Send a Valentine to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin
February 13th, 2007Valentine’s Day is Wednesday, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has spurned the public’s love in favor of the largest media companies. It’s time we won back his heart, according to FreePress.Net.
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The group has created a 40-second Valentine’s Day video for Chairman Martin.
“Watch the video, sign the card to Martin, and tell your friends to do the same,” says Timothy Karr, Campaign Director for FreePress.Net. “Last year, Martin was caught in bed with corporate lobbyists. We need to woo him back to the people he’s really supposed to serve.”
This year is a pivotal year for the chairman. He will be making several decisions that will have a direct impact on the future of television, radio and the Internet.
Before he gets back in bed with corporate lobbyists, Martin needs to hear from the people.
The group urges people to sign the card and ask Chairman Martin to:
1. Stop Big Media from swallowing up even more local outlets.
2. Prevent big phone companies from destroying Net Neutrality.
3. Help foster more diverse voices and points of view.
“Take action today to demand a media system that puts our interests before those of the corporate media lobby. On this Valentine’s Day, let’s make sure the public can’t be ignored.”
To get involved in the fight for better media, visit FreePress.Net and the allied campaigns at SavetheInternet.Com and StopBigMedia.Com.
Tags: Net Freedom
February 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Cute gimmick I will admit. However, Chairman Martin, or any other government regulator, should not adhere to calls for so-called net neutrality. The consequences could be detrimental. As Sonia Arrison puts it, “If, as net neutrality proponents hope, government steps in to micromanage broadband practices, the result will be a neutering of the Net. Growth of Web 2.0 won’t take off the way everyone expects. Restricting the ability of broadband service providers to customize service would lead the U.S. broadband industry toward mediocrity.”
Yes, she said net neutrality will produce a mediocre internet. The US is better than mediocre and we can and will do better. I work with the Hands Off the Internet Coalition so lets not allow net neutrality to get in the way of a superior internet!
HandsOffPlease
February 15th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I have to admit it’s a highly complex, technical debate. I’m still learning about it myself and plan to write about it more as the debate heats up. But I don’t think Sonia Arrison is the expert I will rely on for information about it.
The founder of FreePress.Net is a highly engaged and widely published academic. And in talking with the Lenux programmers and others I’ve checked with, the problem with the position of the cable and telecommunications giants, who are in a rare alliance on this issue (they usually fight and compete with each other), is that they want to control virtually everything on the Internet in their corporate interests.
Talk about leaving the Net alone, I would like to think that readers could choose The Locust Fork News and Journal as a news source as well as the New York Times or al.com, or what the corporate giants really want, the “new” AT&T, Comcast or Cox. Yes, I mean the big corporate Internet Service Providers not only want your TV, telephone and Net access dollars. They want you to trust them as your primary online news source too.
And that’s absurd. We have more news experience over here than anyone working for AT&T or Comcast. But operating out of a small shop from a small shop server, without Net neutrality, we may as well kiss Web publishing goodbye and go fishing.
Don’t you think it would be harmful to people’s news choices not to be able to get to our site when the network gets a little busy? It’s already happening now!
If Charter decides to work on its equipment, my site might be inaccessable for hours at a time, killing us in what you refer to as a “free marketplace.” At the same time, like magic, the Charter.Net site is still up and running, with all those tabloid news headlines about Anna Nicole Smith and ads for Valentine’s Day cards online.
We don’t run that kind of tabloid fodder much. We are a more authoritative news source with a faster Website that does not require readers to pay, enter login information or accept incidious, spam generating cookies on their computers.
Where is the value in that if the cable and TV corporate giants can control what Websites people have access to?
Keep the Net free, free - and take your corporate sponsorship money and stick it…
February 16th, 2007 at 4:17 am
Fast2write, I agree. I think it would be harmful if people couldn’t access this great news site when the network gets busy but that’s where we would be heading if net neutrality is mandated by the FCC. A multi-tiered system would manage traffic more efficiently putting video and audio streaming/downloading under a separate tier so consumers could actually access your site faster. If all content is lumped into one category, everyone’s speed is affected regardless of whether you have these super tech applications on your site.
If you truly want a robust internet, then you should see how government regulations such as net neutrality will “neuter the net”.
If you don’t take a liking to Sonia, how about Dr. Alfred Kahn, the liberal economist who has warned about net neutrality in The Progress and & Freedom Foundation.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:06 am
An interesting read, if quite misleading in my judgement. No, I won’t rely on any economist whose claim to fame is deregulation of the original AT&T monopoly. While I opposed the sneaky way AT&T put itself back together again over the Christmas holidays by ramming it through the FCC when no one was looking, I did not support the original break-up of the old Bell system.
My father worked for the old Southern Bell for 20 years. In those days, a phone call was a dime and you could actually get a friendly operator on the phone, as opposed to a cold answering system. Phone service was a good deal for consumers when it was a quasi-public entity, say like TVA for cheap Appalachian power.
The consumers have not saved one, red thin dime because of the break up. In fact, phone service is now worse than it was in those days and costs a hell of a lot more. It’s just that the corporate execs are making huge fortunes for doing nothing, while the workers gruel for longer hours and less pay in real dollars.
Please show me one actual instance of where the consumers benefited from degegulation. I don’t buy the airlines argument either. Seems to me Reagan’s firing of the air trafic controllers just screwed workers and made air travel less safe.
Why is it that the cheapest gas you can buy in America is at a Citgo or Jet, a chain of stations owned by the government of Venezuela?
If the Bush administration continues to mess around down there, they may pull out of the U.S. market, which would just make Exxon Mobile very happy. They could boost prices again.
How does that help the consumer? It only helps the fat cats.
BellSouth has had the money for years to replace copper with fiber. They have just not invested that money because they are all about maximizing their profits and stock prices, not delivering the best service for consumers.
Take New Orleans as an example. I lived in New Orleans for four years. I was one of the first BellSouth DSL customers Uptown. BellSouth waited until someone on each street signed up for the high-priced, high speed Internet before doing any maintenence or upgrading any of its equipment, basically making improvements to its system only when it had to and when there was a profit in it. I interviewed the BellSouth workers at that time (and when I did the same thing in Knoxville a few years before) and was told the company refused to hire any new workers or train them in how to fix the old copper lines. So the old guys were working 60 hours a week just trying to keep people in basic phone service, which just got jacked up in price year after year with add on service fees for nothing.
Then, after the floods of Hurricane Katrina, BellSouth refused for many, many months to even send in workers to begin fixing the basic phone lines. The company fought New Orleans’ plan to offer free wireless Internet to its citizens.
The local monopoly cable company, Cox, did a better job, offering high speed Internt and cable phone service within a matter of weeks.
My evaluation of the high speed Internet business after trying it all over the past 10 years is that the cable companies will beat the phone companies in this war. The new AT&T will end up with some local phone business and DSL lite customers. The cable companies already have them beat in offering video, as does the Satellite TV companies.
And, when I see misleading advertising on my TV from the Cable and Telecommunications associatoin claiming the “Silicon Valley” fat cats just want to charge customers more for their services, I know I’m being misled. Think about it. Google is FREE!