(A key piece of the puzzle revealed. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Last Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed Network Neutrality rules that he claims will save the open Internet.
As another FCC commissioner has attested, these rules will do no such thing. Instead, they will allow the big broadband companies, like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, to erect toll booths on the Internet that will result in segregated online communities where wealthy content and application providers will pay a premium for carriage, with everyone else discarded to a secondary, lower quality tier.
Such a policy would be disastrous for the Black community. Today, the Internet — unlike cable television, broadcast radio, or print — is the sole medium where we can communicate with each other nationally and globally, pushing back on the political and social status quo without the interference of corporate gatekeepers.
If Chairman Genachowski succeeds in letting the big phone and cable players carve up the Internet, the day will come when many in the civil rights community will realize and regret their role in making it happen.
Net neutrality is a core principle that is largely responsible for the Internet being such a powerful and transformative tool. It requires that content gets carried by Internet service providers with the same priority and speed regardless of the sender. It's the way the Internet has worked since the beginning. Those who are arguing for net neutrality are simply trying to maintain the status quo — a status quo that has enabled the Internet to flourish in a way that no other communications technology has.
Without net neutrality, Google, Facebook, the Huffington Post and MoveOn.org would not exist; neither would Barack Obama be President. And it's an open Internet that has made the campaigns that we've run at ColorOfChange possible — everything from holding Fox News accountable for the likes of Glenn Beck, to stripping away Beck's advertisers, to telling the story of the Jena 6, or advocating for the rights of Katrina survivors.
For over a year, several of the most prominent civil rights groups have been aligned with AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast — whether knowingly or not — in those companies' efforts to end net neutrality. But they have not acted alone. In my conversations with many groups and individuals inside the Beltway, one man emerges as the nerve center for much of the action we've seen on the part of the civil rights groups. His name is David Honig.
I'm just back from a sweltering week in Washington, DC, convinced that those of us who care about protecting consumers' online privacy have reason for optimism. There is growing interest in creating a "Do Not Track Me" list and mechanism to implement it.
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Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the massive lines outside the Apple store have been for the much anticipated, release of the iPad. With over 450,000 sold, it appears that having the iPad will be as commonplace as the iPod. But while there are already 3,000 iPad-specific apps available, there is one thing noticeably absent - Adobe Flash. Apple has banned flash from any of its iPhone and iPad apps, instead choosing only programs developed in HTML5.
Another media mogul Apple is taking a bite out of? Google. Apple is challenging Google's online advertising dominance with the introduction of the iAd platform, which allows advertisers to develop interactive ads within another application. Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has concluded it won't be able to compete with Google's search advertising, he is hoping Apple can become the leader in the mobile advertising sphere.
The war on climate change is heating up as the NRDC Action Fund rolled out its new media campaign to one-by-one get the 68 Senators who are not actively pushing for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation to get in the game. And Senators, if you think they aren't serious, just look at the recent activity towards target number one, Scott Brown of Massachusetts...
While the NRDC Action Fund works on the Senate, fifteen-year old Parker Liautaud is showing his commitment to the environment by skiing to the North Pole. His expedition, funded by none other than General Electric, is in hopes of becoming the first person to check in at the North Pole on Foursquare, which will earn him the coveted "Last Degree" badge.
Freedom of speech has been not only a liberty our country holds with pride, but also the source of controversy when it comes to media. Most recently, the forces for a free and open internet have been dealt a blow by the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., taking away the FCC's power to move forward in it's plans to get more Americans connected to a faster and cheaper internet, and potentially allowing Internet service providers to block internet content they don't like. Luckily this future isn't set in stone, and a majority vote of FCC commissioners could give the power needed to both protect consumers and close America's digital divide. Go to savetheinternet.com to lend your support to this important cause.
The latest news from Twitter is bringing applause from the business community, as the site's plans for a huge redesign shows a greater emphasis on data. Hopefully this will allow better insight into solving the riddle that has plagued many of us, Tweet R-O-I.
And the quest to solve new media riddles brings us to the CRUSH of the Week, where we highlight a number of individuals who are moving up in the world after making the leap from old to new media. Proving once again that the future where new media rules the day, well, is now.
For those not familiar with the term "net neutrality," it describes the rules and practices that currently keep the Internet a free and open communication medium. Net neutrality guarantees that blogs, small businesses, and organizations are on a level playing field with the largest corporations. Whether you're GM or an individual, the content you put online is accessible and delivered in the same way, with the same priority, and nothing is blocked. For communities of color, net neutrality is key. It keeps barriers to Internet entrepreneurship low so that anyone with a good idea and some technical savvy can join the 21st century economy.
Predictably, the major players in the broadband industry have been fighting the FCC's efforts to adopt rules that would solidify net neutrality principles into law, because scrapping net neutrality would enable them to make even more money by creating new revenue streams. Ironically, civil rights leaders and CBC members have joined the dominant players. Their stated reasoning: the belief that net neutrality rules could hurt efforts to close the digital divide. The problem is that, as far as I can see, the argument doesn't hold water. It falls apart whether you approach it from the perspective of business, common sense, or history.
My hope in writing my first post was that it might encourage civil rights leaders who have opposed or questioned net neutrality to publicly explain their positions. Given what's at stake, I think its incumbent on leaders opposing or questioning net neutrality to publicly make clear why. Unfortunately, none have done so.
While leadership remained silent, my post did elicit some responses, which follow the same pattern--uncritically echoing industry talking points while trying to change the subject from the arguments I put on the table. Take, for example, the open letter posted by Navarrow Wright, a former television and Internet executive and current strategic consultant. I gather from Wright's resume that he is an accomplished and intelligent guy, but his criticism of my piece typifies the shoddy argumentation and confusing of issues from the loudest voices against net neutrality. While Wright failed to engage the arguments I put on the table, in the interest of public debate, I want to take on his assumptions one by one.
It's said that politics creates strange bedfellows. I was reminded how true this can be when I traveled to D.C. in recent weeks to figure out why several advocacy groups and legislators with histories of advocating for minority interests are lining up with big telecom companies in opposition to the FCC's efforts to pass "Net Neutrality" rules.
Net Neutrality is the principle that prevents Internet Service Providers from controlling what kind of content or applications you can access online. It sounds wonky, but for Black and other communities, an open Internet offers a transformative opportunity to truly control our own voice and image, while reaching the largest number of people possible. This dynamic is one major reason why Barack Obama was elected president and why organizations like ColorOfChange.org exist.
So I was troubled to learn that several Congressional Black Caucus members were among 72 Democrats to write the FCC last fall questioning the need for Net Neutrality rules. I was further troubled that a number of our nation's leading civil rights groups had also taken positions questioning or against Net Neutrality, using arguments that were in step with those of the big phone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast, which are determined to water down any new FCC rules.
Most unsettling about their position is the argument that maintaining Net Neutrality could widen the digital divide.
First, let's be clear: the problem of the broadband digital divide is real. Already, getting a job, accessing services, managing one's medical care-just to mention a few examples-are all facilitated online. Those who aren't connected face a huge disadvantage in so many aspects of our society. Broadband access is a big problem -- but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with Net Neutrality.
Yet some in the civil rights community will tell you differently. They claim that if broadband providers can earn greater profits by charging content providers for access to the Internet "fast lane," then they will lower prices to underserved areas. In other words, if Comcast - which already earns 80 percent profit margins on its broadband services - can increase its profits under a system without Net Neutrality, then they'll all of a sudden invest in our communities. You don't have to be a historian or economist to know that this type of trickle-down economics never works and has always failed communities of color.
As reported yesterday on NPR, current efforts by telecom providers threaten access to information and applications on the Internet. Possible changes by the Federal Communications Commission highlight these efforts, which pertain to what power Internet service providers have in restricting access that conflicts with their own interest. What is at stake are the values of opportunity, something that should be examined as the FCC released the proposed regulatory changes for public discussion.
Restricting the use of Internet based alternatives to telephones, such as Skype and other voice over Internet applications, is just one example of what changes could take place. As telephone and cable providers aggressively market often monopolized products, bundling Internet and telephone packages into one service plan, services that are free over the Internet jeopardize telecom companies own share in person to person communications.
Julius Genachowski, a venture capitalist who served as a technology advisor to President-elect Barack Obama's presidential campaign, has been tapped to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), according to several reports.
In its Tuesday (Jan. 13) edition, the Washington Post reported that congressional sources confirmed that Genachowski, 46, was the President-elect's choice to head the FCC.
The newspaper also cited sources close to the Obama transition team as saying the President-elect was prepared to offer Genachhowski either the FCC job or name him chief technology officer in the Obama administration. The CTO job would not include policy-making authority, the Post reported, prompting Genachowski to accept the FCC chairmanship.
There are several things to like about this pick. First, as an advisor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Genachowski helped to develop, and / or signed off on, Obama's excellent telecom proposals. Second, the best open media advocacy organization around, Free Press, likes him (more in the extended entry):
So the debt-laden Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, went bankrupt; that's not a surprise, the newspaper business is in dire straights and this company has been in trouble for years. But the details here are fascinating. The Tribune took on most of its debt recently, in a transaction taking the company private put forward by billionaire conservative Sam Zell, who is widely known in media reform circles as one of the single worst influences on media policy in the country.
The FCC actually tried to block this transaction on the grounds that taking the Tribune private would require them to relax cross-ownership requirements. Zell's contempt for journalism in general and his employees is legendary, with one clip online showing Zell cursing out a journalist employee asking him a question at a public forum. This extended to financial self-dealing, with Zell financing most of the deal by borrowing against the employee pension and stock ownership program. He himself only put $315 million into the total $8.5 billion deal.
The Teamsters, Common Cause, and the Media Access Project all argued that the sale of the Tribune would damage local communities, and with Zell's overleveraged strategy combined with immediate layoffs, they were right. But the FCC ignored their points and allowed Zell to proceed anyway. The question is why, and the answer, as usual in DC, is a mixture of influence peddling and social ties.
Last year, Emanuel and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., wrote to the Federal Communications Commission, urging the agency to act quickly on the sale of Tribune Co. to real-estate magnate Sam Zell. The lawmakers said the FCC shouldn't allow its review of its media- ownership rules to delay completion of the transaction.
Both Dick Durbin and Rahm Emanuel received substantial donations from the predominantly right-wing Zell, with Emanuel having an especially close set of ties. Zell gave to him for his contested 2002 primary slot, after Emanuel had just finished his stint as a Chicago investment banker. Their social worlds are so close that Emanuel actually attended the strongly pro-Israel school that Zell built. None of this is to allege some sort of conspiracy, as local media barons tend to have a great amount of power everywhere. In fact, the story, while fetid, is only different because Zell combined several forms of acceptable legal corruption in one set of egregious moves.
Much to his credit, Obama stayed out of Zell's orbit. Zell was a huge McCain donor and blamed Obama and Clinton for the sour economy. That month, of course, in the throes of a debt-laden company, Zell still found time to throw himself an 800 person birthday party in a 'tented fantasyland' with the Eagles providing the entertainment.
So while there is a lot of hand-wringing at the newspaper business dying, there's almost no focus on how egregiously mismanaged and corrupt these companies often are. The New York Times (and until its sale the Wall Street Journal) were framed as 'family dynasties' akin to public trusts, though how nepotistic control of powerful for-profit media corporations is some sort of public trust is a mystery. Local newspaper publishers often have strong public policy preferences, such as ending inheritance taxes, and they use their newspapers to pursue them. Zell's horrific legal theft from his employees, his unseemly political influence with high-level Democrats and Republicans, his financial gamesmanship, and his general contempt for the product itself are just particularly obvious.
Why are outright false ads even allowed to be aired? Even after they are debunked as false, they continue to air, the longer the run, the more (in both quality and quantity) voters at large become convinced it is fact.
With outcries of censorship of reporters in China, it's worth noting that there are Republicans standing up against the possibility of domestic censorship, even within the Bush administration, which has become known - even within Republican circles - for its cronyism and subservience to corrupt industries. FCC Chair Kevin Martin is the latest Bush appointee actually standing up for our rights as consumers and citizens, and for the countless businesses that have not been created yet on the internet. And so, of course, the conservative business right press is going after him viciously.
Here's what's going. Some time ago, the cable giant Comcast began illegal blocking access its subscribers had to file sharing software in its first documented instance of violating net neutrality, or the principle that similar types of data on the internet be treated equally. We know that Comcast likes to censor - it blocked ads critical of corrupt Democrat Chris Carney because they included criticism of Comcast contributions to Carney - and we know that if it is not stopped, it will eventually shape the internet the way that China shapes the internet, for its own political and financial purposes. That's not an indictment of the company, incidentally, more of a recognition that powerful organizations that control communications networks and have content to sell have a business and political incentive to block alternate viewpoints and content.
A bipartisan majority of the Federal Communications Commission has reportedly voted to punish Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, for blocking consumers' access to the open Internet.
According to press reports, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have voted with Chairman Kevin Martin for an "enforcement order" that would require Comcast to stop blocking and publicly disclose its network management practices. The order is adopted once all five commissioners have cast their votes.
Our friends at the FCC, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, helped form part of a 3-2 majority to punish Comcast. The FCC is a regulatory body run by 5 commissioners, 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. Like many agencies, the party that holds the White House holds the majority on the FCC. Kevin Martin, the Republican chair, voted with us on this one because he is terrified of Ed Markey, Congressional oversight, and the millions of people watching him.
It's a significant precedent for this body to punish a large corporation. The FCC just does't do that, if you know what I mean. And the commission did it under Republican leadership, so just wait until there's a Democrat in the White House, one who is actually with us on a universal internet.
Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission relaxed rules preventing TV stations and newspapers from owning each other in local markets. This was a very bad thing. Tonight, the Senate passed by a near universal voice vote a resolution of disapproval that would nullify this rule. It's in the House as well, and while the President will veto it, the next President will not.
If I were a media executive at a big outlet, I'd be getting very nervous about what a Democratic administration and a new progressive Congress will bring. The Pentagon Pundits scandal is the smoking gun, with the WGA strike big media lost its labor allies, and it's clear that the media executives don't get how much legitimacy they have lost. It's as if they have rerun the Quiz Show scandal, only this time with bullets and trillions of dollar.
Republican Kevin Martin, the current head of the FCC and a presumptive North Carolina politician, was shown as politically incompetent tonight. Less than 1% of the public comments supported his move to allow more media consolidation, and now the Senate is mad. A rule of thumb, Kevin, in case you're reading. You shouldn't make the Senate angry. You won't like them when they're angry.
I am confused. The media seems to be unveiling Straight Talk John McCain fairly aggressively, with the snippy exchange between McCain and Elizabeth Bumiller being the flash point.
I heard Ana Marie Cox on Reliable Sources this morning talking about McCain's temper and what it's like to be on the bus, and suggesting that McCain is much worse than he was to Bumiller on a regular basis, and that Bumiller was only shocked because she's new to the McCain bus. "He's a cranky old man" is what she said exactly, I believe. And another participant in the roundtable said something along the lines of 'well he got caught in a lie'. What exactly is going on? Why isn't the punditocracy 100% in love with Saint McCain?
Maybe it's just not fun anymore. It's well-known that McCain will call up and scream at various individuals if they displease him; I know that board members of Common Cause get a standard McCain shout-a-thon if they criticize him in the press. He screams at Senators several times a week, and it's pretty clear that he blows up at reporters fairly regularly. So maybe it just sucks on the bus right now.
Still, this doesn't explain why the press isn't venerating him as they usually do. It's not that they are doing a good job, they aren't, as they aren't covering his career as a politician. McCain has a long history of policy-making on various Senate committees, including being the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which regulates the media. This is interesting information the press could research, but hasn't. And you haven't heard much of anything about the decisions he made as Committee Chair, or his fights and alliances with Abramoff in the Indian Affairs Committee.
It's all fascinating stuff you won't hear about. That you won't hear about it is not a surprise, as the National Association of Broadcasters is one of the most powerful lobbies in DC, dispensing Public Service Announcements to various charities in return for them vouching for NAB priorities. And so, for example, you get the Red Cross and Toys for Tots advocating against local radio caps at town hall meetings. That's not even considering the lobbying power brought to bear by the industrial conglomerates who own these media companies, which include defense contractors, entertainment companies (the copyright cartel), cable, financial services, and well, you get the point. The press has its own agenda; did you know that the New York Times is being fought over like a piece of meat in a hedge fund battle and that billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell owns the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune, carved out a special deal for himself at the FCC, and is shuttering DC reporting staff?
That the media is a special interest organized around maintaining certain policy preferences seems quite plausible as an explanation of its behavior. While reporters don't write their stories with these biases in mind, the 'star system' where Tim Russert is on top both economically and exposure-wise reinforces them every day. All of this is to say that I just don't understand why it is that the press is turning its bitchy claws a bit towards McCain. He's going to be good to them, better than the Democrats anyway. Does he really look like that much of a loser? He must.
By now you've probably heard that Comcast hired a crowd to sit in an FCC hearing on net neutrality so interested citizens couldn't get a spot to speak. The gist of Comcast's excuse is that they hired people to hold spots for Comcast employees, though those people accidentally fell asleep and stayed in their seats throughout the entire hearing. Nuts.
Interestingly, there's a bit more to the story, and it involves the cozy relationship between the NAACP and Comcast. Corporate funding of civil rights groups has been a quiet and dank hallmark of liberal politics for decades. Most of the time these partnerships are innocent, but they lead to some coincidentally problematic situations. For example, here's what else was going on in Boston around the FCC the day before the rent-a-crowd incident.
On the same day and location of the hearing, the Boston and Cambridge, Mass., branches of the NAACP plan to host a "take back our media" rally, according to a flier that was circulated on the Internet.
The flier includes quotations from several civil rights groups criticizing Martin's policies on media ownership. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was quoted as claiming Martin supports a "massive new and unjustified welfare for the rich program."
But in a statement Friday, Jackson denied making such a comment and said it does not reflect his position or that of his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. "We have always enjoyed a constructive relationship with the FCC and look forward to continuing it," the statement said.
Martin defended his efforts as FCC chairman, saying the agency has been "active and proactive in taking steps to increase minority ownership."
Most of the quotations took issue at Martin's efforts to push cable operators to offer channels on an a la carte basis. His proposal has met with opposition from the industry, which says it would hurt minority programming.
The flier initially did not include the rally sponsors. A later version, supplied to the AP by a public relations firm, included the NAACP's Boston and Cambridge branches as organizers.
According to Karen Payne, president of the Boston branch of the civil rights group, the rally was sparked by the sale of Boston radio station WILD-FM in 2006. The station's urban format was popular in the black community.
Payne said the NAACP had not authorized the release of the flier, and that as of Friday night, it was still in the draft stages.
So a flyer calling for a rally protesting the FCC under the NAACP's name, put out by a PR firm, and disavowed by the local NAACP as simply a 'draft', was going around on the same day as a net neutrality hearing that Comcast packed with a crowd they hired to prevent net neutrality advocates from attending. And on that very same day, this letter to the editor in the Washington Post attacking net neutrality shows up, from Jose Marquez of the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology, an astroturf group sponsored by Sprint, the cell phone carrier most aligned with Comcast and the cable industry. In addition, the founder of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, a right-wing group that pushed for the privatization of Social Security in 2005, wrote this piece attacking FCC Chair Kevin Martin for being a racist.
A cynic might say that Comcast, caught red-handed blocking and manipulating the internet traffic of their users is trying to divert attention from the FCC investigation and possible subpoena threat by state AG's by doing a PR campaign around cries of racism. I just think that the NAACP should be a lot more careful in how and when their name shows up when large conservative corporations would want to use their name to distract from their lawbreaking.
There's some really interesting news on the open internet front. First of all, FCC Chair Kevin Martin is now under genuine political attack. He's been setting himself up for a political run with his current tenure at the FCC for some time, buttering up powerful industries and acting as a Bush loyalist. And so this criticism from the North Carolina Democrats is a big deal.
The North Carolina Democratic Party today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Office of the Inspector General to obtain a detailed list of Chairman Kevin Martin's recent travel.
The request comes in the wake of numerous news reports that Chairman Martin may be using public funds and his position as Chairman of a large government agency to seek elected office in North Carolina.
"Members of Congress who are running for office are closely regulated to ensure that they are not campaigning on the taxpayer dollar - why shouldn't Kevin Martin be held to the same standard?" said NCDP Chair Jerry Meek.
"Our citizens deserve to know whether their taxpayer dollars are being used for Kevin Martin's political gain," Meek said....
Chairman Martin has a long history within the Republican Party. He served as lawyer on Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation team and was a key player in the 2000 Bush-Gore election recount where many African American votes were systematically discounted. Martin also served as deputy general counsel for the Bush 2000 campaign; and led the transition team's effort to pick new FCC Commissioners, including himself on the short list of potential nominees.
"Mr. Martin has been a longtime crony of the conservative movement and the Bush Administration," Meek said. "We are concerned this conservative operative may be misallocating public funds to seek higher office and we want to get to the bottom of it."
In the past month, the U.S. Congress has also launched an investigation into Mr. Martin's stewardship of his agency. Other FCC Commissioners have commented that Martin has failed to inform them or the public of proposed agenda items and rules, creating an agency that lacks transparency, arrives at predetermined conclusions and completely disregards public commentary.
Jerry Meek at the North Carolina Democratic Party has reinvigorated that party. It's a fascinating use of leverage.
Meanwhile, Connect Kentucky is being damaged by Art Brodsy's earlier revelations about the organization. Their latest bill went down to defeat.
The telecoms have not had a good week. They've had to deal with us pesky bloggers on FISA, which they thought they'd have quietly by now. They lost their champion in the CBC, largely because of his support for their agenda and his . Their pet project Connect Kentucky is getting smacked. And now their owned and operated FCC Chair is feeling heat because he's associated with them.
I wouldn't want to be in their very expensive shoes right now.
STATE BLOGS
By now you've probably heard that Comcast