Steel this film I and II have helped shape the debate on copyright policy. The first film focused on the raid against the pirate bay and file sharing culture. Part II took on the broader copyright debate.

Now they are making their interview footage from Steel This Film II available for remixing. Their site features ogg video with time segment requests (similar to what we do here on metavid) and synced transcripts for search. Footage is made available in ogg theora & high quality HDV via bittorrent. They encurge people to download and reuse the footage.

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From the DemocracyTV blog:

There’s a new version of XiphQT, which is the behind-the-scenes code that helps Democracy Player for OSX play Ogg files. We’ll be including this in an upcoming release of ours and it should make Ogg playback much more efficient. If you use the XiphQT plugin yourself, this version supports creation of Oggs, which is very handy.

This theora support means that the RSS feeds generated by MetaVid searches (those funny orange boxes: ) are exportable as channels for your DTV player. You could use a channel for your own Congressman (here’s mine), an issue you care about (like peanut butter), or some combination of the two (Anna Eshoo saying Peanut Butter). The great thing about RSS and DTV is that as new matches to these searches occur, the clips will download automatically — giving you a new and efficient way to sousveil your representative and cause.

update: hmm, it looks like our feeds are broken in the latest democracyPlayer; we’re looking in to why.

Metavid will be participating in the Beyond Broadcast conference of 2007. Like last years conference its shaping up to be a key exploration of participatory culture and its potential to enable powerful tools for citizen engagement. Henry Jenkins giving the Keynote and schedule is action packed with projects and speakers addressing the state of politics and participation on the internet. look interesting… see the schedule

Metavid will be co-running the beyond youtube working group where we will explore contemporary political participatory media, and give some usage demos of metavid.

Like last year it will be possible to “tune in” via the internet. So if your interested in seeing portions of the conference check out the beyond broadcast site at or around February 24th

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…)

I just ran into Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation article on the future of internet video and how we can aim to push it toward more openness.

It is well written and questions the single service provider model that internet video is currently operating under.

Will internet video be centralized in huge services like YouTube or Google Video, or will it be more broadly distributed? (with technologies like RSS)

Some more questions to consider in the interest of “open” video on the internet:

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I just ran into Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation article on the future of internet video and how we can aim to push it toward more openness.

It is well written and questions the single service provider model that internet video is currently operating under.

Will internet video be centralized in huge services like YouTube or Google Video, or will it be more broadly distributed? (with technologies like RSS)

Some more questions to consider in the interest of “open” video on the internet:

(more…)