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Obama: Waive Copyright Rules on Debate Video
White House hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday urged that copyright rules be waived so that video from Democratic presidential debates is publicly available "for free and without restriction." In a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the Illinois senator said he supports an effort by a bipartisan coalition of academics, bloggers and Internet activists who have asked the Democratic and Republican parties to make the video available. Presidential debates are often underwritten by television networks who have a copyright to video of the debates. Those networks typically work out arrangements with news organizations for use of the video. But with the ease of posting video online, the question of right to use video on Internet sites has arisen. "I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in the digital age," Obama wrote. "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.
Story Continues Below "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." Last week, a coalition led by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig sent letters to Dean and Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez asking them to ensure that debate video can "be shared, re-used, and freely blogged about without the uploader of the video being deemed a lawbreaker." The letters' signers include Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith; Markos Moulitsas, founder of the political blog DailyKos.com, and MoveOn.org Civic Action executive director Eli Pariser.
© 2007 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
2008 Presidential Race Inside Cover Stories
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