This years NetSquared featured projects includes metavid along with 20 other proposed or in-development net mashups for social change. Featured project developers and social innovators will meet up in late may for the net squared conference. More from the site:

The NetSquared Conference, will be on May 27 and 28, 2008 in San Jose, CA. As in the past two years, the two-day event will bring together innovators in social benefit initiatives, business models, funding for philanthropic initiatives, software development, and technology to advance social change around the globe using social networks and social Web tools such as blogging, podcasting, and virtual communities.

We are pleased to announce that MetaVidWiki  (link) is now in open beta. We look forward to you comments, suggestions, and bug reports on this new free platform for community audio video participation.

We have put together a new extended screen cast demoing MetaVidWiki features available here on metavid. (also available on google video, and xvid copy here (23 megs) ). Editing on MetaVidWiki site is now open to anyone that can pass a audio or visual captcha test…

So check out the demo video, try some searches, and then try improving the archive by syncing a transcript or improving some text content

Simultaneously we are releasing the software that powers metavid: MetaVidWiki extension (v.01). It has been packaged and released for other cool re-uses of the code base. The Mv_Embed package has been updated to version .7 and released as well.

Read on for Technical Feature overview:

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Here are some minor corrections to the article Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a lesson published on February 26th.
The article quotes “C-Span said that it had for first time asserted its copyright against a video-clip site, ordering YouTube to take down copies of Stephen Colberts pointed speech…” This neglects a the smaller players that have been affected by C-SPAN take down notices see the C-SPAN and intellectual property article on Wikipedia.

Additionally the articles does not address the trademark issue. Although the floor footage is public domain the only copy the public has access to is encumbered with C-SPAN’s trademark and this has provided a grounds for which C-SPAN has requested sites take down otherwise public domain footage. Our site metavid has been hosing this public domain footage with the trademark removed. Metavid’s conversations with C-SPAN in early 2006 showed that C-SPAN would leverage its trademark rights to force the removal of floor footage. The real story here is one of selective enforcement, and how citizens have no real, reusable, permanent access to committee footage.

Update: As boing boing pointed out today Carl is working to change the situation of limited archival access to committee footage. Check out what he has grabbed so far.

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…)

The Beyond Broadcast conference is happening this weekend covering topics related to reinventing public media in a participatory culture. I highly recommend checking out the conference site http://www.beyondbroadcast.net/

They have gone to great efforts to make the entire conference very web accessible for virtual attendants, including public question space, irc channels, live video broadcasting and even a space in second life

The question space is particularly impressive, you can watch the webcast and add in questions for the panel to answer.

Breaking news from our Better Late Than Never department: we sat down with Scott Shawcroft back in March to talk about Metavid for his Open Road Trip project.  He has posted a video of the interview and demo.  Check out some of his other interviews too, others from the bay area leg of his road trip include Larry Lessig and Rick & Megan Prelinger.

on march 3rd aphid and I did a radio interview with Timothy Jordan. An mp3 of the radio program is now avaliable. Show Summary excerpt:

This week Aphid and Michael Dale join us to talk about their C-SPAN [re]mediation project, Metavid. Monsters Are Not Myths play their song of the week, ‘Customer Service.’ Alec Stefansky covers the weather, the Patriot Act, and gives the Award of Excellence to some control freaks.

Check out the spring06 UCSC review which features an accessible article on Metavid. Here is the opening quote

“One evening last year, UC Santa Cruz graduate student Abram Stern logged on to the C-SPAN web site to gather information for an art project. Stern knew that the cable television network had been providing live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of U.S. Senate and House of Representatives proceedings for more than two decades as a public service, and he was looking to obtain some older footage from its archive”