As Jeff Jarvis points out over at the Buzz Machine, MSNBC has placed a very restrictive license on their video coverage of Thursday's Democratic primary debate.

Regardless of your opinion on the usefulness of political debates (especially at this early stage of the primary), I think you have to acknowledge that Jarvis' outrage is justified. Alexander Wolfe counters that it's unreasonable to expect for-profit news corporations to give away all of their content for free on the Internet.

While I think Wolfe makes a reasonable point, I also think that political debate must be distinguished from the everyday news MSNBC produces. Political debate is absolutely vital to our core democratic values. It is a sacred form of speech that profoundly influences the course of our nation. It is outrageously avaricious and unpatriotic for a corporation to hijack our nation's most sacred form of speech.

Yet perhaps the relevant question is not "Why is MSNBC greedy?" (we know why - because they are a corporation); but why are we entrusting our most sacred political speech to a profiteering corporation in the first place? Particularly, where is C-SPAN (which recently adopted a Creative Commons style license for all of its content)? Who chose MSNBC to televise these debates, and why?

Larry Lessig has begun a campaign to influence the chairmen of both political parties to license the video and audio of all debates under a Creative Commons license. Unfortunately, it seems like it's too late for this first debate of '08. Perhaps if we continue these demands, future debates will fare better. Our democracy depends on it - so join the call!