NCMR Opening Plenary
Posted on June 6.2008 by Ira Horowitz
This morning's opening plenary session, speakers kicked off the National Conference for Media Reform and built on the excitement of the burgeoning media reform movement.
Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, said "This conference and this movement is growing to a level we couldn't imagine five years ago. This has truly become a national movement for media reform."
Reminding the crowd of the historic gains made in the last year, Silver said,
Just last month, together, we got the United States Senate to overwhelmingly reject the FCC's latest outrageous attempt to let Big Media get even bigger.
Together, we stopped the White House and Congress from abolishing Net Neutrality and turning the Internet into a private fiefdom for the largest cable and phone companies.
Together, we are pushing Congress to award thousands of new Low Power FM radio station licenses to cities and towns that sorely need more independent voices.
Together we are challenging unfair postal rate hikes that threaten to shut down independent publications that are the lifeblood of our democracy.
Together, we have created a movement made of thousands of people who are committed to creating the media system we so desperately need.
And for the first time ever, we have presidential candidates debating an open Internet and media consolidation.
As the movement continues to grow, plenary session speaker Adrienne Mare Brown of the Ruckus Society said, “We need to be as comprehensive a movement as possible and realize that media is the fundamental tissue that all issues are built on.”
Larry Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas, gave a rousing speech, saying, "This conference is an extraordinary celebration. I don't think there's been a social movement that's grown as fast as this one has in the last 7 years."
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Net Neutering - The destruction of independent media
Alas, what Free Press calls "Network Neutrality" is really "Network Neutering." It would allow bandwidth hogs using P2P -- mostly downloading illegal content -- to degrade or even cut off users' access to media. Network Neutering regulation would drive small, independent, and competitive ISPs out of business, leaving a cable/telephone company duopoly that would seriously threaten consumer choice and independent media. And it would kill innovation by dictating one way, and only one way, in which people could connect to the Internet and do business there.
Larry Lessig and Ben Smith of Free Press have been fearmongering and spreading misinformation in the name of a very destructive agenda. Don't buy it, folks! For more on this issue, see my remarks to the FCC at http://www.brettglass.com/FCC/remarks.html.
Uhhhh Brett ...
...there is far more to neutrality than meets your eyes. I am an activist for low income people. In inner cities and rural areas there is one choice for Internet access (56k) and if you cannot afford cable, even less choice as to your access to what is going on in the world. Thanks to the 2009 conversion changes, television will be out as well for most low income people. This leaves out a huge segment of Americans who desperately need that access for many reasons: to obtain work, to find housing, to hear the latest about what is going on in their communities and the world that will impact their families, to learn new technologies so they are employable, for their children's educational opportunities, for our Elder's access to resources and family, for creating content that speaks to communities as well as connects and educates other communities about what is going on, the list goes on.
I am aware that people's worlds are different and not to be disparaging but ...your comments sound a bit elitist as you seem to think that the whole Internet is rife with teenagers whose only concern is that they do P2P, when there are MILLIONS of other people who want far more than that such as, contact, learning new skills, access to information, and communicating.
Cat In Seattle
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