Image by Free Press via Flickr
Updated: Jun. 2, 2014
Updated: May 16, 2014
Democracy loses if the Internet is sold to the highest bidder — and that may be what’s about to happen.
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Moyers & Company
May 2, 2014
For years, the government has upheld the principle of “Net neutrality,” the belief that everyone should have equal access to the web without preferential treatment.
But now, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a former cable and telecommunications top gun, is circulating potential new rules that reportedly would put a price tag on climbing aboard the Internet. The largest and richest providers, giant corporations such as Verizon and Comcast – in mid-takeover of Time Warner Cable — like the idea. They could afford to buy their way to the front of the line. Everyone else — nonprofit groups, startups and everyday users – would have to move to the rear, and the Net would be neutral no more.
This week, speaking with Bill Moyers about these latest developments are two keen observers of media and the world of cyberspace. David Carr covers the busy intersection of media with business, government and culture for The New York Times. Susan Crawford is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, contributor to Bloomberg View and author of, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age.
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Updated: May 16, 2014
FCC Chair Wheeler News Conference
C-SPAN
May 15, 2014
Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler spoke with reporters after the May FCC meeting about the vote for open Internet rules and the spectrum auction. Chair Wheeler said that the open Internet proposal did not authorize “fast lanes” or prioritization. He stressed that because of court rulings there was nothing on the books to stop Internet providers from discriminating or blocking content and this proposal seeks to stop that from happening.
via http://www.c-span.org/video/?319385-4/fcc-chair-tom-wheeler-news-conference
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Updated: Jun. 2, 2014
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): Net Neutrality
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Jun 1, 2014
Cable companies are trying to create an unequal playing field for internet speeds, but they’re doing it so boringly that most news outlets aren’t covering it.
John Oliver explains the controversy and lets viewers know how they can voice their displeasure to the FCC.
(www.fcc.gov/comments, for any interested parties)
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Take Action: http://act.freepress.net/letter/internet_fcc_nprm_oliver/
see
Ralph Nader Radio: Good Apps/Bad Apps/Good Contracts/Bad Contracts/Good Seeds/Bad Seeds, and More!
Edward Snowden: Here’s How We Take Back The Internet
Tell the FCC: Restore Net Neutrality + Court Backs Internet Censorship: Open The Internet Now!
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First class stuff Bill! Thanks Lo.
This just might be crunchtime for the USA ~ the core issue that really tips the scale.
It may well determine which values prevail, and what principles finally constitute the ethical basis for a type of consensual political foundation of lucid (self-) governance; a more generous vision reflexively embedded in this ecological technosphere…the www.
Could it possibly augur the inexorable emergence of a truly reflexive (Daoistic) political diversity out of America, a movement genuinely responsive to our planetary commonwealth of nested, cultural complexity that is the real world? A world of social speciation perhaps?
Might we envisage this as some kind of unrestricted dynamic spiritual force in fact, a reciprocal œcumenic “organon” (in the peripatetic Aristotelian sense ~ or even “ummah,” if you prefer the Arabic to old Greek…?)
now available.
Thanks, peskyvera.
It says the video is private.
I just watched all of it. I’ll add the new video when it becomes available later today. Thanks for letting me know, Bruce.