Speaker Nancy Pelosi Launches The Gavel

Posted on February 21, 2007

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has launched a new blog called The Gavel. Law.com's Legal Watch Blog notes that Nancy Pelosi is not new to blogging. She has blogged before here on the Huffington Post. The Gavel blog debuted on February 6th and has included many YouTube video clips from C-SPAN that show the action on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi even has a YouTube channel.

There was some quick criticism from the GOP who accused Nancy Pelosi of violating copyright laws by running YouTube video clips of C-SPAN coverage on her blog. However, it turns out that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was wrongly accused. The video footage was shot by cameras owned by Congress and so Pelosi was not violating any copyright laws by posting them on her new blog. The video footage is in the public domain according to C-SPAN.

C-SPAN spokeswoman Jennifer Moire says The Gavel content came from the House chamber. Video here is shot with Congress cameras. Moire says, "That's in the public domain, it's owned by the American people."

You can read more about how the GOP was wrong and had to retract its criticism of Speaker Nancy Pelosi here.