Twittering Copyright

I'm accustomed to following hearings about digital rights through live streaming video feeds, so it was strange only to be able to keep track of what was happening in real-time via Twitter as witnesses testified, although apparently audio recordings were also made of hearings about exemptions urgently needed to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for educators, computer scientists, and creative artists. I had actually submitted a letter several months ago in response to a call for evidence of the pedagogical unworkability of the current system. Coverage was also available through the Media Education Lab, although the Twitter feed of Wendy Seltzer focused on recording some of the best lines and exchanges. (Click photo to enlarge.) See Seltzer's blog entry about what she calls the "theater of the DMCA anticircumvention hearings" for more details. Of course, Twitter has some advantages over videorecording, because it creates a text record that is more easily searchable, but the 140 character limit makes it difficult for live blogging and approximate transcriptions.