A Copyright Issue Everyone Can Agree On

by on April 27, 2007 · 8 comments

Copyright issues generate a lot of controversy. But here’s a cause I think everyone on all sides of the copyright debate can agree on: the presidential debates should be free from copyright restrictions after they are aired. Larry Lessig has a petition up calling on the RNC and DNC to require any television stations airing the debates to release their copyrights into the public domain, or under a CC-BY (or its equivalent) license.

Makes sense to me. The debates are a central part of the national conversation that is our presidential campaigns. There’s absolutely no reason there should be any restrictions on viewing, re-distributing, or re-mixing them. I’ve left a comment expressing my support. You can call the DNC to express your support at (202) 863-8000, or call the RNC at (202) 863-8500.

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Tim Lee / Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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