‘Put Presidential Debate Video on Internet’

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/26/put-presidential-debate-video-on-internet/

‘Put Presidential Debate Video on Internet’

by James Parks, Apr 26, 2007

A large bipartisan alliance is asking the Republican and Democratic national committees to ensure that all video from upcoming presidential debates can be legally shared, reused and blogged. This would allow people to share the candidates’ issue positions through sites such as YouTube.

The AFL-CIO is one of the 75 signatories, which include Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessing, the founders of Craiglist and Wikipedia, national women’s and civil rights groups, MoveOn.org, DailyKos.com and conservatives such as Redstate.com and Michelle Malkin.

Rather than allowing television networks to retain exclusive rights to debate footage, the alliance is asking that debate footage be put in the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license, which makes video free for anyone to access, edit and share with proper attribution.

“This is about the Internet empowering the little guy in our democracy,” said Adam Green of MoveOn.org Civic Action.

The big TV networks should not be the only ones determining which sound bites are newsworthy after a debate. Everyday people should be able to put candidates’ positions on YouTube and share them with others without fear of breaking the law.

To read copies of the letters to the political national committees, click here: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003755.shtml

[Breeze54]

1. The debates should be on National Braodcast. Not just cable or the net!

:grr:

Thanks for the link.

K & R'd

[JDPriestly]

2. This is really important.

We independent souls refuse to buy into the MSM and shun cable TV should not be excluded from the debate audience. Democrats need to go even further than that. Many, many older voters cannot afford cable, do not have internet access and would not know what to do with it if they did. The debates should be broadcast by local community-based TV stations. This should be mandatory. The debates have become an important part of the democratic process. Those who sponsor them should not do so for profit. The debate tapes should be made available for free and broad dissemination.

[Ignacio Upton]

3. The idea that PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES can be copyrighted is ludicrous

The footage should be public domain.