Campus Progress and American Progress have provided extensive coverage of the exclusive sole-source 30-year sellout between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks. The deal gives Showtime, a privately-owned corporate network, the right of refusal to requests for access to content in the hands of the Smithsonian- a publicly-funded organization.

During the last Congress, it appears the Smithsonian earned a healthy smackdown for their actions. However, Carl Malamud, one of the leading voices against this hijacking of public educational archives since it was first announced, offers a summary of recent developments. Via I-P:

The Smithsonian Institution has been telling Congress and the public to move on and get over it.

Smithsonian lobbyists are trying to paper over their exclusive 30-year sellout to Showtime, saying that the contract has posed no problems and nobody seems to be upset about it anymore.

This position is meant to convince Congress that they should rescind language in pending House bills, such as provisions that no contracts shall be issued that limit access by the public. The situation is timely since the House and Senate will soon be meeting to reconcile bills in conference.

1. The contract is still secret and was even withheld at first from members of Congress. When they finally delivered the document to the oversight committee, large portions of the contract were redacted until they agreed to sign an NDA. The public *still* hasn't seen this contract.

2. The Smithsonian managed to get the hearing record pulled from the Government Printing Office web site, claiming it contained sensitive material, but I snagged a copy before it was pulled. Appendix 3 contains a small excerpt from the contract, which is why that had it pulled.

3. The Government Accounting Office has delivered a draft report of the contract to the Congress and Smithsonian officials maintain the study should not be released for the public to see.

Carl has provided more information, as well as a letter you can sign to protest the ongoing attempt to make public archives less public. You can add a link to your own site with the following code:

<a href="http://public.resource.org/smithsonian_congress.html">Link</a>

(Edited on 11/22)