C-Span argues that it is a public service.  I think that they should open all their content to being useful as tools for political debate, and that their unwillingness to do so somewhat undermines their moral point.

All of this being said, C-Span's move to loosen its hold over political content is a terrific step in the right direction.  My guess is that they are going to generate more revenue than they did before, and see over the next few years creative use by the public of the extremely valuable content they have collected over the past twenty or so years.  I hope that this will convince the leadership of C-Span that they made the right choice in loosening their control over content, and that other news organizations will follow suit.

Right now, as with the Fox News discussion with the Nevada Democratic Party leadership, we're seeing a tremendous opening up of political discourse.  The internet is becoming not just a tool with which to wield political power, it's becoming a recognized and run-of-the-mill place to do politics.  That's very good.