spazeboy

Dodd Wants to Free Up Debate Video

Chris Dodd urges DNC Chairman Howard Dean to make video of the Presidential debates freely available under a Creative Commons attribution (and presumably non-commercial) license. An excerpt:

While copyright protections remain essential, I see no cause to maintain copyright on Presidential primary debates. Because the campaign will continue until our convention next summer in Denver, we will have many chances to gather and discuss the issues, and making the product of those discussions free and open to the public simply makes sense.

I urge you to join those calling for the unrestricted release of debate video, and I hope you agree that by doing so, the Democratic Party will continue to spread our message and inform millions of Americans of where we stand.

The bottom line is that clips from these debates will be used freely whether the copyright on them is released or not, as is the case with this video uploaded by YouTube user JoeBidendotcom (who appears to have posted a clip of each of the Democratic candidates on Iraq):

It’s not in Senator Dodd’s interest, or the interest of anyone but the mega-corporations that hold the copyright, to keep these debates locked up. Those of us who put video clips from televised debates onto our blogs are not doing so in order to profit from them, but to comment on them. It’s a way of engaging more people in the political process.

So I join Senator Dodd in calling for the video of all Presidential debates to be made freely available. It’s hard enough to combat apathy in politics, and tearing down another barrier to participation and creative political expression is in my opinion a very good thing.

On a tangentially related note, if you want to bust your ass for a semester, Chris Dodd is looking for some good interns in Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Washington D.C., and Connecticut.