Intellectual Property Law

Even though the presidential debates will for the most part stick to the traditional broadcast television format, there are plenty of places online where you can engage with other voters on the issues.

Here's a quick round-up of the interesting applications and places where you can engage with others as the candidates battle it out on television at 9 pm Eastern this evening.

Twitter will definitely be an amusing application to have around during the debate.

We've launched our own Twitter widget here on Threat Level, which provides a running stream of commentary. Threat Level and Wired.com readers have specific interests in general technology, culture, privacy, civil liberties and security issues, so one way to engage each other during the debate would be to tag your tweets with #WIREDPD.

If either of the candidates says anything that alarms or surprises you about any of these subjects, you could kick off a discussion with other Wired.com readers by tweeting: "#WIREDPD X candidate's take on the USA PATRIOT Act is ...." for example.

If our Twitter feed experiment during the summer conventions are indicative, the conversation should be interesting, colorful and often hilarious despite the serious subject matter.

The live stream of commentary also provides a peek into group consciousness as people react in real-time to live events.

Current TV and Twitter have also partnered to create "Hack The Debate." Current will stream live tweets to its television broadcast of the debate. It will also stream the debate live online. The on-air tweets will be filtered to cut out cuss words. Tag your tweets with #Current, and they could be featured on TV. This should be interesting. 

Twitter has launched its own Election 2008 section. You'll find a torrent of commentary streaming online. Might be fun to check out on your iPhone or iTouch when you're at a party and bored with the conversation.

C-Span has a meta-page that features blog and Twitter-round-ups, embeddable video clips, a debate timeline and live rolling transcript, and a word tree that will analyze how many times a candidate uses a particular word (sound familiar?.)

Free Press has launched a web page where you can rate the performances of the debate moderators, perhaps an inevitable development. If you can't join 'em, rate 'em.

Javalava has a weird and interesting application called "Shout" in the iTunes store that lets you vent anonymously in chat rooms with people around the world. The app now has a US Elections room.

CNN has launched a page called "Debate the Debates," where after you register and log in, you can chat with each other, as you watch the debate either on television or streamed online. Voters will also have the chance to interact with CNN's correspondents online.