CNN To Release Debates Under Creative Commons

remove office writes "After calls from several prominent bloggers and a couple of presidential candidates, CNN has agreed to release the footage from its upcoming June presidential debates uncopyrighted. Senator Barack Obama was the first candidate to call for all presidential debates to be released under Creative Commons, with fellow Democratic hopeful John Edwards following shortly afterwards. CNN will be the first to do so with their June 3rd and 5th Democratic and Republican debates. MSNBC hosted the first presidential debates recently but refused to release them under Creative Commons, opting instead to post online only commercial-ridden clips in Windows Media format."

Comments

On a closely related sidenote:

[c0l0]

To license (creative) work under a Creative Commons license does NOT mean to have that stuff "uncopyrighted" - not even outside of Europe, where copyright is mandatory and cannot be renounced at all (except for by the death of the work's author having passed for some 70 years or so).
"Uncopyrighted" would probably mean to have the work put into the public domain - that's, however, not true for the CC-licenses, nor is it for any other "free" license (like GNU GPL, GNU FDL, BSDL, MITL and Co.) I know. All these licenses cleverly make use of copyright to guarantee certain freedoms and/or restrictions.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[QuantumG]

Sounds to me like Sweden has no concept of a public domain at all then.

Which, of course, is absurd.

Don't let the americans find out.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[Anonymous Coward]

Start thinking of ourselves as sovereign peoples, sovereign households - streets - communities.

I've lived in places where this happens, like West Philly where I am now. People get shot for walking down the wrong street.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

So, don't go to the rape house and you won't get raped. Keep your kids away from the molestation house. And avoid the weapons house, but if the weapons weren't illegal in the first place, there'd be no issue there.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[essence]

Then criminals can have rape houses where rape isn't illegal, houses where child molestation is legal, distribution centers for illegal weapons... What a great idea! Take the idea of the sovereign individual. Everyone has their own sovereignty. Now rape houses and molestation houses are clearly a violation of the individuals sovereignty. Saying you have the sovereign right to abuse someone elses sovereignty is not really what I was thinking.

The idea of anarchy is that you can do what you like so long as you are not denying others of their freedom.

Commercial-Ridden Clips?

[moehoward]

Come on. The debates themselves ARE commercial-ridden clips. The pandering? The acting? The party-line quotes? The weeks of "prep time" these alleged law-makers indulge while honing their so-called "debate" skills? The "I'm presidential" BS? So what if MSCNBCNSC runs them with commercials.

After two stories on this in a few days, is Slashdot sure it wants to hang their hats here on this issue?

The debate format died 20 years ago, was resurrected by Saint Perot, and then was again laid to a peaceful sleep.

The debates now are nothing more than traps. If you attend a debate and get caught in a trap, you are dead. If you lose your temper or slip up, or say "um" too many times, you are dead. Does anyone really think that some candidate will suddenly have some nation-shocking insight that will capture us?

All debates now require that news programs compare every candidate's makeup to Richard Nixon in 1960. WTF? CCGIGO. Creative-commons garbage in...

Moe

Re:Commercial-Ridden Clips?

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary voters need to get a feel for these candidates, how articulate and prepared they are and how they respond under pressure. Can they think on their feet, or do they rely exclusively on their canned stuff? I think people watching can tell when someone is dodging a question or changing the subject.

When the emotional tense of the debate changes (for example, someone asks about the families of fallen troops in Iraq), are they sufficiently aware to notice, or are they locked into their message? This is important, because it's hard to lead a country if you can't connect with people on TV. Michael Dukakis lost a debate in 1988 when he failed to recoil at a hypothetical question about his wife getting raped.

Without debates, what we have is network news playing short clips of the top tier candidates delivering applause lines in their stump speeches in whatever town they happen to be campaigning in.

Re:Commercial-Ridden Clips?

[FunWithKnives]

Nice knee-jerk. The GP's point was that, notwithstanding the fact that the presidential debates being available to everyone is a Good Thing (TM), it does not actually matter, if those debates are shallow and pointless (and they will be). Presidential candidates have become nothing more than actors. It is all about "talking points" and grand-standing. The actual issues are just glossed over. The important thing is how a candidate is perceived. People, by and large, don't vote for or against a candidate based on his or her stance on issues (if they even really have one). They vote for or against them based on two things:

1. Is this person toeing my chosen party's line well enough?
2. Do I "perceive" ("gut feeling," truthiness, et cetera) this person properly?

The GP is absoultely correct in his statement. In this case, I think that there are two root causes. Firstly, our government and the career politicians who comprise it do not want an informed public, by any means. An informed majority would be disastrous for these people. However, it is rather difficult to suppress information within a country that is supposed to be democratic. Dissidents do not just disappear without a trace (yet), and journalists aren't thrown in jail for articles which are critical of the government. A delicate balance must be maintained: the majority must believe that they are informed and conscious, and the information must be ladled out "properly," i.e. dumbed down to "talking points," presented as black and white, with no grey areas, and so on. In traditional totalitarian or dictatorial states, the public is left completely uninformed. That method will not work in the United States. In ours and other pseudo-democratic states, the goal is to have a misinformed public.

The second cause, I believe, is affected somewhat by the first one. The majority get their news on the run, and from the humongous conglomerates such as CNN or Fox. They do not research anything that they are exposed to further. They see the latest "Left vs. Right: Smackdown!" show on CNN, watch it for awhile, take one side or the other, and call it a day. This is how the majority establish their stances politically. When the option of further research and the establishment of a view based on the facts instead of the opinion of a talking head on a "news-er-tainment" network are given (and I have experienced this firsthand, many times), they claim that they are just "too busy" to worry about things like that. While I realize that it does take a bit more time and effort to become an informed individual, is it really too much? I also think that it might have a lot to do with the fact that policy-makers decisions, as opposed to one hundred years ago or more, do not appear to affect a great deal of our lives. The policy may be a ticking timebomb, but the majority do not realise it.

All of this amounts to what we have today: debates that are, in reality, nothing more than popularity contests. As for a solution, I honestly do not know if there is one in the short term. The majority in this country cannot be forced to care enough to become informed; they must choose to do so themselves. I have never had much faith in most people when it comes to things like this, but then again, I am a devout pessimist. Maybe I will be proven wrong at some point, who knows?

youtube

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Youtube is going to be clogged with eight-billion videos of clips out of context and "deep" bad voiceovers explaining why [Candidate X] is the worst/best thing after the devil/Jesus

And the annoyance of having links of all of them e-mailed to me pales to the joy that America is becoming (slightly) more democratic

I'm offended that it's legal to copyright this.

[bobdobbs3]

American public political speech for the purposes of running a civil society should be de facto uncopyrightable. This is how you run a (supposed) democracy. If they don't like it, they can pay the entire annual FCC budget for every clip they want to keep to themselves. We GIVE them spectrum, we PAY to defend and protect it for them, this REALLY IS the very least they can do.

Personally, I think they should be compelled to air ??? hours of campaign content to help run the system that makes them their fortunes - it might start to reign-in some of the insane budgets "needed" to "win" office these days.

Creative Commons!=no copyright

[frdmfghtr]

FTA:

CNN announced that it plans to release all debate footage it broadcasts in their upcoming presidential debates under a Creative Commons type license Saturday.

"Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public," CNN said in a statement, "CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate."

FTS:

"After calls from several prominent bloggers and a couple of presidential candidates, CNN has agreed to release the footage from its upcoming June presidential debates uncopyrighted.

How does a CC license mean the same as noncopyrighted?

IT DOESN'T! Creative Commons, like the GPL, relies on copyright to license works.

Furthermore, according to the CNN website,,

The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. Therefore, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.

To me, that reads "public domain" and not even Creative Commons. What am I missing?

Re:You can watch them on YouTube anyhow

[evilviper]

This should dominate mainstream broadcast and print media. This should preempt regular programming on every broadcast channel.

Calm down. This is just a couple democratic PRIMARY debates we're talking about. Later, you can expect some debates to get broadcast on various network channels.

As for EVERY channel, that's just idiotic. I am capable of changing the channel myself, thank you.

There are plenty of people that can't vote, anyhow, and don't need to be annoyed. There are also plenty of people who simply don't want to watch the debates, in-full, and will find other, perfectly valid ways to inform themselves. Shoving the debates down everyone's throat would serve no purpose, except to boost ratings on cable.

Re:But Which CC License?

[evilviper]

Unfortunately, none of the referenced articles/links specifies which of the various Creative Commons licenses will be used to release the debates.

That might be because there's no indication it WILL be CC at all...

If you would have clicked-through to CNN's press release, it simply says: "available without restrictions"

Nobody knows any more than that. Complaining about the different CC licenses, like CNN is trying to use a loophole to keep it restricted, is nonsense, and completely off-topic.

Admit minor parties, then I'll care.

[kitzilla]

I don't care what license they release the presidential debates under. It will be "closed source" until the debates establish reasonable guidelines under which minor party candidates are allowed to participate.

I'm a Democrat, but the exclusion of Independents and candidates from the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Socialist, and Reform parties (among others) is a far worse abuse of power than anything done by Microsoft at the height of its antitrust powers.

These are not non-partisan debates -- they are bipartisan affairs, and the rules are deliberately constructed to preserve the political monopolies of the two main parties. It makes for boring, highly scripted debates, where the same old questions receive the same pat soundbite answers. The U.S. Constitution does not provide for a two-party system, and voters deserves better.

Any party or independent campaign which has gotten itself on enough state ballots to theoretically win an election if they carried those states' electoral votes belongs in the presidential debates. As it stands now, a candidate's party must also meet an unrealistic standard of previous electoral performance. This is pretty much impossible, given that minor parties are denied the millions of dollars of free advertising doled out by the media to the already well-funded Democrats and Republicans.

Rather than talking about open licensing for a series of closed debates, let's talk about forbidding their free broadcast over public airwaves until they amount to more than an undocumented campaign contribution by the networks.

Open the damn debates and quit feigning openness with this BS about a Creative Commons license.