Jeff Jarvis notes that “NBC and ABC have now joined CNN in freeing up the debates they air for our unrestricted use and remixing.”
Then he opines:
In truth, YouTube users — including the candidates themselves — were already making copious use of debate footage and the networks weren’t trying to stop them. But now there is an open acknowledgment that these debates are ours and that we will add value and perspective as we share and remix them.
I agree about the added value and perspective, but is this really “an open acknowledgment that these debates are ours” - ?
I can’t make head or tail of that formulation. Can you? Perhaps I’m fleeing its echo of vacant Leftspeak.
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Here is some uninformed comment:
You can’t take pictures in a gallery, if that is not allowed, because the art and the right to make copies belong to the owner of the art. What about the words and actions of the politicians in a studio. I would think the words and actions of the pols would belong to the pols, unless they sign an agreement that the copies made by the studio are transferred to the studio. Would a pol do that? They want publicity, not hording of the recording of their efforts by a studio to use selectively as it desires.
This wouldn’t make the images broadcast by the studio the property of the viewers, but it would be as if it were.
When a pol is running for elective office, are not his words and actions in effect his articulation of his promises? In effect, a contract which he undertakes? Do not the people who would vote for that candidate have a right to see and discuss the ‘contract’ - in its original form? Would not the people who have not made up their minds have the right to peruse that contract as well?
Just thoughts.
I’m probably talking through my hat here, Tom, but I think in the US any intellectual property product of the government is by law prohibited from obtaining copyright.
Could be wrong about that, though.
More or less true, Bill. Works by the US Government cannot be copyrighted. However, works by non-US Govt persons or organizations, under contract to or grant from the US Govt, can be. See “loophole”. There’s also patents and trademarks, with essentially the same restriction and loophole.