Many of involved in some aspect of rhetoric, advertising, politics, and/or film studies have taken note of a wonderful site called The Livingroom Candidate. The site has a huge archive of Presidential campaign ads stretching all the way back to 1952, and loads of valuable context-setting commentary for each. However, the site suffers from two big problems: (a) They do everything they can to prevent you from downloading the ads to your hard drive, forcing you to stream, and (b) the site doesn't work in Firefox. At some point, stuff like this just makes me want to scream.

I did a little digging on the download issue and found this article in the Corante. The author emailed the site and asked them about the no-download policy, and got this in response from the curator:

Some of the permission obtained to exhibit this material was contingent on the Museum's assurance that the material would not be downloadable, and would not be edited.

What the heck? I share in the Corante's indignation about this justification, and lament how badly this limits what "remixers" can do with the ads--but also teachers like me, who'd like to use these clips in class.

So what, you say? Why not just stream them?

The answer is, frankly, banal: The site is sluggish and produces very congested streams. This means frequent pauses in the videos which ruins their intended effect. Also, the lack of FF compatibility means that I can't use my DMCA-violating Firefox tools (Video Downloader) to bypass this problem.

So, let's break down the problem in all its insidiousness.

A. These campaign ads, which have played an enormous role in contemporary rhetorical history in the US, are locked behind wall after wall of DRM, thus preventing scholars from using them adequately in the classroom and artists from "remixing" them into critical new media works.

B. Most of these ads are in the public domain, as they should be considering how many were funded by tax dollars.

C. The site itself takes tax-deductible contributions...Yet, they're using code to force users to submit to an even more draconian copyright scheme than even the law itself permits!! (See Larry Lessig's book Code for more info about this issue).

The question is, what can we do about it?