Category Archives: free culture

While I have no idea what this paragraph means,”[w]e opponents of megamergers and cross-ownership are afflicted with what sociologists call “pluralistic ignorance.” Libertarians pop off from what we assume to be the fringes of the left and right wings, but do not yet realize that we outnumber the exponents of the new collectivist efficiency,” I declare that the war of ideas in this media concentration battle is over. This brilliant piece by Safire ends it.

Let’s now see whether ideas and ideals translate into policy. Continue reading →

Howard Dean says at least two important and true things here: (1) “The way to deal with a leader is to be another leader, and to be strong in your views and present the American people with a choice”; (2) “For me, when the Cumulus Corporation, which owns a lot of radio stations, kicked the Dixie Chicks off their networks � a couple hundred radio stations � I realized that media corporations have too much power.” Continue reading →

Dan Gillmor has picked up the MediaCon story — thankfully. His eJournal has begun collecting stories about the obvious effect of concentrated media: that the news will begin to sing in harmony with the interests of the owners. Here’s a snippet from Salon on this. And here’s his announcement of a mediacon channel.

I don’t know who owns the SJ Merc, but whoever does, I guess Gillmor is at least some evidence against my concern that big media will compromise journalism. Some. Continue reading →

Mikael Pawlo, among the world’s, and certainly Sweden’s, most active lawyers monitoring of all things cyber, wrote a terrifying story about the law regulating the net last year. Seems a newspaper ran an online forum where readers could post. A reader posted speech that was deemed “hate speech.” The newspaper was held liable — not because it failed to remove the speech quickly enough. The newspaper was liable the moment the speech was posted. Thus, the message from the Swedish courts: Do not create fora where people get to speak unless an editor reads their speech first. The story is here.

And they say the Internet will check “big media” … Continue reading →

Glenn has a great column on the “internet will save us” meme. The final paragraph captures it perfectly:

So, Michael, here’s the deal: if you think that concentration in Old Media is okay because New Media will provide the discipline, then stand up for freeing the New Media from the shackles that the Old Media are trying to weld on. Because if you’re not serious about freeing the New Media, then you’re not serious about competition, and what you’re describing isn’t a bold new world, but a sellout.

Exactly right. Continue reading →

Memo to the few:

Two important items for today.

(1) This Internet is getting out of control. I just learned that when you search on news in Google, for example, it actually returns results with the work of people, not Incs. This has got to be stopped. Get Google to change its code. Incs. before people. Always.

(2) Research shows that the best way to resist the increasing public criticism of Mikey’s plan to relax rules on media ownership is to focus on the internet. Why worry about 3 companies controlling all of media when we have the internet as a competitor?

(BTW: ever notice?: Mikey + (c) = Mickey) Continue reading →

Doc is writing about a meme we have got to get right early on.

One (not the only) general way to describe what’s important about the Net we knew is competition. The end-to-end Internet is a platform for fostering and supporting competition.

One general kind of competition that this platform will enable is competition between commercial and noncommercial content and innovation. A richer public domain, and more in the creative commons will mean more to choose among when creating or sharing or criticizing culture.

Competitors hate competition. They will always work to increase barriers to entry. And they will use a string of silly excuses to increase the barriers to the free.

We should resist these excuses. We should be fighting to preserve this competition. “How can you compete with free?” Jack Valenti asks, again and again? By making stuff better, again and again.

But the important point is this: It is wrong wrong wrong to bias the rules against the free. Free societies make closed societies harder to sustain. The same should be true of culture. If you find it hard to be closed and important, then either accept irrelevance or accept the Internet. Continue reading →

So the Register has a piece about my post yesterday, attacking Dr. Pangloss and his predictions that the Internet will save us all from the dangers of media concentration. Midway through, Andrew Orlowski writes, “‘The Internet is dying,’ he writes.” Actually, that’s not quite what I wrote, the quotes not withstanding. What I wrote was: “‘The Internet’ that is to be the savior is a dying breed.” That is, the “end-to-end Internet,” where the edge holds the intelligence, is a dying breed. Something called “the Internet” will be with us forever, so in that sense, “the Internet” will never die. But the end-to-end internet (the only internet that really matters to any important issue) is a more fragile beast. Continue reading →

Tom Barger has a nice story about changing his mind. If ideology didn’t govern in DC, perhaps it would do some good. Continue reading →

Of all the lines that Dr. Pangloss pesters me with (and you know who you are), the one that gets me the most goes something like this: “But there’s an internet now. Why do you worry about media concentration when there’s an internet?”

So there’s a million reasons why this is silly — despite the importance of blogs, etc. But the one that’s most relevant is this:

At the same time that media concentration restrictions are being removed, such that 3 companies will own everything, so too are neutrality restrictions for the network being eliminated, so that those same three companies — who will also control broadband access — are totally free to architect broadband however they wish. “The Internet” that is to be the savior is a dying breed. The end-to-end architecture that gave us its power will. in effect, be inverted. And so the games networks play to benefit their own will bleed to this space too.

And then Dr. Pangloss says, “but what about spectrum. Won’t unlicensed spectrum guarantee our freedom?” And it is true: Here at least there was some hope from this FCC. But the latest from DC is that a tiny chunk of new unlicensed spectrum will be released. And then after that, no more. Spectrum too will be sold — to the same companies, no doubt.

So then, Dr. Pangloss: When the content layer, the logical layer, and the physical layer are all effectively owned by a handful of companies, free of any requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask then? Continue reading →