A few days ago, the NY Times editorialized in favor of relaxing the rules regarding cameras on the floor of the US Congress. This comes on the heels of an open letter (PDF File) by C-SPAN president Brian Lamb calling for independent media cameras (particularly C-SPAN’s) on the floor of the House. In addition to editorials on his behalf, Lamb appeared on numerous media outlets including this interview on NPR’s Talk of The Nation to lobby for these changes.

Much of the discourse around these proposed changes is a critique of the cinematography of C-SPAN, particularly on the head-on closeups that the House Rules require. Furthermore, Lamb suggests that relaxing the rules would be more consistent with House Speaker Pelosi’s “most open, honest and ethical congress ever,” with an implication that the government may be covering something up through these tight controls.

On Friday, Pelosi rejected these proposed changes and will leave the House in charge of the cameras. There are a few issues at work here, I’ll address them briefly and what they mean for this project. More after the fold. (more…)

here is snipit from my thesis about the metavid code licence. The full paper will be available in a open contestble format shortly I belive aphids version will be as well

Licensing the metavid code base was an important element of the praxis of open source. Several licenses were considered to secure the freedom of participants to re-negotiate the mediations enabled by the metavid software. This survey and license selection process addressed the problems of contemporary archival systems, through the practice of open source licensing.

(more…)