And who are the authors and artists in a political debate? It sure isn’t MSNBC; they’re just the publishers.

Isn’t it nice to have this spirited little dabate here without anyone caring about who “owns” the words? Why, we might even advance the arts and sciences a bit.

surely you must be joking ACS. that whole fiction about iraq and WMDs? the belief that abstinence promotes AIDS awareness? that idea stem-cell research is bad science? the fraudulent policy that tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy help the poor?

those people have more demonstrated more creativity in their ignorant denial of truth than just about any other group of people we’ve ever seen.

pity copyright cannot be used to stop them!!!!

/sorry for the derail. we didn’t want anyone on this board to get the idea that our swipe at democrats was in any way showing support for the gang of criminals who call themselves republicans.

The distinction between congress’s constitutional powers (and the powers of parliament in other jurisdictions such as Australia) is often, within the public arena, seen to succumb to the populist view that all policital speech should be unimpeded.

The notion, however, is flawed as you have correctly pointed out. Certainly the leftist justification that ‘all constitutional rights are equal – but some are more equal than others’ is at work here.

Albeit – I have not noticed much creativity from the republican movement either – lol 😉

ACS

on a more serious note, however, the shibboleth of “creativity” is used by commons-ists to undermine the U.S. constitutional basis of copyright law. a narrow view of what promotes the progress of.. useful Arts… serves well the purposes of those who would strip the U.S. congress of its constitutional authority to extend fundamental rights to authors and artists.

it would be nice if the concern for the constutional protections of “political speech” was consistently held in regards to other constitutional rights.

Repeat after us: copyright protects creative expression, not content and not effort and not economic investment.

Well that is patently wrong. Copyright protects original works. Originality and creativity are completely separate. It may be an original cinematic work if the recorder is turned on because it is the first time the recording has been made – The fact that it is not creative does note prevent the subsistence of copyright.

Get your law straight, buddy.

you seem to be confusing copyrights with patents.

what we are talking about here in this thread is the video recording made by MSNBC. read the professor’s carefully worded statement in his post.

No candidate should agree to be a part of a debate broadcast by an organization that purports to exercise this type of control over the video of the debate.

“control over the video of the debate” – not control over the debate itself.

and there ain’t no proporting. MSNBC is completely within their legal rights to exercise this sort of control over their video recording. so was C-SPAN. whilst C-SPAN made a business decision to make their video recordings available under a different type of license, we think it is doubtful that a for-profit organisation like MSNBC can/will do the same.

it is people who DO NOT GET the internet who continually insist that this machine fundamentally changes human nature.

repeat after us: copyright protects expression, not content.

MSNBC does not own the content of the debate – they own the recording made at their own trouble and expense.

“The following rules apply to all media organizations…News organizations, including radio, network television, cable television and local television may use excerpts…

This doesn’t seem to address what I can do with clips of the debate. Video sharing sites aren’t news organizations so I wouldn’t think this applies to youtube. The daily show and late night shows might be an issue because, if i remember correctly, these types of shows sometimes claim to be news shows in order to not have to give all candidate equal time (I’m thinking about the the CA governors election a few years ago). It seems to me MSNBC is only trying to regulate its competitors which, in theory, is reasonable in and of itself.
Now this is not to say that they have “granted” me or these non-news programs the right to do whatever we want by failing to mention me. And in limiting other competitors they may be implicitly claiming the right to limit anyone else (which is troubling).
However, fair use does not cover commercial use (to the best of my pre-law school understanding), and news organizations are commercial corporations. So maybe MSNBC isn’t infringing on fair use here or even claiming the right to. You’ll have to ask someone who’s been to law school about that one.
But let’s at least keep the facts straight. They aren’t limiting your rights at this time (unless you happen to be a news organization), and they may or may not implicitly be claiming the right to do so in the future. So from a legal/fair use standpoint, I’m not sure this document says much. For a policy standpoint of letting all sources, including commercial, have free reign over debate footage, that’s another issue.

Political speech is afforded special consideration and protection, because it is viewed as critical to the functions of democracy. MSNBC’s codification sends a chilling message to the public that their ability to use content generated by their chosen and potential leaders is limited, at a time when just the opposite should be happening. They don’t own the debate. We do. Granting them first right to broadcast is a fair enough way for them to re-coop the costs they invest in covering the debate. The benefit to MSNBC of their placement of restrictions is economically negligible, and more importantly represents a restriction on otherwise protected speech.