CNET: Dogfight over videos of White House pup
In what is becoming an annual rite, the White House's holiday-themed playful digital video of the First Dog Barney Bush is also becoming a regular tiff between online news sites and the Bush Administration. The White House has released the videos in the past to television networks for broadcast but has told online news organs, like WashingtonPost.com, that it is forbidden to host the video on its own servers and, instead, must link over to the White House site.
The media discrimination is all the more odd in light of the fact that U.S. intellectual property law specifically allows the distribution of content created by federal employees on the government's clock. Barney has proven quite an internet attraction, logging up about 24 million views, roughly equivalent to the traffic generated during the height of the recent presidential election.
