October 7th, 2008
Obama, McCain support making debates public
Both Obama and McCain have come out in favor of the Open Debate Coalition’s call to open the presidential debates for fair use on the Internet, Wired reports.
Obama sent a letter to Coalition leader Larry Lessig. He quoted his own letter to Democratic Party chairman last year:
The Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation…
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.
Obama went on to praise town hall debates like tonight’s, saying they “provide an excellent opportunity to utilize technology to give voters more of a role in determining which questions are selected and asked.”
McCain general counsel Trevor Potter said the senator is on board, too, Potter wrote to the coalition.
We also believe that Americans — including the campaigns themselves — should be able to ‘debate the debates’ using all available tools on the internet and elsewhere, including blogs, web-video services and other means,” wrote Potter. “We support your suggestion that those who may own rights in the debate video dedicate those rights to the public domain.”
