This Week in Media 

You Don't Know What You Got Til' It's Gone...

Public Access Television is facing a number of battles in the House and Senate. 

Today, February 13, is the last day for submitting your concerns to the FCC.

Click here to submit your letter.

Click here for a complete listing of pending legislation.

The telephone companies want to do away with local video franchise agreements between local municipalities and video providers.  Local video franchising agreements are the mechanism by which municipalities ensure that cable and telecommunications companies doing business within the community are accountable to the local public interest.

Video franchise agreements are also the only mechanism that protects and ensures the existence of Public Access TV channels.  We must ensure that local municipalities have the authority to require local video franchising.

 

  Big Media Has Big Plans for Privatizing the Internet

The Nation

by Jeff Chester

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets - corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers - would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Under the plans they are considering, all of us - from content providers to individual users - would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.

To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.

(Click here to read the entire article)

Take Action!  Go now to:  netfreedomnow.org  With a couple of clicks you can send a letter to CEO’s of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter, Cablevision/Optimum Online, Qwest, plus your members of Congress!

To learn more about this debate, go to:  freepress.net/netfreedom/

To find out more,  click here     or here Rapid Response Iowa