How to save the Internet: net neutrality (equal access)

This post is yet another entry summarizing proceedings of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press.

A panel presented yesterday was entitled “Saving the Internet.” [At his plenary speech, Bill Moyers has suggested an alternate way of designating this issue: “equal access to the Internet.”] At the panel presentation, Tim Wu summarized the concept of net neutrality issue. Tim is a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in telecommunications law and copyright. In 2006, he wrote a book titled Who Controls the Internet.

Wu explain that the Internet is a meritocratic network. It is a place where we don’t need permission to speak. The aim of “net neutrality” is “to protect this no-permission” aspect of the Internet. The electric network of the Internet, itself, is a second form of neutrality. The idea is that any compatible device should be allowed to be connected to the network.

The function of net neutrality is to protect the Internet from incursions by phone companies and cable providers. If they had their way, the Internet will become like cable companies or “like the Chinese Internet,” where the provider tells you how you can use the network.

Wu previously worked with a telecommunications company. He was not proud of this, but admitted that his job was to try to sell ways to discriminate use based on content. Ironically, this is exactly what he is now concerned about. That is why he wrote a seminal paper …

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Nation Conference for Media Reform – Plenary Speech by Bill Moyers

For the past two days, I've been reporting from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis.  This conference is being sponsored by Free Press. Here is a link to the inspiring speech Bill Moyers delivered yesterday.  I've sketched some notes below, as well, but there is no substitute for…

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National Conference for Media Reform – The Press at War and the War on the Press

I’m still reporting from the National Conference for Media Reform, from Memphis.  The conference is sponsored by Free Press.  

This afternoon I attended a panel discussion exploring the issues set forth in the title of this post. The moderator, Geneva Overholser (of the University of Missouri School of Journalism), warned that when we criticize the press, we should not be too general.  There are, after all, many good people doing honorable work in the profession.

The first speaker was Sonali Kolhatkar, who is a host and producer of a popular morning drive time program called Uprising she is also the co-director of a nonprofit organization, Afghan Women’s Mission. 

Kolhatkar noted that the media goes where the violence goes, then moves on.  At the present time, Afghanistan “is blowing up.”  There are suicide bombs, as well as no liberation of Afghanistan women (a prime selling point for the war).  Nonetheless, the media (and thus, the American public) no longer cares. She criticized the term “war on terror.”  You can’t have a war “on an abstract noun.”

The second speaker was Paul Rieckhoff, who is the Executive Director and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America.  Rieckhoff was an infantry officer in Iraq from 2003-2004 . He was one of the first Iraq veterans to publicly criticize the war.  We’ve written about Paul before. 

Rieckhoff described the war in Iraq as a “war of disconnect.”  For instance, “you never see a dead American soldier on TV.”  In fact, …

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The Republican party is grateful to be back in the minority

A recent post on Daily Kos reported on the U.S. House of Representatives passing a bill to loosen Republican restrictions on stem-cell research. Although it sailed through the House and looks set to pass the Senate, George W. Bush has threatened to veto it, and it has not yet gained…

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Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control Media – Day 2 of the National Conference for Media Reform

I’m reporting again from Memphis, where I am attending the National Conference for Media Reform sponsored by Free Press. 

This morning, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media.  The panel was headed by Eric Klinenberg, who teaches sociology at New York University.  He is also the author of Fighting for Air: the Battle to Control America’s Media (2007).

Klinenberg indicated that we have been experiencing decades of deregulation in the media industry and we’re now paying for it.  To those who attended this conference, however, he asked whether they remembered the moment when they figured out that they did not have to accept the toxic misleading filtered version of the media that they had been getting.  He asked them if they remembered that moment when they realized that they could do something about this problem, about this media that has become “a war-mongering media.”

Large corporations are striving to finish the job of taking over the media.  They are trying to take over the entire media system and to “plunder” it for their own profits.  How bad have things gotten?  Klinenberg states that he can’t find a single person who is more pleased with the media today than he or she was 10 years ago.  No one he asks tells him that “after that newspaper chain took over, I learned so much more about my community.” 

Pete Tridish of Prometheus radio was the first speaker. Prometheus is handing out flyers containing …

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