Lawrence Lessig reports that CNN will make presidential debate footage available without restrictions — a significant victory for citizen journalists and bloggers who would like to use the video in their reporting on these events. Momentum started building in Lessig’s favor after Michael Turk criticized the Republican National Committee for blowing off a request to get involved. With Turk’s help, Lessig wisely added several right-leaning bloggers, including me, to his coalition letter. Then came word from Democrat presidential candidates Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd that they supported the idea.

As Patrick Ruffini noted yesterday in an e-mail to me yesterday, this isn’t the end of the road. While getting CNN to agree is significant, Turk told me, “As long as Fox, NBC, CBS, etc, keep these proprietary, it‚Äôs a long way from winning the war.” I asked Lessig about this in an e-mail. He said we’ll need to continue pushing them to make the footage free.