Obama: Make Debate Video Public

WASHINGTON – White House hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday urged that copyright rules be waived so that video from Democratic presidential debates is publicly available "for free and without restriction."

In a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the Illinois senator said he supports an effort by a bipartisan coalition of academics, bloggers and Internet activists who have asked the Democratic and Republican parties to make the video available.

Presidential debates are often underwritten by television networks who have a copyright to video of the debates. Those networks typically work out arrangements with news organizations for use of the video. But with the ease of posting video online, the question of right to use video on Internet sites has arisen.

"I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in the digital age," Obama wrote. "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."

Stacie Paxton, a spokeswoman for the DNC, said the organization is "already exploring ways to make the DNC-sanctioned debates more accessible and will continue to work on this and other issues in our discussions with the networks."

Last week, a coalition led by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig sent letters to Dean and Republican National Committee Chairman Mel Martinez asking them to ensure that debate video can "be shared, re-used, and freely blogged about without the uploader of the video being deemed a lawbreaker."

The letters’ signers include Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith; Markos Moulitsas, founder of the political blog DailyKos.com, and MoveOn.org Civic Action executive director Eli Pariser.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is asking for more donations – and blaming it on the states racing to hold earlier primaries and caucuses.

A dozen states, including New York, California and New Jersey, have moved up their contests to Feb. 5 and at least seven others are planning to follow their lead. Florida took a major step on Thursday to holding its primary on Jan. 29.

"The costs of building our ‘Ready to Win’ organizing effort rise with each new decision by a state to move up its primary or caucus," the New York senator said in an e-mail message.

"And that’s not including the enormous expense of getting our message on the air. With so many big states holding their primaries in such a short period, advertising leading up to February 5 will be incredibly expensive," she wrote.

Clinton pointed out that people in more than half the states will cast a primary ballot within 22 days.

Clinton raised a record-breaking $26 million in the first quarter of this year. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was close behind with $25 million.

Strategists from both parties estimated last September that the White House race in 2008 could cost each nominee $500 million.

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Associated Press Writer Marc Humbert in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.