Note to Powell from Telecomm CEOs: Thanks Pal! Want some kneepads?
After reading my last post about the FCC's five-year strategic plan, my pal John Anderson e-mailed to remind me that there's all sorts of FCC biz going on just below the surface. He points out the following:
Another thing you might be interested to know is that the FCC's "Spectrum Policy Task Force" is holding two "public workshops" on unlicensed spectrum use and on interference protection (two biggies for radio, no?)....you can see the list of participants here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-02-1816A1.txt
Surprisingly enough, note that there's just about nobody represented on any of the panels to speak for the public (or "the consumer," as the FCC likes to call us).
BROADBAND: Establish regulatory policies that promote competition, innovation, and
investment in broadband services and facilities while monitoring progress
toward the deployment of broadband services in the United States and
abroad. 47 U.S.C. § 157 and note.
SPECTRUM: Encourage the highest and best use of spectrum domestically and
internationally in order to encourage the growth and rapid adoption of new
technologies. 47 U.S.C. § 309 (j); 303 (g).
MEDIA: Revise media regulations so that timely development and delivery of new
technologies is encouraged, media ownership rules promote competition and
diversity in a comprehensive, legally sustainable manner, and the migration
to digital modes of delivery is facilitated. 47 U.S.C. §§336, 307(b);
Telecommunications Act of 1996 § 202(h)
HOMELAND Provide leadership in evaluating and strengthening the Nation’s
SECURITY: communications infrastructure, in ensuring rapid restoration of that
infrastructure in the event of disruption, and in ensuring that essential public
health and safety personnel have effective communications services available
to them in emergency situations. 47 U.S. C. §§ 151, 606, 337.
COMPETITION: Support the Nation’s economy by ensuring there is a comprehensive and
competitive framework within which the communications revolution can
continue so that all consumers can make meaningful choices among and
have equal access to communications services. 47 U.S.C. §§ 251, 271, 253,
254.
MODERNIZE Emphasize performance and results through excellent management, develop
THE FCC: and retain independent mission-critical expertise, and align the FCC with
dynamic and converging communications markets. 47 U.S.C. § 155(a).
"Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading.... Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., the measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place. Berman and Coble plan to introduce the 10-page bill this week."
What's next? Will supermarkets be allowed to amputate the hands of shoplifters?
To whit:
"Hoping to end the online trading frenzy that has plagued the music business, the movie industry is hunting down digital film swappers and getting their Internet service cut off." -- You know, just where do all those movies that are still in theaters and traded on file-sharing networks come from? A good part of the time they come from screeners -- which are pre-release videocassettes sent to industry insiders. It's the entertainment cartel's dirty little secret that they're all bigger pirates than you or I will ever be -- they just take it as their little club privilege. Fuck them for that. They should know that you can't enjoy the drug without it catching on with the lumpen. "More than 200 Internet-based radio stations have shut down because of a royalty fee that takes effect in September, and more are closing daily." -- And thus it's revealed that the real reason for the royalty fees were not to generate revenue, but to clear the field so that the entertainment cartel--which owns the music industry--can seize Internet radio for its own. If you can't own 'em, drive them out of business, even if you have to manipulate Congress to get anti-competitive legislation passed. Remember, you only want deregulation when it doesn't deregulate anyone who might be your competitor. Fuck them for that.
Will blogging change the way mainstream news sources report and comment on
the news? Will blogging be ruined by mainstream attention? That's yet to
be seen. Similar predictions were made during the zine craze of the 1980s.
Today, with the photocopied-and-stapled-zine fad just about dead, most
magazines look and read much like they did before the zine proliferation.
The same arc may occur with blogging, with mainstream news sources
sniffing around them interestedly for a time before reverting back to the
same-old, same-old.
The comparison is dumb and illconceived. It's just the kind of salacious but empty grandstanding that gets attention but produces misunderstanding rather than contributing to any sort of constructive dialog.
But the real neon sign advertising the journalist's self-importantence is the need to compare the blog hype with the hype once surrounding the "just-about dead" "photocopied-and-stapled-zine fad." And how does said journo know that 'zines are dead? Well, because nobody's reporting on them, silly. If they're out of the mainstream, well, then, they can't be too vibrant or important, right? Tell that to the 800+ people who showed up to the Underground Publishing Conference in June.
It just goes to show that coverage of independent and grassroots movements by the mainstream media is a mixed bag. Currying their favor is like trying to popular in high school -- you have to sublimate or alter so much of what makes you unique that you're subverted and homogenized in the end.
Blogging, zineing, Indymedia -- they're all outside the mainstream for a reason, and that's where they'll thrive. That is, until we usurp the dominating media mainstream. The mainstream is not inherently evil, but the current strictly controlled, homogenized, corporatized and sanitized one is. Why play ball with the enemy? Staying underground is not underachievement, it's cultivating a new way of doing things and making it self sufficient. Fuck mainstream dependency -- I'm glad to be part of a dead movement in their eyes. (thanks to Anita for the link!)
Previously on mediageek:
A Brief Meta-Blogging Indulgence / Microcontent 3/18/02
Blogging, "Warblogging," and Punditry. Is There an Effect? Is There a Point? 1/16/02
"In the 10 weeks since it has opened, the space known as DV Dojo has attracted film students, video buffs and storytellers who squeeze into a narrow, brick and blond wood room for a weekend class, a five-week course or a film screening..."
Why, this is a Democracy! That's why we had a diverse group of 20 industry heads represented at the table. What, someone besides industry should be afforded a place? But this is the Commerce Department, not the Citizen Department!
Muller fails to take proper account of the fact that the Soviet and other totalitarian regimes exist in a larger world context that is not totalitarian. They have borders, both geographical, political and social, with other nations that are not so strictly controlled. Technologies in these nations -- like the US -- has a social and political history of not being monopolized by the state. For example, the US has a strong belief in the ideology of the individual inventor and scientist -- like Edison -- who pursues technology independent of the state. Thus, in the US and most of the West, technologies and scientific discoveries that birth technologies happen outside the sphere of direct state control.
This Western model of technological development is not natural nor essential. It happened both by plan and accident. The US patent system is a strong element of this plan -- it's the manifestation of the Founders' valuation of individual invention.
But it didn't have to happen this way. Indeed, the Soviet system was effective for forty+ years. What if, by accident of history, the Soviet system came to be predominant in the world? What if the US had lost a war with the Soviets, rather than existing in a chilly state of detente? Would technology have been such an effective tool for freedom?
I don't know, but I can't say for sure that it would be. If a citizenry has access to tools and the knowledge to use them, it is difficult for the state to control their use. But that's still an 'if' which is presaged on there being a system and society that allows these tools and information to be dispersed in the first place.
I'll agree that once let out of the bag, technology is a hard cat to catch. Still, hard does not equal impossible -- we're just lucky that our current government does not yet bring the full potential of its force and violence upon us to steal our technology from us. But I don't think we can take that for granted and trust things to stay this way.
A false belief that technology is essentially freeing only serves to give us a false sense of security, and makes us less wary of the real encroachments on our freedoms. Sort of like how wearing a helmet causes some bicyclists to take more risks because they feel more immune to injury. Technology can be used for many ends, and it can be taken away from us. To realize its most postivie potential, we must be aware of it and put it to that purpose. But we cannot take that potential for granted nor believe that it exists without us.
Otherwise, technological romanticism threatens to be the opiate of the techno-masses.
Of course, TV broadcasting is a big boy's game, and I doubt that ABC, FOX, CBS and NBC will shed a tear for their little market affiliates. In fact, I'll bet their secretly licking their lips. These little cash-strapped stations will make great takeover targets if the networks can coerce the FCC into lifting the current limits on how many stations they can own. And if not the networks then the bigger owners of network affiliates will be in line to clean up.
It won't be long, then, 'til TV looks even more like radio. News will be cut back even more, or eliminated altogether, especially in smaller markets. Any local public affairs programming will be slashed away in favor of lowest-common-demominator syndicated crap that costs as little as possible. Don't be surprised when local TV is turned into a low-overhead, high-profit but crap-ass service (as if it weren't already mostly that way).
Virtual communitarian Howard Rheingold pens an essay on the 'Smart Mobs' -- the ad hoc networks of individuals using technology to coordinate their actions, be it by cell phone, text messaging, Internet. He correctly identifies the source of ongoing technology struggles and the conflict between people's desire to use technology to create and build and the corporate desire for technology to facilitate consumption:
Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests?This is how I've come to view the current struggles over copyright, intellectual property, digital rights management, Internet broadcasting and even pirate radio. The entrenched powers -- primarily the entertainment/communications/culture cartel -- desire to have full control over all these arenas in order to maximize their ability to profit from their use. Overwhelmingly, the interest of our representatives and regulators is to maintain and facilitate that control, rather than to question or constrain it. Indeed, their own personal power is excessively intertwined with that of cartel -- they rely upon the cartel to pay attention to them, to mediate their message and thus make sure they can be elected or appointed again (and again).
I use the word cartel, but not conspiracy, because the collusions happen out of opportunity and fleeting shared interests, rather than a coherent and engineered strategy. Like OPEC, members of the entertainment/communications/culture cartel often are at odds with one another and have competing interests, such as the debate between movie studios and the electronics industry over digital TV rights management. The cartel is not strictly hostile to the idea of you and I being creators. Indeed, they'll embrace it when it seems like it will get us to buy computers, video cameras, scanners and the like. But they'll just as quickly slash away at it when it seems as though it erodes at their profits -- like when CD burners are used to copy CDs. There's no rhyme or reason, just knee-jerk reactions to preceived loss of control, and therefore, profit.
Control really is the primary issue, because the cartel has come to believe that it is a necessary prerequisite for maximum profits. They might profit when you use the camcorder to videotape your child's graduation, but they profit more when you have to use their equipment to edit it, and then use their proprietary compression scheme to encode and distribute it over their server network, which will not allow it to be played on anything but their playback technology.
It seems simplistic, and the normal impulse is to hope it's more complex. We hope that corporate executives will see the value in sharing and openness and see how there might be a path to profits if it were embraced. And yet, time and again an embrace of openness lasts only until the gravy train runs out -- until the smaller fish is eaten by the bigger fish and the new CEO says openness is too much of a risk, or too unproven. The desire to control always wins.
Sadly, the deisire to control knows no end -- hence the perpetual extension of copyright so that corporations can keep characters and works under their control long past the death of the original authors. It's never satiated because there's always something out there that slips through the cracks.
Sounds pretty fascist, doesn't it ? (Just replace the state with the corporation) That's because it is. But it's also horrifically conflicted and paradoxical because the titans of the cartel don't see themselves as fascist, and still tithe to the church of freedom and democracy. They sin on Saturday night and atone on Sunday morning. So the control they desire is never yet completed, and they're even themselves conflicted about whether they want it (or can somehow justify it). But that doesn't stop their efforts at attaining it every chance they get.
And that doesn't take away from their absolute and primary logic and desire -- the entertainment/communications/culture cartel fundamentally want to make stuff for you to buy, that's what they do and everything else is secondary (an externality). They might let you create, even help you create, but once that interferes or just appears to interfere with their ability to sell you shit, then they'll leap over mountains to rip that creative ability out of your hands. Unless, of course, they can buy the product of your efforts so that they can resell it at a major profit (this is done best when they employ you and so nothing you produce is yours to begin with).
Trying to conceive of this opposition in any other terms only needlessly complicates and blurs what's going on. As soon as you begin to think that maybe a member of the cartel is on your side is when you actually cede control to the cartel. Sure, Sony might want to defend your home taping rights right now, but they'll turn on you in a heartbeat if their next self-interest determines a different course (like, when you're copying one of their CDs).
The problem with this analysis is that it's only analysis, and I'm perfectly aware of that. But it does help us figure out our tactics and approaches. If we want to live in our own culture it's near impossible to completely ween ourselves off the cartel's milky teat, nor extract ourselves from its web.
I'm not advocating a pure existence, separated from the media cartel. Instead in our world I'd like to see the cartel put out of business. But until then it's critical to recognize our own place within the conflict. We are both consumers and creators, and I'm certainly doing my damndest to hold on to my right to continue being a creator. I hope you will too.
For those of you who keep hoping that Congress will churn out a law that preserves the Fair Use rights we've come to take for granted, and are wondering why Congress instead keeps chipping away at our right to manipulate our own cultural products, keep in mind this principle: Congress values dollars, not citizens. Sure, it may appear on the surface that we citizens elect our representatives in Congress, and that indeed is a formal part of the process. But how are those candidates chosen? How do we manage to find out about candidates? What does it take to create a candidate? Yep, cash money.
A candidate makes it onto one of the major party tickets by pleasing those in power, and, increasingly, by having enough personal or other financial backing to launch a campaign to make it onto the ticket. And who funds that -- you or me? Not directly, and not in any way that we maintain any sort of control.
So, let's apply this principle to the Copyright issue. Average citizen computer users would like to trade mp3s, CDs and movies with their friends, not for the purpose of piracy, but instead for the purpose of sharing something they mutually enjoy. Besides making a vote in the ballot box, what has average computer user done to get Mr. Representative and Ms. Senator elected, not much. On the other side, multi-billion dollar culture industry prefers to have strict control over all content they create, and are able to manufacture a piracy crisis, despite continually growing profits. What did multi-billion dollar culture industry do to get Ms. Rep and Mr. Senator elected? They donated thousands upon thousands of dollars of campaign funds, that's what.
Are those campaign funds a guarantee of election. No. But not having those campaign funds are near guarantee that you won't get elected.
Of course, this is common sense, right? The dirty clusterfuck relationship between lobbyists, industry and Congress is pretty well acknowledged by most sentient beings. Yet, we just keep clinging to the ideology of republican democracy, even as it crumbles at our feet.
That doesn't mean I think we should give up, or we shouldn't pressure our Congresspeople or lobby for change. But I do mean to point out how perversely slanted the system is away from your's and mine interests. We can try to continue swimming against the tide, but the tide usually wins.
Things like civil rights and liberties, and fair use rights over our own culture cannot be taken for granted, and clearly are up for sale to the highest bidder in a political environment where voting is a pro-forma activity to legitimize the choice of the plutocracy. My only hope rests in that this full-scale attack by the highest moneyed class upon the cultural freedoms of the vast majority is one of the few things that seems to be waking people up to how their mental environment is being auctioned off before them.
There are many tactics that can be used to combat this -- some within the system, some without. I make no claim to knowing which are best and which will work. There are good arguments for and against trying to reform a system that has rotted away from the inside, I won't try to convince you of the superiority of either. But my gut tells me that playing only by the rules of the system is like trying to win at casino blackjack. Certainly some folks do win, but most of the time you lose, and if you keep playing and bet big, you lose big. The setup is rigged so that the house always wins in the end. Regardless of what the Constitution supposedly guarantees us, this is not our house, and we are not set up to win.
Independent, grassroots, DIY media provide some useful tools and strategies, but I'm not foolish enough to think they're alone sufficient. We'll need to rise up some way -- resistance can be waged every day in easy ways, and it can be waged as a full-scale assault.Pick your way(s) and do it (them).
Which brings me to my second item -- show archives. You'll notice that the radioshow archive hasn't been updated since April 17. That's due to my home minidisc deck biting the dust, and due to running out of space where I'm hosting the RealAudio files. Since I'm moving to the community server I will start archiving the radio show in mp3, and maybe ogg vorbis, the open-source audio codec. I've acquired a new minidisc recorder for my computer, but since I've bought a house and moved, I don't yet have my home setup completely together -- I hope to have this done this weekend.
But, I have uploaded last week's mediageek radio show, and it's ready for listening in mp3. The features are on the upcoming Portland Zine Symposium and Indpendent Publishing Resource Center Zine Library. The program is encoded at 24kbps and is 5 MB total. Download and listen away!
Have a blog? Then you should meet up with other bloggers in your area. I think I'll meet with the local (Champaign-Urbana, IL) bloggers -- there's three of us so far -- just as long as the meeting doesn't happen at Applebee's, which is one of the three locations available to vote on. So, if you're a local blogger participating in the meet-up, please don't vote for Applebee's.
"The Streamer technology works a little like Gnutella or other file-swapping services that don't rely on central servers. A stream of music would be relayed through a daisy-chain of listeners and PC relay points across the Net, so that the original broadcast point would be difficult--though not impossible--to track down."
Sounds like something I've gotta try out. I'll gladly send a check to the songwriters, but screw the RIAA. I wonder if the RIAA will harrass on-line stations that are only playing music from labels that aren't RIAA members or by unsigned indie artists? I wouldn't be surprised if they'll jump all over the place without actually listening first. Of course, you can just forget the Internet altogether.
Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
will hold a symposium on "Corporate Control of the Media" in
Washington, DC, featuring three of the country's leading experts on
the issue. Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy,"
John Nichols, co-author of "It's the Media, Stupid" and The Nation
magazine's Washington correspondent and Linda Foley, president of the
Newspaper Guild, will join the Congressmen at a symposium on Thursday,
July 11th, 3:30 p.m. in the U.S. Capitol room HC-9.
"The EC Ecommerce Directive has been much criticised on the grounds that consumer rights enshrined in its philosophy are unfair to etailers and ISPs and may retard online trade. But who spotted its potential as a backdoor cross-border censorship tool?"
"Indymedia NL regrets the facts that the judge in the verdict does not
elaborate on which kinds of links are permissible and which are not. This
ruling will therefore have severe consequences for every person or
organisation that has placed links on the Internet. Due to the structure of
Internet, it is possible to reach any website on the internet, by way of
combinations of links and indirect links."
This isn't a "USA Rules, everyone else sucks," argument -- merely an observation of how values differ. While Indymedia.nl risks a fine of 5000 euros if they do not remove the links in question, there is a far smaller percentage of the Dutch population in prison than in the States, at least partially due to the Netherland's legalization of many drugs that the US locks up thousands of people for. In the US we take some freedoms for granted -- like a fairly broad freedom of speech -- while sacrificing other fundamental freedoms through the war on drugs and, now, the war on terror -- the latter of which also threatens our vaulted speech freedoms, too.
My question is, then, if a US based Indymedia site posts links to mirrored Radikal pages, will Indymedia.nl get fined because it has links to all worldwide IMCs? How many links of separation are there between one page and any other page on the 'net? We are connected, whether anyone likes it or not.