Media, Culture & Society

As Alex noted in a recent post, a Copyright Board ruled recently that webcasters must pay increased royalty fees for playing licensed music. The decision may force a great many webcasters offline–yet another blow to innovative, risk-taking radio.

This news story provides a helpful overview of the issue. There are a number of websites where you can learn more. Here’s a link to SaveNetRadio Coalition–they are asking for people to contact their congressional representatives to support legislation that will keep innovative radio around on the internet.

This video was done on a blog at Rocketboom.com. For no longer than the piece is, it is fairly informative and might be a great help in explaining net neutrality to friends or groups who know little or nothing about it. Gotta love the pro-business comments left about this video– (these of course have my own spin as to what people sound like)

“Government control of private enterprise? Preposterous.” –Since when has the internet been private? Anyone and everyone can use it and see what you’re doing if they just know how.

“TeleCo’s aren’t really trying to make any more money than they do now.”

“I’ve seen the birth and development of the internet first hand and I know exactly how it works. You’re using TeleCo property, so net neutrality is just stealing.” –as if charging $40 a month for access isn’t?

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPap8ijDv…

Here is the 30-second TV spot compiled by the TeleCo companies to get people to hate net-neutrality. Notice the use of text colors/effects, irrelevant images, and wording (Mumbo jumbo? Seriously people, how old was the person who wrote this commercial?) And lastly, take notice how they call it a “scheme by the Silicon Valley Tech companies to make you pay more.” I guess the TeleCo companies own Silicon Valley too…

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPIYxtjLF…

I don’t have a flash extractor and WordPress apparently doesn’t support HTML embedding, so you’ll have to follow the link.

The Fairness Doctrine has a long and contested history in U.S. broadcasting. Here’s a helpful essay that explains the rationale behind this policy issue.