Presidential Debates Move Online

Last night’s presidential debate featuring candidates for the Democratic Party nomination hosted by MSNBC was available live at their website. Candidates fielded questions from Brian Williams as well as from good old “regular Americans,” and focused on the issue of the Iraq war. MSNBC’s debate page has plenty of ad-supported video, and there’s also clips available (for now) on YouTube.

“If MSNBC had any sense, which it doesn’t, it would have taken every one-minute answer from last night’s ping-pong debate and put them up on YouTube themselves,” argues Jeff Jarvis over at PrezVid. His point is that, instead of popular, highly-trafficked political blogs being able to link and embed video that could potentially generate pre-roll ad impressions if MSNBC had its own flash player, they’ll be busy issuing DMCA takedown notices threatening YouTube users who are, in effect, promoting MSNBC’s brand.

Of course, the topics and issues discussed at such dog and pony shows are actually in the public interest as well as MSNBC’s business interest. To that end, Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons advocate Lawrence Lessig has issued a call to the national parties to ensure that video of the debates will be available as public domain or under a Creative Commons license.

One hopes that the two online-exclusive debates planned for September by the Huffington Post with partners Yahoo and Slate announced earlier this week will be a bit more forward-thinking about distribution. While the plans include participatory media features like live questions submitted from the public via the web, enabling bloggers who will spend the following day debating the debate can’t hurt and might instead broaden the exposure and appeal of the format.