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]

There is no-where in the world where you are prohibited from disclaiming copyright on a work.

I don't know how that rumour got started.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no-where in the world where you are prohibited from disclaiming copyright on a work.

Untrue. I've prohibited it in my house. If you want to disclaim copyright on a work then you can go someplace else and do it. My house, my rules.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[essence]

Untrue. I've prohibited it in my house. If you want to disclaim copyright on a work then you can go someplace else and do it. My house, my rules. Likewise, cannabis isn't illegal at my place.

It's the sort of thinking we need to overthrow this system. Start thinking of ourselves as sovereign peoples, sovereign households - streets - communities.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

In Sweden one can only publish books that are copyrighted. Any book that has noone claiming copyright for it means that the printer of the book are forced to take the responsibilty _and_ the copyright for the book. If the original author are found he/she cant disclaim their copyright.

Thus all books are copyrighted by someone - but it may not always be the original author.

  Thus every book published will have someone who holds the books copyright.

I doubt Sweden is the only country that have laws like this.

Re:On a closely related sidenote:

[houghi]

What happens when a publisher or author who owns a copyright dies without heirs?

First he must be an orphan, otherwise his closest relatives will inherit the copyright. They can say no to inheriting anything. In that case all his belongings are belong to the state, including the copyright.

Or if an author submits a book to a publisher using a false id? Or if a publisher prints a book anonymously?

The copyright is then the publishers.

Re:Uncopyrighted...

[mobby_6kl]

Seems like a good idea, anyway. What's the point of having a debate if you don't let people debate the debate?

(That was a rhetorical question, please don't comment on it).

What's the point of making a comment if you don't let people comment on it?

Re:Even worse than that...

[Jarjarthejedi]

No! Not Proprietary! Anything but Proprietary! Ahh! It burns! It burns us!

(Sorry but the enthusiasm with which you said that was a little much or at least that's how I read it :P)

Re:Presidential debates

[larry bagina]

I think it's a stretch to call any of them presidential.

You can watch them on YouTube anyhow

[dircha]

I don't own a television. Transcripts don't really give a complete sense of the candidate's performance. Luckily I've been able to find the debates so far for both parties on YouTube.

Just search for "republican presidential debate part" or "democrat presidential debate part" respectively on YouTube. They're split into 9 minute chunks.

I think it would be awfully bad form for MSNBC to pull these from YouTube. But I commend the candidates and CNN for making this issue public. We shouldn't have to rely on the good will (or hesitant takedown action) of MSNBC in order to get coverage of the men and women, one of whom will in a relatively short amount of time hold the highest political office in our democracy.

But sometimes I'm not sure why I care, or that I do. Especially when I see headlines like this: "FLASH: FOXNEWS O'REILLY TOPS MSNBC GOP DEBATE".

And look at the viewership numbers. That's right, not only did less than 1% of elligible voters even WATCH that debate, MORE people watched some blowhard talk about the debate than watched the debate itself.

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

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?

[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

Indeed

[rolfwind]

The companies want to choose the "acceptable" candidates for you rather the populace choosing themselves. The primaries are very important in party politics and when people complain that they only have a choice between a douche and turd on election day must be informed that they get whittled down to that choice because they consider eleection day all important and not the primaries and that "vote". May not be fair but it is true.

The mainstream media is silent on these candidates, but Digg is abuzz with Ron Paul and Mike Gravel. Please looking up these two and consider actively spreading the word about who you like (either of these two or other candidates you find). Or do you guys want to be stuck with a Bush vs. Kerry like candidates in 2008 with both sides sucking?

Ron Paul:
http://digg.com/search?s=%22ron+paul%22&submit=Sea rch&section=news&type=both&area=promoted&sort=new

Mike Gravel:
http://digg.com/search?s=%22mike+gravel%22&submit= Search&section=news&type=both&area=promoted&sort=n ew

Re:Creative Commons != copyright free

[remove office]

Thanks to you and everybody else in here complaining (rightfully), I've edited the article on my website to hopefully reflect the corrections people are offering. The Slashdot summary is not editable by me though.

Also, in answer to your question, a specific license has not been announced yet, but CNN has indicated that people will be free to do whatever they like with it (remix it, edit it, use it in a documentary, post it anywhere they want, etc).

One of the specific points that Obama had was that he wanted the footage to be free for people to use in creating things like remixed YouTube videos, etc ("end user created content").

Let me be the first to say....

[moosesocks]

Let the YouTube mashups begin!

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?