Lessig Launches Open Transition Principles

soDean writes "The Principles for an Open Transition and a petition were co-launched by Lawrence Lessig, Mozilla, and the Participatory Culture Foundation today. This was in reaction to the announcement that Obama would be posting his transition videos to YouTube. The petition encourages Obama to publish his transition videos with open licenses, make them available for download, and preferably use royalty free/open video formats and standards. Unless YouTube makes some radical changes, the videos will need to be hosted elsewhere."

Comments

You do the work.

[LostCluster]

Since the Office of the President Elect (web address: Change.gov) is a federal government office, anything it produces is automatically in the public domain.

But here's the problem with Lessig and company... it costs money to mount a video service, especially something that would be as popular as this is. If The Mozilla Foundation (main funder: Google) is willing to convert and host the videos, then the most likely could get the source from the governement. If they're complaining to YouTube (owner: Google) to change their ways, then they're just biting the hand that feeds them.

Flash movie on the homepage

[byolinux]

Nice. Something ever so slightly silly about that.

Re:Stupid...

[RobBebop]

material produced by the federal government of the United States is automatically public domain

And where I work, YouTube is a blocked website that would prevent me from seeing Obama's messages. Something like transition.whitehouse.gov or speeches.whitehouse.gov would be a more suitable host for these videos.

The new administration should attempt to disassociate itself with corporate giant Google and open standards running on websites that aren't regarded as "a giant waste of time" who's aim is to give every man, woman, and child (no matter how talentless) a platform to "Broadcast Yourself".