NBC Believes They Own Political Discourse

PoliSciASU writes "MSNBC has established draconian rules regarding the use of the Presidential Primary Debates on the internet. Some examples: '5. No excerpts may be aired after 8:30 pm on Saturday, May 26th. Excerpts may not be archived. Any further use of excerpts is by express permission of MSNBC only. 6. All debate excerpts must be taped directly from MSNBC's cablecast or obtained directly from MSNBC and may not be obtained from other sources, such as satellite or other forms of transmission. No portions of the live event not aired by MSNBC may be used.' Kevin Bondelli talks about why this is 'shameful and wrong'. Voters are missing out on the ability to actually have an engaged conversation about the candidates and their debate performances because of NBC's greed." Alexander Wolfe at InformationWeek and Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine share similar sentiments, and discuss the matter in different ways.

Comments

Re:Who is it going to be?

[maxume]

Why are you assuming that the debates are public events? They are not.

Oh noes!

[Quiet_Desperation]

I won't be able to watch eight meglomaniacs, who all took their own private jets to the debate, preach to me that I have to live in an unpowered hut and hide there all day to save the planet while they prance about the country in gas guzzling tax tractors.

Our system is such that all politicians are batshit insane. They're just alpha control freaks. They get a psychological buzz from knowing they had an effect on parts of your life they have no Constitutional (or moral) right to do so. They are the ultimate version of the homeowner's association president.

Who needs Hillary's banshee wail? Who needs Obama's arc of the moral universe, which, I think, is a constellation visible from the Southern Hemisphere? Kerry? AGAIN? Haven't you people had enough of that giant douche? Or was he the turd sandwich? I forget. Might as well get Supreme Scientist Gore in there again so the new Futurama episodes can fellate him some more.

Who cares about NBC when there is YouTube?

[michaelmalak]

Here we have a broadcaster willing to broadcast the debate to the entire universe for FREE: YouTube. I blame the political parties for giving exclusive license to a twentieth century media outlet. But that's not the worst of their evils -- that would be excluding candidates who want to uphold the Constitution, such as Ron Paul.

I cant view debate under Linux

[krbvroc1]

I missed the debate and want to watch it. My first stop was C-SPAN and was surprised that it was not archived there. After finding out it was NBC, I went to MSNBC website. But when I
try to 'view the video' I just get a screen that looks like some Flash based Windows Media Player and it does nothing. Buttons dont work or anything.

I tried it on a Windows box under Firefox and it didnt work either. Looks like some type of IE-only crap or some type of gymnastics are needed.
  Thanks MSNBC. How about turn it over to some other people who can cater to a wider audience?

Isn't it Obvious?

[PPH]

It appears that the structure of the current political process is designed to make money for the media industry. Politicians have been reduced to being paid performers, with the rights to the produced product available for sale just like any other asset. Its only a matter of time before they figure out how to apply DRM to political content.

Question: Did NBC pay the producers (political parties) and performers (candidates) for the rights to this content? Like they would have to do for an episode of "24" or an NFL game? I don't thinks so. If the candidates, or their sponsors signed a contract that effectively turns their 'product' over to the network, then they aren't the sort of people I'd want to run this country. They have reduced themselves to being no better than paid actors. But in this case, they aren't even getting paid. They are dumber than actors.