radioshow news headline: SENATE TELECOMM BILL STILL GOING NOWHERE

From the Aug. 4, 2006 edition of the mediageek radioshow:

The Senate Telecomm bill which would create a national cable franchise is no closer to a vote than it has been all Summer. One factor holding up the bill are Democrat threats of a hold or filibuster. Majority leader Bill Frist won’t let the bill come up for a vote unless the bill’s chief sponsor, Commerce Committee Chair Ted Stevens can rustle up the 60 votes necessary to force a vote.

But another factor has turned out to be members of Republican party who are up for re-election this November who are reluctant to sign on, fearing voter reprisals.

The key controversy over the bill is the fact that while it is a massive giveaway to the nation’s largest telephone companies, by easing their entry into the cable TV market, it contains no provisions to ensure the telcos don’t use their growing power to limit, filter or slow down access to multimedia content they don’t have a hand in.

While the big telcos have been spending millions this summer trying to give the appearance that a grassroots coalition of their customers is joining them in opposition to network neutrality, vulnerable senators, like Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum, know the truth that the real grassroots voting power supports guaranteed free speech on the internet.

Other Republican senators who reportedly have cold feet include Lincoln Chafee, R.I., Mike DeWine, Ohio, Ben Nelson, Neb., and Jim Talent, Mo.

As a result of Senate Republicans’ reticence to rally behind the telecomm bill, it remains in limbo until the Senate reconvenes after Labor Day. But there’s still no indication that the legislation is any more likely to see a vote before election day.

Read more »

Ted Stevens Goes Postal

On today’s radioshow I reported on a half-baked pamphlet that Senate Commerce Committee Ted Stevens is distributing to fellow Senators to promote his telecom bill and oppose network neutrality. Click here to take a look at the pamphlet yourself [PDF].

Public Knowledge’s Alex Curis asks some good questions about the pamphlet:

• Has a congressional committee itself (not a lobbyist or public interest org) ever advocated for a piece of legislation with a promotional brochure?
• Is this a proper role of a committee?
• What would members of the committee who didn’t vote for the legislation have to say about it?

Mediageek Joins the 21st Century Phone Era

I just finished an interview with video and camcorder writer Richard Baguley and for the first time I conducted the interview using the free Skype voice over IP (VOIP) service. And I must say that I am very impressed with the quality and ease of doing it this way.

Mostly, I am blown away by the sound quality. The frequency range of Skype is better than conventional landlines, although there is a little bit of digital aliasing present in the high end. But I think the quality is much better than doing an interview with someone who is on a mobile phone.

It’s also a hell of a lot easier to record a Skype call than a call over a landline. First, you can simply just capture the sound output using an audio editing program on the computer you’re making the call with. Because I wanted to use a high-quality dynamic mic for myself, and also EQ and balance the audio, I used a small mixer and recorded directly to my minidisc recorder. Using this method it was easy to isolate my voice from the caller’s audio.

To do this with a regular phone you need to buy a specialized phone hybrid interface. Unless you have an expensive digital hybrid, it’s nearly impossible to completely separate your audio from your caller’s. Plus you have to deal with the buzz and noise that are an inherent part of a telecommunications network based on 19th century technology.

You’ll be able to hear the quality for yourself on today’s radioshow, live at 5:30 PM on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, IL, and beginning Monday at the radioshow site.

If the sound quality survives broadcast FM processing and MP3/ogg compression, then this may be my new preferred phone interview method, since Skype let’s US callers connect to US landlines for free.

From Today’s Radioshow: Net Neutrality Debate and Daily Show Segments

On today’s radioshow we listened to excerpts from a debate on Net Neutrality between two founders of the internet, Vint Cerf, in defense of net neutrality, and Dave Farber, speaking against it. The debate was sponsored by the Center for American Progress, and you can find an mp3 of the whole debate at the Public Knowledge Policy Blog.

We also listened to some excerpts from two Daily Show segments also on Net Neutrality, and you can watch them both at YouTube:

• Daily Show segment on Sen. Ted Stevens’ explaining the internet as a “series of tubes,” from July 12, 2006.
• Daily Show segment explaining net neutrality from July 19, 2006.

One Step Closer to the Demise of the Record Button?

In addition to the votes for LPFM and against net neutrality, the Senate Commerce Committee voted in favor of an amendment creating the broadcast flag for both radio/audio and TV/video. If you haven’t heard already, the broadcast flag would allow all content producers to effectively disable the record button on any digital device you own. The flag regime would force electronics manufacturers to give control over your recorder to the entertainment cartel, even preventing you from recording material that you otherwise have every legal right to record.

This big telecom saugsage keeps getting packed tighter with fat and pork, I’m really hoping it bursts. While I’d like to see net neutrality become law, especially if the big telcos are going to get the big national franchise bone thrown their way, on the whole I’d like to see this so-called telecom reform bill die an ugly death.

Progressives’ Paradox — Senate Commerce Committee Votes Up on LPFM, Down on Net Neutrality

Oh, those party lines. Senate Commerce Committee Republicans showed themselves to be 92% against ensuring internet freedom, with 11 out of 12 voting against a net neutrality amendment to the big telecom bill (S.2686) today. That was a much narrower loss than a similar amendment suffered in the House, due to the fact that all Committee Democrats in the Senate supported net neutrality.

On the brighter side, the Committee also voted in favor of Sen. McCain’s LPFM amendment that would reverse the 2000 evisceration of low-power radio by restoring the FCC’s original spacing requirements. There was bipartisan support on this one, with 14 votes for, and 7 against.

So now the paradox facing the media reform movement is that although it would restore LPFM, the overall Senate telecomm bill is a near-wholesale giveaway to the big telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon that also screws local communities and municipalities by taking away their ability to negotiate for better public service. One arm of community media–public access TV–is threatened with extinction, while the other–LPFM–gets a boost. Loaves to the telecomm industry, crumbs to the public.

On Sunday I attended a community radio caucus at the AMC organized by Prometheus Radio Project where this exact situation was discussed. The advice from Prometheus’ Hannah Sassaman was to urge one’s senator to support LPFM, but also to support public access. The underlying logic is that even if the over telecomm bill fails, LPFM amendment and all, the political life of the overall LPFM cause will be extended as a result of the amendment’s passage in the first place.

Will the same logic apply to net neutrality? Are media reformers willing to trade away the future of public access in order to get internet freedom guarantees?

The party-line vote at the Commerce Committee would seem to indicate that there’s strong support amongst Senate Democrats for internet freedom–more than in the House–but not necessarily enough across the aisle to pass amendment. Though, one Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Orgeon, is willing to use his Senate privilege to put a hold on the telecomm bill if it fails to contain net neutrality provisions.

Also, just yesterday, Commerce Chair Ted Stevens told Reuters that he doesn’t yet have lined up the 60 votes necessary to end debate and force a vote on the Senate floor. So Senate Democrats also have a viable opportunity to filibuster and derail the whole telecom bill.

Network neutrality very well may be the issue that saves or kills the Senate telecom bill. Accepting net neutrality may be the compromise the big telcos have to accept in order to get all the other valuable gimmies — though I seriously doubt they’ll be willing to budge, even if some Republicans do.

The the question remains: if Senate Republicans compromise and give in on network neutrality, will media reformers be willing to accept that in exchange for selling out the future of public access TV? My guess is that they will, and wouldn’t blame them. The bigger picture is the internet, you don’t need any special genius to see that.

But in the biggest picture, I think we’d all be better off if the national franchise doesn’t pass in the first place. Network neutrality may still have a good shot on its own, and the situation is just a little less dire if the likes of AT&T aren’t given free reign to take over the nation’s TVs.

Path for LPFM through the Telecom Bill Forest?

Thursday at 2 PM EDT the Senate Commerce Comittee will begin marking up and possibly voting on the ironically titled Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. It’s the Senate version of the COPE Act, whose primary purpose is to speed the entry of the big telcos, like AT&T and Verizon, into the cable TV business, without all those pesky public service requirements that traditional cable has had to contend with.

One little point of light is that Sen. John McCain is taking this as an opportunity to offer an amendment called the Local Community Radio Act [PDF of the Act], which would reverse the 2000 act of Congress that cut LPFM off at the knees . McCain’s amendment would restore the FCC’s original spacing requirements for the service, allowing LPFM stations to be closer than three adjacent frequencies to other stations.

Of course, we can also expect network neutrality to be hotly debated during this markup. And, I daresay that net neutrality is more important than the restoration of LPFM — even though that restoration could mean hundreds to thousands more community stations across the country.

Self-Aggrandizement and the Axis of Justice

I will indulge, momentarily:

Jake Sexton is the webmaster for Axis of Justice, the social justice organization formed by Tom Morello of Audioslave and Serj Tankian of System of a Down. Jake did an interview with me on net neutrality which is now featured at the AoJ site.

Jake also is the sole proprietor of the Lying Media Bastards (though he is not a bastard, and does not lie) blog and radioshow/podcast.

Did Your Rep Sell Out the Internet?

You might be surprised, though it might not be pleasant. My own Congressional Rep, Tim Johnson voted in favor of the COPE Act (even just hours after having skin cancer surgery). His vote isn’t a surprise, he’s a real milquetoast Republican that tends to sway with the party most of the time.

But some Chicagoans might be surprised that otherwise progressive congressmen like Jesse Jackson Jr. and Bobby Rush both voted in favor of COPE, too.

Click here to see how your representative voted on the COPE Act.

With regard to the Markey Amendment to add Net Neutrality to the COPE Act, Jackson did vote in favor of that, but Rush did not. Neither did Tim Johnson, but, again, I’m not surprised. How did your representative vote on Net Neutrality?

House Sells Out the Internet

I’ll have my own comments later (have to go back and watch the PVRed proceedings from CSPAN to pick choicer comments for the radioshow), so I leave it to Free Press to tell the story:

June 8, 2006
Contact:

Jeannine Kenney
(202) 238-9249
Ben Scott
(202) 265-1490

House Ignores Public, Sells Out the Internet through Passage of COPE Act

Net Neutrality Advocates Look to Senate to Save Internet Freedom

WASHINGTON – Today the US House passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) without meaningful network neutrality provisions promoted by the diverse, right-left www.savetheinternet.com coalition of public interest and business groups. The 152 to 269 vote coincides with a massive lobbying effort by telephone companies to enter the national television market and prevent preservation of network neutrality requirements.

“Special interest advocates from telephone and cable companies have flooded the Congress with misinformation delivered by an army of lobbyists to undermine decades-long federal practice of prohibiting network owners from discriminating against competitors to shut out competition. Unless the Senate steps in, today’s vote marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as an engine of new competition, entrepreneurship and innovation.” said Consumers Union Senior Policy Analyst, Jeannine Kenney.

“The American public favors an open and neutral Internet and does not want gatekeepers taxing innovation and throttling the free market,” said Ben Scott, Policy Director for Free Press. “The House has seriously undermined access to information and democratic communication. Despite the revisionist history propagated by the telcos and their lobbyists, until last year, the Internet had always been a neutral network. It is the central reason for its overwhelming success. This issue is not about whether or not the government will regulate the Internet. It’s about whether consumers or cable and phone companies will decide what services and content are available on the Net.”

The grass-roots coalition backing network neutrality includes more than 700 groups, 5,000 bloggers and 800,000 individuals who have rallied in support of net neutrality at . The coalition is left and right, public and private, commercial and noncommercial. Supporters of net neutrality include the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, AARP, ACLU, and every major consumer group in the nation. It includes the founders of the Internet and hundreds of companies that do business online.

This is not Google vs. AT&T,” said Mark Cooper, Director of Research at Consumers Federation of America. “CFA has been battling to keep the phone companies from putting tollbooths on the Internet since the early 1980′s, but now every business and every consumer that uses the Internet has a dog in the fight for Internet Freedom. This coalition will continue to grow, millions of Americans will add their voices, and Congress will not escape the roar of public opinion until Congress passes enforceable net neutrality.” The battle for Net Neutrality – or Internet Freedom – now moves to the Senate, where there is significantly stronger bipartisan support. Senators Snowe (R-ME) and Dorgan (D-ND) have introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006″ that enjoys the strong support the SaveTheInternet coalition.

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