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

Stupid...

[i kan reed]

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm also fairly certain that copyrightable material produced by the federal government of the United States is automatically public domain and could not be placed under a more restrictive license such as any copyleft. The office of the president elect is under the purview of the General Services Administration, and I imagine would be under similar requirements.

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".

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.

I can post to, and watch, YouTube for "free"

[h4x354x0r]

And everyone else I know can, too. It's very ubiquitous. If "open/free" makes it any more difficult to access than YouTube, it's toast. With Jelly. And peanut butter. Yum!

Flash movie on the homepage

[byolinux]

Nice. Something ever so slightly silly about that.

This just irks me

[Shivetya]

Since when is there an "Office of the President Elect" let alone a seal. Whose ego is driving this anyway?

First, he isn't even the President elect until the 15th (or whenever the electors cast their vote) though the vote is not in doubt, it just is factual to declare the title is not applicable yet.

Second, there is no office of the President Elect, there is no authority other than what the current President grants; I doubt it is even legal for the sitting President to do so.

I don't want to sound like part of the tinfoil hat crowd but all this wrapping oneself in an air of authority/royalty really is marketing gone amok or an ego gone amok. I hope its the marketing side because if its the later we are not in for a good four years.

Re:This just irks me

[Atlantis-Rising]

I imagine his office is acting under the aegis of the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 which allows the General Services Administration to provide offices, funding, training etc. to the person who 'apparently' won the election.

It is not necessary for the electors to have voted, and the Presidential Transition Act is a congressional statute.

MPEG4 available beginning this week

[jsjacob]

This week the videos are available in MPEG4 format. Is that open enough?

http://change.gov/newsroom/blog/

Re:MPEG4 available beginning this week

[cparker15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4#Licensing

No.