I happened to be poking around the City of Raleigh‘s website today and was happy to discover the Raleigh City Council meetings are now available as streaming media. These streams are designed for Windows Media Player, which not exactly an open format but can indeed be played using the open-source mplayer if one decodes the various URLs.
Being the political junkie (and, well, hopeless geek) that I am, I considered subscribing to cable just to view these meetings. Now not only do I get to view them, I can also skip through them easily to see only what I want.
Also today I learned that C-SPAN will be offering its content with a Creative Commons-type license allowing for non-commercial use. That makes the meetings of my federal and local governments freely available online, joining my state government which was already available online.
If there’s a better way to begin national Sunshine Week promoting open government, I haven’t seen it. Its also another great victory for the Creative Commons, which includes everyone. Go on: pat yourself on the back!
(On a related note, I find it ironic that many of the News and Observer’s open records stories are locked behind its paywall).