CNN to offer free access to presidential debates

You know how they say “information wants to be free?” Well, when it comes to news, that hasn’t always been the case.

Sure, there’s fair use, which lets you use small subsets of copyrighted material under certain circumstances. But if say, CNN hosted a presidential debate, they could restrict viewers from posting clips of that debate on YouTube, sending them to their friends, or doing pretty much of anything else.

That’s why it’s pretty cool that CNN has decided to offer unrestricted access to the 2 presidential debates the network will host in June. John Edwards and Barack Obama had called on the networks to license the debates under a Creative Commons attribution license, allowing viewers to share and edit the debates. As Obama points out, there’s plenty of incentive for the candidates to debate, and there’s more than enough incentive for the TV networks to air the debates. So what’s the point of rigorously protecting ones’ copyright here?

The two debates will be held in New Hampshire, with the Democratic presidential candidates taking the stage on Sunday June 3 from 7PM to 9PM, and the Republican candidates debating on Tuesday June 5th, from 7PM to 9PM.

Expect to see the debates remixed into music videos and posted on YouTube within hours.

[via PrezVid]