More proof that the conservatives are intellectually bankrupt: Instead of using valuable air time to discuss one of the many critical issues of the day, they mock President Obama for his request for dijon mustard on his hamburger.
Josh Silver of Free Press tells us why metering threatens the Internet
Cable companies Time Warner and Comcast, and phone giants AT&T and Verizon sell the vast majority of high-speed Internet service in the United States. Phone and cable companies like these have no other competition in 97% of US markets, thanks to corrupt policies passed by the Bush Administration at the companies' behest.
These duopolies are betting on the future of their "triple-play" phone-Internet-TV service, so that you'll pay them more than $100 per month and they can keep earning record profits. They know that if you start downloading video from online innovators like Hulu.com and Roku.com, eventually you won't need their expensive, advertising-ridden television service. If you decide to use online phone providers like Skype, you won't need their expensive phone service. The answer? Jack up the cost of Internet, and once again eliminate the competition.
But that's not all. Metering Internet usage also has ramifications for journalism.We continue to learn about Madonna's adoption problems and Ms. California's old photos, but if you want substance in your news, you'll have to look beyond corporate media's steady stream of sensationalism, celebrity gossip and product placement. We need fast, neutral, affordable Internet that can deliver video, audio and other multimedia to enable efficient production and distribution of journalism and other educational content.
If I'm reading Silver correctly, he's not totally against all surcharges for truly high-volume users. And it does make sense, in the abstract, that those who barely use any bandwidth would pay less than those who stream videos and music all day. But I agree with Silver's concerns that the telecoms need to be closely regulated on this issue. But who would do the regulating, given that the telecoms have successfully purchased undue influence over Congress with their ostensibly legal campaign contributions? It seems as though we need campaign finance reform before we're going to have Congressional independence on any issue. On a separate issue relating to media, consider listening to Arianna Huffington's testimony before the Commerce Communications subcommitte, chaired by Senator John Kerry. She makes many worthy points. I am concerned, though, that she is overly optimistic that journalism would thrive in a world without newspapers. Based on what I see, much of the Internet is filled with content that has its origin with traditional newspapers and news magazines. Many these newspapers are doing terrible work because they're laying off reporters and because they put profits way ahead of journalism. Yet I'm not convinced that Internet news sites are ready or able to step into the void to do this job well enough on the scale handled by traditional media outlets. I hope I'm wrong about this--I hope that we are about to see a golden age of Internet journalism--because I don't see newspapers ever making a big comeback.Would you like to monitor our government at work? What if there’s a really interesting court proceeding in Massachusetts, but you live far from Massachusetts? But you’d really like to hear the court proceeding live, because this case is about some of the lawsuits that record companies have been bringing under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 501, alleging that individual defendants (many of whom were students) were copyright infringers—that they had illegally used file-sharing software to download and disseminate copyrighted songs without paying royalties. The Plaintiffs were a large group of record companies including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records, Inc., Atlantic Recording Corporation, Arista Records, LLC, and UMG Recordings, Inc. In a case styled In re Sony BMG Music Entertainment, 2009 WL 1017505, 7 (1st Circuit, (Mass) 2009), the Court of Appeals recently ruled that I don't have the right to listen to court deliberations over the Internet, at least in the First District. In the trial court, Joel Tenenbaum (one of the persons whom the record companies had sued) moved to permit Courtroom View Network to webcast a non-evidentiary motions hearing that was scheduled for January 22, 2009. Presiding Judge Nancy Gertner, citing the keen public interest in the litigation, granted his motion over the objection of the record companies. She thought it would be a good idea to permit webcasting of the motion hearings. She thought that anyone interested in the exercise of the Court’s power should have the opportunity to listen in remotely through a computer. On April 16, 2009, however, the Court of Appeals struck down Judge Gertner’s decision, holding that it was inappropriate to make the inner workings of the private PUBLIC courts easily accessible to the public. The Court of Appeals said something that a sarcastic lawyer might paraphrase like this: No more of that webcasting nonsense, Judge Gertner!
Glenn Greenwald is one of my heroes. He can research the hell out of a complex topic, then really spell it out succinctly. On this occasion, though, he decided to quickly blow away the garbage strewn buy neocon Cliff Kincaid, who took a swipe at both Greenwald and at I. F. Stone. [Via Firedoglake]
What's up with media reform? Free Press is active on many fronts. Click on this video to hear Josh Silver's two-minute message regarding many of the most pressing issues. I've found Free Press to be a terrific organization providing numerous ways for thousands of journalists, citizens and citizen-journalists to exchange ideas for improvement of our news-gathering and publishing. I've attended the past three Free Press national conferences, each of which drew several thousand people. I highly recommend that you visit the Free Press website and get involved.