Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates.
The Obama campaign posted this today:
Chairman Howard Dean
Democratic Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates
Democratic Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates
National Committee
430 S. Capitol St., SE
Washington, DC 20003
Dear Chairman Dean:
I am writing in strong support of a letter from a bipartisan coalition
of academics, bloggers and Internet activists recently addressed to you
and the Democratic National Committee. The letter asks that the video
from any Democratic Presidential debate be available freely after the
debate, by either placing the video in the public domain, or licensing
it under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.
As you know, the Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens
to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of
that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We,
as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this
participation. Not only will it keep us focused on the issues that
matter most to America, it will also encourage participation by a wide
range of our youth who have traditionally simply tuned out from politics.
The letter does not propose some radical change in copyright law, or an
unjustified expansion in “fair use.” Instead, it simply asks that any
purported copyright owner of video from the debates waive that copyright.
I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a
digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of
content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The
networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than
restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure
that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in
all the ways that technology makes possible.
more...
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003763.shtml
_______________________________________________
NetBehaviour mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
