GNU.media

Media Access Project Expresses Support for Reform of FCC Retransmission Consent Process

Media Access Project — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:40:09 +0000

WASHINGTON — Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President and CEO of Media Access Project (MAP), issued the following statement regarding the petition being filed today with the Federal Communications Commission by cable operators and other groups, asking the agency to reform its retransmission consent process:

“The system is out of balance. Increasingly, broadcasters are demanding that the public pay them for access to their TV channels, even though they receive free use of public airwaves. People are tired of paying ever more for the same thing. Viewers should not be used as pawns in contract negotiations, but that is what the broadcasters are doing.

Citizens Groups Ask FCC to Address Diversity in Telecom, Media Ownership and Programming

Media Access Project — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:39:32 +0000

A coalition of public interest organizations sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski yesterday, calling on the Commission to make increased diversity in the media and broadband communications landscape a top priority. The groups issued the following joint statement:

“Historically marginalized communities still face countless barriers to their own members’ provision and ownership of communications services. The Communications Act instructs the Commission to examine these barriers and take steps to eliminate them. This Commission has taken strides in this area, yet much work remains to be done to address persistent and growing digital divides.

Read the letter here.

A Guide to Net Neutrality Cherry-Picking, Telecom Style

Public Knowledge — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:32:36 +0000

It’s springtime in Washington, finally, after the snowpocalypse of last winter. Pretty soon all sorts of summer foods will be available. Let’s take a stroll into the grove to see how some really big companies pick cherries.

Over the last couple of weeks, a fierce little debate has started to rage about how the United States should treat high-speed Internet access. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the whole ecosystem surrounding the big telecom carriers got together to warn the Federal Communications Commission about really and truly regulating this crucial service.

While the whole letter was outrageous, there was one little part that particularly stood out for special mention, because it demonstrates the rhetorical trickery and intellectual dishonesty that unfortunately inhabits our little telecom world.

Cheap Shots and Bad Logic In The FCC Debates

Public Knowledge — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:43:05 +0000

The FCC has started to dig through its backlog of indecency complaints. This predictably triggers some cheap shots at the FCC with the non-sequitor that somehow this is the fate of the Internet if the FCC does Net Neutrality. While it is no doubt laboring in vain to point out the unfairness of this for the FCC, here goes.

I’m no fan of the broadcast indecency rules. I do, however, believe very strongly in the rule of law and the idea that an administrative agency has a duty to uphold the law and process complaints. That is what makes and keeps federal agencies accountable to Congress, the democratic process, and the rule of law generally. This means enforcing laws you don’t particularly like and defending them in court.

Why Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love

Media Access Project — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:22:10 +0000

Several of MAP’s staffers have installed ad blockers on their Internet browsers, and many readers of RoadMAP have probably done so as well. Here comes the Editor In Chief of RoadMAP’s favorite tech site, Ars Technica, begging all of us not to use our ad blockers because it threatens to kill off free content on the Internet. (By the way, Ars is hardly a hand-to-mouth startup. It is owned by Conde Nast, which also owns The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and other major magazines. This plea has forced RoadMAP to rethink its practice.

Why Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love

Did you know that blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit? We recently learned that many of our readers did not know this, so I’m going to explain why.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us. Just like a restaurant, we have to pay to staff, we have to pay for resources, and we have to pay when people consume those resources. The difference, of course, is that our visitors don’t pay us directly but indirectly by viewing advertising. (Although a few thousand of you are subscribers, and we thank you all very, very much!)

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Ars Technica

Film Annex

Creative Commons — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:20:44 +0000

CC BY-SA by Film Annex Last October, Film Annex, “an online film distribution platform and Web Television Network,” launched CC license support, enabling filmmakers to release their films under one of our licenses. Since then, the number of CC-licensed films on the site has grown, with each license having its own Web TV channel (CC BY [...]

Creative Commons at CiviCon 2010

Creative Commons — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:03:30 +0000

Creative Commons depends on a lot of free software to scale our activities on the web. One of the most important pieces is CiviCRM which we use to manage our contributions and contacts. CiviCRM has been on an amazing trajectory since we first started using it in 2006: new releases continue to bring [...]

Getting Older Without Getting Old

Media Access Project — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:08:39 +0000

Here is an interesting real-life discussion of the impact of Metcalfe’s Law.

Getting Older Without Getting Old

Facebook now has more than 400 million active users, up from only 50 million as recently as 2007. If social networking still resembled a young, hip downtown nightclub scene – one day a site is hot, the next it’s not – we might expect the crowds to decamp soon. Facebook would become another Friendster, still around but ghostly, forgotten by most.

Facebook, however, isn’t likely to have such a fate. For one thing, it has attracted many “olds,” and they tend to stay put. (Consider AOL.) More than 50 percent of Facebook’s members in the United States are 35 or older, and only 26.8 percent are 24 or under, according to an analysis of December visitors by comScore Media Metrix.

More than demographic stability favors Facebook. The site has shrewdly emulated the “network effects” strategy used by another brand that has long held a dominant position in the computer industry: Microsoft Windows.

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New York Times

Public Knowledge Disappointed in Failure of New York Cable Talks; Kerry Praised

Public Knowledge — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:01:31 +0000

For Immediate Release:

March 7, 2010

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“It is truly unfortunate the consumers in the New York City area are the latest victims in the continual dispute between broadcasters and cable companies. WABC-TV this morning pulled its signal from Cablevision’s systems, which provide service to about three million customers.

“We have urged Congress to change this system in which consumers are usually the losers in the fights between broadcasters and cable companies.

“At the same time, we were heartened by the comments of Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.

Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources in the U.S. National Education Technology Plan

Creative Commons — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:26:57 +0000

The United States Department of Education 2010 National Educational Technology Plan (pdf) includes the following: Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important element of an infrastructure for learning. OER come in forms ranging from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks, games, and courses. They are freely available to anyone over the web. Educational organizations started making selected [...]