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Obama Requests Creative Commons for Presidential Debates
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 04, 2007 08:02 AM
from the free-for-all-debate dept.
from the free-for-all-debate dept.
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."
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Obama's MySpace Drama 483 comments
fistfullast33l writes "TechPresident, which is covering the use of technology by Presidential Campaigns for 2008, has a very interesting article on how Obama's MySpace page is currently the subject of an underground battle for control by the campaign itself and the volunteer who created it in 2004. Joseph Anthony worked with the campaign initially and grew the site to include over 160,000 unsolicited friends that the campaign could use to reach out to. It currently is the main Obama page in the Impact Channel on MySpace. However, as Obama's campaign became more centralized and formal, the decision was made to attempt to acquire control of the site from Anthony. They asked him for a price, which he offered up as $49,000 plus part of the $10,000 fee paid to MySpace for the Impact Channel. Obama balked at the price, and decided to start afresh rather than pay the money. The fight broke out into the open when Anthony posted a response on his blog to rumors that the campaign was spreading regarding him wanting to cash out. MyDD has more."
[+]
CNN To Release Debates Under Creative Commons 151 comments
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."
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Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to 2nd that!! I'm still VERY open minded to this next election...and this just put a big "+" mark next to his name so far.
Anything that starts to 'buck' the system a little I'm for. I thought I'd heard that MSNBC? was covering the debates, and was trying very hard to lock in all the content to themselves where no one could really publish parts of it, etc. The debates are (should be) and important part of the US public's decision making, and should therefore be completely free for use and analysis by the general public as they see fit.
You know...I've heard it say that the govt. takes your freedoms a little piece at a time. Well, maybe it works in reverse too? Every little thing that helps change the old party way/style in the elections, helps break the grip and open it up more to change......and I'm all for that.
If we could next somehow blow away the primary system for something else more open...we might be able to someday get actual GOOD candidates to the elections, rather than the predestined crap we seem to get from the parties which is largely decided either in advance, or apparently by the early primaries that seem to hold nothing in common with the majority of the US.
But, that's another story....start with baby steps....baby steps.....
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Re:Good for him (Score:4, Informative)
You thought right: Here's the previous Slashdot Article [slashdot.org].
Parent
USG employees' work is pub. domain (Score:4, Interesting)
Presidential speeches -- ones actually given by the sitting President -- are in the public domain, as a product of a U.S. government official created during the course of their duties.
However, a campaign speech that someone gave while running for election wouldn't necessarily be in the public domain, nor possibly would a campaign speech given by the President (since it's arguable as to whether campaigning is really part of his official duties as a U.S. government employee). Now, in reality, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone blocking the publication of transcripts of campaign speeches -- they're usually pretty easy to get -- but I expect that they're copyrighted either by the candidate's committee (the nonprofit corporation that also holds all their campaign money, and employs the speechwriters).
In addition to that, which would be the copyright on the text of the speech itself, the networks who broadcast the speeches and debates also claim copyright on the video recording (although other networks use clips from each other without formal permission, under Fair Use, all the time: e.g. Jon Stewart frequently shows news clips with the originating network's banner blurred out). It's an open question in my mind whether this is defensible: copyright law in the U.S. doesn't protect "sweat of the brow" or simple movement from one media to another, but it does protect something that is 'fixed' into a medium. The question then is whether, if you record the President giving the State of the Union, are you actually fixing that speech into a medium, and deserving of copyright protection? Or has the President (or his speechwriter) already done the creative act, by writing the speech, and the TV camera is simply mechanically reproducing this. I would like to believe the latter (actually I'd like to have a blanket law that anything recorded, written, spoken, or performed in the U.S. Capitol or any other place where the Legislature is in session is automatically in the public domain, but I'm not getting my hopes up), but I suspect that the courts would probably find for the networks. (There's probably precedent on this somewhere but I'm too lazy to look.)
But you're right to think that actual Presidential speeches are free and clear; if you want to print out the State of the Union and make it into wallpaper, or perform it in front of an audience, or sing it to your dog, nobody's going to stop you.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask them a simple question, and get a complex non-answer.
So, props to Obama for trying to look like a progressive to those who cannot see through such ploys for voter support.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's a good question, about the need for politicians to better address voter needs. In my campaign, we have had a tremendous, just, two-way dialogue with the voters in this country and that is definitely the way to go. That's why I have always been a big supporter of education. If I'm elected, I will give a lifetime tax exemption to anyone who pursues a PhD in anything. And that's what America needs right now.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm miffed at Obama's crew for their action as well -- not that they took over the profile, but that they did it in a hurry, without coming to some sort of agreement with the guy. Heck -- they even could have offered him a prime spot in the campaign if they wanted to. I still think I'd vote for Obama if the election were tomorrow....but a poor show all around, really. I hope they at least try to make it right with him, rather than steamrolling on.
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Re: (Score:3)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
This appears to be a simple case of "Sorry, your price is too high", unless someone can actually give a cogent (and truthful) reason why anyone should care.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats what gets me, is that discourse was never an option. It was just "I want it, and I will have it". Yes the guy who made the page asked an unacceptably high amount for the page, but still does not justify the Obama campaigns actions. I think Obama could have lived without "ownership" of the MySpace page, and thus resisted ALL headlines about his spending, or lack thereof. The page was in competent hands, and the campaign could still manipulate people using the page (they had full access). The status-quo was not broken. Obama's campaign just want COMPLETE control over everything dealing with their candidate, which I find more frightening than the MySpace ordeal itself.
As for the registering in his name bit; we must remember that this page is OLD, it wasn't spurred by Obama running for president, but by Obama originally running for senate, meaning this was a local thing and not some big hijacking thing.
I do wonder how much of this actually involves Obama himself, though, and how much is just an over-zealous campaign manager. At what level was this whole thing initiated.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Could the Obama campaign have handled it more gracefully? Obviously. But I don't have the slightest bit of sympathy for a person who creates a site ostensibly to support a candidate, and then tries to use it to leach the candidate out of as much money as he can.
Parent
Clarification.. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Joe Anthony "locked out" the Obama campaign by changing the password after the campaign rejected his $50k offer. So they no longer had access.
2. Anthony violated MySpace ToS by creating a site representing himself as Barack Obama. He didn't call it a fan site. He didn't say "People for Obama" or whatever.
3. Obama didn't take ANYTHING from Anthony EXCEPT the URL. That's it. All Anthony has to do is pick another, more acceptable URL and his page with all 160k friends will be restored
4. The page was being updated less and less frequently and at the same time it was growing more and more popular. The campaign needed to manage its resource more effectively. Go figure.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
1) Obama's team started a new site.
2) They applied to have the url myspace.com/barackobama pointed to the new official site.
3) Myspace shut down the old fan page because the owner wasn't Barrack Obama
I don't know if Obama's team intended for step 3 to take place. When you understand the events, it's hard to see this as a black and white issue instead of just an angry disagreement between people. It wasn't handled very deftly, so I guess the lesson for everyone involved is:
When you act like an ass you get burned.
That applies to both the volunteer and Obama's campaign staff.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not think that word means what you think it means. Fucking up a "cakewalk" land war is a fiasco. Calling a minority a racist name, getting caught on video, and subsequently losing a previously easy election is a fiasco. Soliciting underage boys online and having everyone know about is a fiasco. Lying under oath and then getting caught is a fiasco. This is more like a scuffle.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Funny)
You mean, getting involved in a land war in Asia?
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Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the Obama MySpace incident a reason to not vote for him? Absolutely not. Is it something that could have been done better? Yes, without question. It is nowhere near the order of magnitude of say, GW's business track record, which IS relevant voting information IMHO. Speaking of relevant information for voting, this is it:
http://www.ontheissues.org/2008_Speculation.htm [ontheissues.org]
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. That doesn't change the action itself, or whether or not we should get behind it.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Interesting)
Most societies are prone to evil. Most socioeconomic systems are founded on evil premises. Therefore, most people in the world are prone to evil, but they would be just as prone to good in a better system. Still, your optimism and assumption of goodness are themselves a good thing. "Doing what society tells them" is another way of saying "doing what other people expect of them," and you are doing your part by expecting good things of people.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Informative)
It was clearly marked as a "fan site.".. The price tag the guy set on it was to pay him back for the 160,000 user community he had formed which even myspace said he had a right to. He didn't want to stop doing the page--he would've kept doing the fan site for free. He asked for cash because, since they were forcing off his own project anyway, he thought he should be compensated for what he had lost.
The campaign didn't negotiate with him, and ended up promising him $10,000. This happened briefly before they strong-armed myspace to step in. It is not for you to say how much he can sell his OWN stuff for. Judging from the amount of work he put into it, and that he didn't want to give it up, it's obvious to me that he was not asking for too much.
The guy didn't have a right to Obama's name. He also didn't have a right to force himself into the campaign as he attempted.
He wasn't doing anything like that. He made the page and started it from the ground up and was an avid supporter of Obama, just trying to do his part. Over time, the community got huge under his care, and Obama's campaign stepped in and said "hey, nice work, gimme!".
Note that only the link - barack obama's name - got transferred, the idiot still has his page.
What? No. They transfered it to another URL [myspace.com] and dropped his friends. All myspace did was transfer his text to another account. He lost EVERYTHING of value.
Losing a URL to a website, as any idiot can piece together, often ends an online community. This community was not created by the obama campaign. They could've setup an "official" page with a different URL and left this poor guy alone. Instead, they hijacked myspace's terms of service and fear of law suits to steal this guy's URL and destroy all his work.
The site was clearly labeled "unofficial," and the entire community knew it as such. The campaign simply wanted the address. Personally, I think it hurt them more than their new URL could ever help.
He deserves what he got. If you don't want your site to be transferred, don't name it after a public figure. If this had been a registrar issue the result would have been no different.
Registrar issues are vastly different than free myspace accounts. He wasn't even posing as Obama, so there's no legal issue here. Obama does not own the myspace.com/barackobama url any more than he owns en.wikipedia.com/Barack_Obama.
If I were Joe Anthony, I'd sue the Obama campaign if I could.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Debatable. I would expect the wikipedia page to be content about Barack Obama, and the myspace one to be content from Barack Obama. Those two sites work differently, you can't equate them so easily.
The campaign simply wanted the address.
yes, because that's where you'd expect to find, you known: Barack Obama on myspace.
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, that's why they call the site "SomebodyElsesSpace.com" instead of something like "myspace.com". Oh wait
Parent
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're missing a few key points:
I doubt we'll ever know exactly what went on behind closed doors in this situation, but one thing seems clear -- Barak Obama's campaign made a huge mistake in letting this affair become public. No matter how you shake it, Obama has lost some of the squeaky-clean public image he enjoyed before this debacle. Obama's requesting liberal copyright policies for future presidential debates isn't going to fix the public relations issue his campaign created this week, and I suspect he'll be spending a lot more than $50k on damage control over the whole Joe Anthony/MySpace issue.
Parent
Creative Commons is good, but (Score:5, Funny)
If he takes a stand against alliteration (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:If he takes a stand against alliteration (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Silly Obama... (Score:5, Funny)
i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
boxlight
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy to label people with extreme views, but in reality most people are somewhere in the middle.
Parent
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that conservative should not = religious nut job, but that's irrelevant. I'm sure there are plenty of nice moderate guys in the KKK but the guys in charge are wackos, and as a result anyone who supports their organization is supporting hate filled whack jobs and the same applies here. Until the conservatives in this country grow a pair and get someone other than a fundie cretin in charge of their political party, the game is still over and conservative might as well be the same as religious nut job. Because it's the religious nut jobs at the top making all the decisions and the fact that you are probably a nice reasonable conservative doesn't make them saner.
Parent
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me repeat: no one just "decides" to get an abortion nine months into a pregnancy. Even 8 or 7. Again, no one says, "oh, I hadn't made up my mind until now, and just decided to get an abortion." This is documented and figures are freely available online. There has not ever been an elective abortion that late.
Now, on the other hand, there are very rare abortions performed that late when the fetus is hydroencephalic and has a cranium filled with water and swollen up to the size of a watermelon. The fetus is brain dead, and if left to continue to swell, would kill the mother. This is exceedingly rare, but the only safe way to remove the fetus is D&E. You can do a C-section, but that's major surgery - it involves actually lifting the intestines up out of the body and putting them on the chest so that you can get to the uterus underneath. Scary shiat.
So, just drop the whole "those indecisive women" meme. It's stupid, dishonest, and is 100% wrong.
Parent
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Please, please, take your party back over. I am not conservative (I think the world is a lot more complicated, and therefore require solutions that do not necessarily extrapolate directly from the minimal precepts of individual liberties, although I do think individual liberty is a fundamental prerequisite; I am left leaning, but also skew very libertarian), but I believe conservative thought is legitimate and honest. I would much rather have an intellectual debate at that level than somebody who may violently agree with me for all the wrong reasons...sometimes a position informed by my preferred ideology will be the right one, and sometimes not (at which point the ideology is irrelevant). Ideology is only necessary when there aren't enough facts for a clear best solution to be obvious (in fact, I'd like debate to move beyond ideology entirely). Yes there are extremists on the left, but I am much more afraid of apocalyptic militant religious nutjobs (that fundamentally reject the notions of individual liberty the nation was founded on) than I am by annoying nanny-staters that want to make me completely safe from everything.
Parent
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah what you don't get. See, in this country, parties are like football teams. You pick your favorite and defend their bad decisions (play calls) until the end. Even in the face of overwhelming defeat and obvious bias in the referee's calls and penalties, you defend your team until the end. Cuz if you don't have a team, you are a bandwagon jumper! So you must pick your preconceived ideology and vote strictly based on that, despite the value of the actual candidates.
You've just realized one of the fundamental flaws of this America's government system.
Political candidates shouldn't be "enemies", they should have opposing viewpoints. The candidate who wins the most arguments should win the debate. But this is America, so all of that logic flies out the window and in the newly ajar window the "political pundits" come in and confuse everyone into thinking that each side did equally well. So that we can continue to believe there are two versions of the truth, and the only difference is which side you are rooting for.
Parent
Re:i'm conservative, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how it works for the people who speak up, post on the internet, etc. That's always how it works. Few people are assertive enough to post on the internet while not holding a position so strongly that almost no conceivable evidence will change their mind. Those that do are generally ignored, because they do things like talk about the good counterarguments, which is far more boring than spewing bile and invective every which way. This is even stronger on TV since only the most "interesting" handful of people can own a show.
But if what you're saying was actually true, then every election would turn out effectively the same, regardless of the candidates, and that is not how it works. States swing back and forth, and while the last couple of Presidential campaigns may have been close to 50%, there's been radical alterations in the makeup of Congress in the meantime.
If what you are saying was true, then the Republicans would still control Congress. Obviously, this is not true.
This is one of those cases where cynicism of the system blinds you to the truth. Some cynicism is good, but you need to be careful with it. You need to look at all of the evidence, not just the evidence jumping up and down demanding to be heard or that reinforces your cynicism, and consider whether the obvious consequences of some claimed truth are coming true.
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Re:Or not--or not again! (Score:5, Informative)
Obama is a hard person not to like. Personally, I'm not wild about a lot of his vews--in his two years in the senate he has one of the very most left-wing voting records alongside Kerry, Kennedy, etc. But despite this, he's somehow managed to garb himself in the clothes of a moderate and a uniter? I'm not sure I see that... I'm not sure where in his record I should look to find this either. Despite this though, I like the guy..
Obama by all accounts HAS kept himself clean (minus some small real estate possible scandal). That's helped him out popularity-wise in Chicago--they carted away current and former politicians by the dozen while I lived there.. Back to Obama.. He's well educated and a powerful public speaker. He's got a definite charisma and he knows how to use it. Perhaps most importantly, he knows what to say--just look at the excitement that has built up around somehow who's been in national politics for two years.
Honestly, I think one could easily draw parallels between Ronald Reagan and Obama on that front--could Obama be the next Great Communicator? I don't know.. I also have no idea what Obama would actually do, beyond the party-line typical stuff that he has said in the past and/or voted for. Like the p/gp/ggp whoever else said, we don't really have a clue what his platform is.
Parent
Brilliant... Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
w00t (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Check (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me up when he declares that he'll see to overturning the absurd patent laws should the US electorate vote a black guy into power.
Re:Check (Score:5, Informative)
- WAIVE THE COPYRIGHT AND PLACE IT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN , or barring that,
- place it under (SPECIFICALLY) the Creative Commons (Attribution) license. (Yes he specified one: http://creativecommons.org.nyud.net:8080/licenses
/ by/3.0/ [nyud.net] , if it's down, here's Wikisource of v2.5 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_Att ribution_2.5#English [wikisource.org] )
Reading theArticle summarizations that give half the story like this are why rms has to be such a pedantic language lawyer when speaking. Clarification of the article would be appreciated, scuttlemonkey.
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Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up [sourceforge.net]!
Parent
Specificly... (Score:5, Informative)
"The letter asks that the video from any Democratic Presidential debate be available freely after the debate, by either placing the video in the public domain, or licensing it under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license."
There are many kinds of Creative Commons licenses, and not all of them are as permissive as the requested one.
Actually, it might help if the networks say 'No' (Score:4, Insightful)
All set for Lettermanisms (Score:5, Funny)
"I am a strong believer in
Good first step, but let's see more. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced he's not just "throwing a bone" here. How about a campaign promise to veto any copyright extensions or new restrictions that come across his desk? To work to scale back the DMCA, and work the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act back to a genuinely, realistically "limited time", like the Constitution requires? To ensure that if the Internet streaming royalty increases go into effect, he'll work toward scaling them back? It's a nice thought and a good idea, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not much. If this is to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than promise to release one thing, he needs to be willing to take on the deep-pocket content industry, and in doing so, ensure that their bribes^Wcampaign contributions will go to the other side. Otherwise, it makes no real difference.
John Edwards too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wtf? I think not... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
RTFA [lessig.org], AC. CC:A [creativecommons.org]. YHL HAND
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Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up [sourceforge.net]!