The Television News Archive is a site dedicated to maintaining and preserving the news broadcasts in America from 2009 until today. It copies the broadcasts and has them available for search. I was perturbed initially by the idea of this site taking these videos from the news source and was determined to discover the legitimacy of doing such things. Then I began looking through what there was to offer; any topic mentioned on any news source since the archive begins is there and decently organized.
To go with something I was comfortable with I searched “The Daily Show”. I was aware of that the Daily Show’s official site contained full episodes and I believed that it was unnecessary for the TV News Archive to even contain episodes since they were already openly available and I am assuming they could be archived through that site. So, when the search loaded I was pleasantly surprised with how it not only offered clips from a multitude of episodes it also contained clips from all other news shows that had mentioned The Daily Show. For this the ethics of it are blurred since the show is already freely there for viewers to enjoy and this is just another place to watch. However it is questioning how the site can get away with obtaining these shows.
Determined to further understand how this constant coping and publishing was occurring I turned to the old faithful, Google. One of the first links was to a recent New York Times article explaining the new website. I was once again shocked when it was discovered that the project was mainly funded by outside grants by the Library of Congress and the National Archives. The founder, Brewster Kahle, said that he set the annual budget at $12 million. The article also went on to say that the broadcasts were protected from direct coping “under a federal copyright agreement signed in 1976”. This added more to the legality of the site.
The ethics of whether or not it is okay to take these broadcasts is still skeptical but the New York Times article does give peace of mind by stating:
The archive has no intention of replacing or competing with the Web outlets owned by the news organizations. Mr. Kahle said new material would not be added until 24 hours after it was first broadcast. “We don’t expect this to replace CNN.com,” he said.
This site does take care to keep the actual news broadcasts still desirable to watch, and this makes it so that the effect of the site does not impact the market. While, of course, there is still the chance that people will limit their live television watching and go for the online viewing at a time of their pleasing (naturally with the 24 hour gap). The premise of the site is stated as for research purposes and this increases its legality by the site being educational.