Carl Malamud writes to the IP list
Hi Dave -
Many congressional committees provide webcasts of their hearings. In all cases, the streams are based on a proprietary streaming format, with no download. In many cases, the streams are only available "live" and no archive is maintained as a matter of policy. In some cases, the committees even put copyright "all rights reserved" stamps on their data (even though there is no copyright in the hearings, therefore no rights to reserve).
As a service to the committees, I've started ripping all the streams and placing them on both Google Video and the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=malamud%20behalf%20house
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=malamud+behalf+house
On these sites, you can tag, annotate, and review the hearings. Hopefully, the congress will see what great fun this is and start providing a permanent archive in a nonproprietary format with much better resolution. Until then, if you're looking for congressional hearings, I'm happy to be their proxy. :)
Regards,
Carl Malamud
