Personal notes

There have been few noises and discussions recently about how media companies should release their content of public political debates.

As i see it, the issue is the following:
Public political debates are , by definition, public and this means they should be accessible to all citizens with no discrimination. For example I guess they shouldn't have a ticket price which is too high, in order to prevent poorer people to access it.

Today the Internet, the Media companies and the technologies we have make it possible to reach an incredible high number of citizens. So, public debates can, nowadays, reach  the largest public ever. There are a few issue that can prevent this:

1. Content licensing issue
2. Media format issue
3. Digital divide issue

All of them are particularly important, but i guess that solving the first one could be of some help to the other two as well.
If a media company record a political debate and then puts it online with a restrictive, commercial and non-permissive license then nobody will be able to rip that video in another media format and share it with someone else who can't play that particular file format, or does not have a internet connection. 

For example MSNBC put harsh restrictions on the Presidential Primary Debates broadcast. This mean the debate of a political event is no more public. Someone will not be able to watch it, not due to physical and major issues, but simply because the company who recorded that event decided so. Bloggers and journalist who should be in charge to carry the information of that event were prevented to broadcast or show parts of the debate. MSNBC decided to be the only vendor of that content.

To lots of people this seemed to be not too fair. Jeff Jarvis and Lawrence Lessig started on their blog to raise awareness, criticise and to call for help in solving the issue. 

Some catched up on  Lessig's call and asked to the american DNC  (Democratic National Committee) to act on this and to ask for political debates to be released in the public domain or at least with a Creative Commons license.

CNN did something more than asking DNC such regulation, CNN has actually announced they will release political debates with no restrictions. And this, actually, made quite happy lot of people in the U.S.

And so far i believe the direction took by CNN is in the right way. Content of high public impact, high cultural relevance, political and educational subjects should always be released with the most accesible license and the most accessible format possible.