Read My Lips

Video file-sharing services now offer options to those who want to make informed decisions about candidates or follow public policy issues. YouTube You Choose links voters directly to the official YouTube channels of all the current Presidential hopefuls. On Google, Carl Malamud on behalf of Congress transforms the meandering live feed of Congressional hearings into video files that can actually be archived, replayed, and fast-forwarded through. Providing useful metadata for that video is the tricky part, unfortunately. Now, if only we had voice recognition technology that could produce transcripts from the Malamud files, so we could avoid relying on the Grace News Network.

Update: The news from C-Span that they will make more video easily available to the public online is encouraging to advocates for public disclosure who worry about proprietary attitudes toward the public record that digital video archives may often foster.