I caught this blog post at the New York Times TV Decoder blog.  It raises some interesting questions about how we get our news.  ABC contends that because they paid for last night's democratic debate they have the right to determine when and how that program is used by other news organizations.  Some opponents of the network's stance say a debate is news and under the fair use principle in US copyright law, they have the right and in fact the responsibility to air what's newsworthy despite the timing or the length of the content.  If you're not familiar with the idea of "fair use", it's worth a moment of your time to explore it.  

What do you think?  ABC is a commercial television station.  They've paid to produce the debate.  Is it theirs to control?  I assume the NewsHour and other programs will excerpt more than thirty seconds of the debate in their coverage despite what ABC News allows.  Isn't that essential to providing information that benefits the public?