When we made this recent piece for NARAL: Pro-Choice America, we needed debate footage that we could mash-up and play with. Should we have to pay a private corporation to re-use the footage of our national candidates speaking? If you were to want to grab video of President Bush speaking in order to criticize it, you would have to pay the station that ran the original story. Does that make sense?

The issue of what is Fair Use and how this specifically relates to our political life is an important one. Pressure from the right places can make a difference in the push for more openness. Responding to a complaint from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Federal Trade Commission told NBC that their copyright notices were deceiving the public about the public’s right to use materials under the Fair Use doctrine.

The move drew immediate praise from CCIA President and CEO Ed Black, who said NBC’s decision “further opens the doors of the political process.

“The Internet, the great equalizer of our time, empowers people from every walk of life to make better decisions with more information,” he said in a statement. “Indeed, the political process depends on this very principle.”

Black pointed out that fair use guidelines allow others to use portions of the debates for commentary and review, but do not require the footage to be release entirely without restrictions, as the networks have agreed to do.

“Nevertheless, because the public’s fair use rights have limits, ABC and NBC are to be praised for providing the public with unrestricted use of this content, thereby ensuring that the democratic discourse will not be impeded,” he said.

Read more at Information Week.

You can also check out the CCIA’s website Defend Fair Use.