The letter calls on the candidates to commit to "a principle that whenever you debate publicly, the raw footage of that debate will be dedicated to the public domain. Those in charge of the video feed should be directed to make it free for anyone to use." During the primaries, CNN, ABC and NBC agreed to release video rights but Fox News Channel threatened legal action against McCain for using a debate clip. "Such control over political speech is inconsistent with our democracy," the letter stated.

Furthermore, the group asked that "town hall" Web questions be chosen by the people, not solely by the media. "In order to ensure that the Internet portion of this debate is true bottom-up democracy, the format needs to allow the public to help select the questions in addition to asking them," the group said. According to the letter, questions chosen by TV producers during this cycle's YouTube debates "were considered gimmicky and not hard-hitting enough, and never would have bubbled up on their own."

Follow the jump for the full text of the letter...