Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama recently submitted a letter to the DNC asking for the Presidential debates to be licensed under the Creative Commons. This move would give everyone the freedom to share, recut, and edit the debates as they wish. "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."

Comments

Good Idea

[Cpt Piett]

I've not heard of this before, but I have noticed that playing clips of debates on networks other than the origional broadcating network have been limited. I assume this is due to the copyright issues and royalties. All serious presidential debates should be fully open for dispersion.

Which CC licence - a free or non-free one?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

There is not "a" or "the" CC licence, there are 13 or more. Some allow redistribution, and some don't. It's important to differentiate, even if CC don't do so.

Stallman has explained this.