How to Watch Tonight's Republican Debate Online

 Guess what, cord cutters? Your democracy has not completely abandoned you! (At least, not this week.) Some concessions have been made by the corporate media gods of old, who have taken a brief respite from wasting away in the bowels of their decaying mountain fortresses and casting aspersions upon the peasants below who think they can simply disregard decades-old media delivery paradigms.

Tonight's GOP debate on CNN will be available to watch online without a cable provider's permission.

A release from the network says "CNN will offer a live stream of the Republican Presidential Primary Debate on Tuesday, December 15, from 5PM to 11PM ET. All users will be able to watch live CNN TV on CNN.com's Home Page and on their mobile devices without logging in."

That means that anyone will be able to watch tonight's GOP showdown from a connected device regardless of their current cable company contractual status. This is the right decision. There is no good reason for public affairs programming (which will potentially affect the future of the world's largest army and economy) to be held for ransom by cable companies.

There is, however, one super terrible reason to require a pay TV login: Survival of a dying business model.

Cable companies are little more than warlords who rule over the citizens of specific ZIP codes (who may be left with limited—or even just one—ISP option). Against these companies' wishes, technology has evolved to make them less necessary as TV mediums. While cable companies should feel free to mind their bottom line, they should not be allowed to use important public affairs programming to do so. End of story.

I wish I could say that CNN's open-streaming decision was purely altruistic, but there is a somewhat more self-interested motive at play. This year's presidential debates have pulled in stratospheric ratings (not to mention record ad revenue), both of which are undoubtedly magnified when the feeds are open to the growing number of cord cutters. (The debate ratings boom probably owes less to a sudden surge in civil participation than it does to this race's inclusion of an leather-bound attention sponge, though the Dem debates have also performed very well.)

Now let us just hope that CNN does a better job of mass live-streaming than it did on its recent Democratic debate, which was plagued by a steady parade of technical hiccups.

CNN is far from the only major brand to botch a major live-streamed event, but these messes should not cast a shadow on streaming technology as a whole. There are plenty of mass live-streaming broadcasts that go off hitch-free. The technology is sound; any problems are typically a lack of preparation on the content provider's side.

Americans deserve the opportunity to judge their future wannabe leaders, regardless of whether their local ISP warlord approves or not.