Just got home from the excellent Access to Knowledge (A2K) conference in Yale. The weekend was chock-a-block with provocative speakers during the sessions and stimulating discussions during the coffee breaks. Some of the more memorable bits: Eric von Hippel of MIT Management School talking about the case of French Chefs as a norm based intellectual…
Category: Media Reform
Reframing IPR -> Access to Knowledge
I’m off in a couple of hours to the “Access to Knowledge” conference at Yale University this weekend, April 21-23. The goal of the conference is to come up with a new analytic framework for analysing the possibly distortive effects of public policies relying exclusively on intellectual property rights. Beyond this aim, the A2K initiative…
Village Voice on the Plight of Media Non-profits
The Village Voice is running a story called "For a Few Dollars More" on the struggles facing non-profits supporting independent media. The article blames a combination of forces for the decline of these independent media groups, including drying up of foundational support (particularly the MacArthur Foundation) and the growth of new electronic media. So young…
TV Networks Reject “Controversial” Church Ad
I just got word that the United Church of Christ’s recent TV ad promoting inclusion and welcoming of people from all walks of life was deemed too "controversial" to air on TV networks and Viacom cable. The UCC has created a campaign to protest Viacom’s refusal to air a paid advertisement for reasons that strain…
Reporters as Shills for the Industry Roll Fake News
Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy are running a new campaign called "No Fake News" that is already starting to create a buzz in the media. So much so that I have had trouble accessing their site this morning: An exposé by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press…
Republicans Defeat “Net Neutrality” Amendment
ZDNet and Ars Technica are reporting that Republicans defeated a Net Neutrality amendment to a current piece of telecom legislation. According to ZDNet: A Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday defeated a proposal that would have levied extensive regulations on broadband providers and forcibly prevented them from offering higher-speed video services to partners…
Democracy Player: Roll Your Own TV Channel
I have been playing around with the Democracy Player, a nice little program that aggregates various online videos into “channels” that you can easily surf through, view and subscribe to. They bill themselves as “a new kind of browser for watching videos– grab webpages with video and video RSS feeds (including podcasts, video blogs, and…
Send us your interns and research requests!
The media and democracy project I coordinate "Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere" is about to launch its online "Media Research Hub." To get folks ready, we are asking groups that are looking for graduate student interns to email us their needs for this summer. And we also want media justice groups to get…
Hearings today on House Bill on Pay-TV
The House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet has scheduled a hearing today to consider the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006." According to the Benton Foundation, the bill would prevent regulations from slowing the entry of new competitors into the pay-TV services market. Specifically, the bill would 1) create a…
Common Cause exposes telecom Astroturfing
Common Cause has just released a damning portrait of a number of "astroturf" non-profits funded by telecommunications corporations to give the impression of public support for their views. Entitled "Wolves in Sheeps Clothing" the report profiles nine fake grassroots groups that are bought and paid for by telecom companies. These include: Consumers for Cable Choice…