Lawrence Lessig at SXSW on Open Media and Public Broadcasting

(Crossposted from Pubforge.org)

My friend Kevin Reynan from the Open Media Project traveled to SXSW in Austin last week, and captured an interview with Lawrence Lessig…you know, the Stanford law professor and the guy behind Creative Commons.

(Kevin says “please thank whoever paid for the beer and food and the PBS happy hours during SXSW. I went there several times, but never met anyone who actually worked for PBS. Probably not the best use of your marketing dollars, but I appreciated it.”)

Anyway, Lessig has some semi sharp words for PBS relative to open content, or lack thereof, in public TV practice. PBS wants to protect its rights to distribute and properly monetize PBS productions, and I completely get that. But I have long argued for drawing a line between content that is expensive, heavily-produced, and highly marketable, and another class of content whose value in the public domain exceeds its private value. That line would often be fuzzy and hard to define, but I believe we have an obligation to try and draw it.

Here’s an example: Ken Burns’ new documentary, National Parks, begins airing this fall. Ken Burns and PBS are the rights holders to the documentary. They’ll use it during pledge drives, sell DVDs, and monetize it however they (and stations) can, all of which is appropriate. But doesn’t the general public have a stake in the production beyond this? Our (too small) tax contributions help pay for it, as does corporate underwriting and possible grant money. Most important, our continued investment and support of a public broadcasting system enables Ken Burns and PBS to produce and air the documentary in the first place. So how about making available lots of beautiful HD footage of national parks freely available for download? Stuff left on the cutting room floor, full-length interviews, images, whatever…all of this would be of great interest to lots of people if they could get their hands on it. This content would enrich us generally…but will probably never be released.

An objection to releasing it would be the cost of doing so. This is another argument for funding the American Archive, so important A/V materials like this can be preserved, and all citizens can benefit from a larger view of our lives and times. It’s critical that we make that happen…and that we clarify the rights to public media. My point of view is, making public media truly public should be the norm, not the exception.