BIG BROTHER’S EYES AND TUBES
A lot of institutions, organizations and clout-heavy individuals have aligned behind a movement to provide a free, fast internet to all Americans as a right.
Without going into details in regard to implementation, the group enshrines these principles:
| Access | Every home, business and civic institution in America must have access to a high-speed, world-class communications infrastructure. |
| Choice | Every consumer must enjoy real competition in lawful online content as well as among high-speed Internet providers to achieve lower prices and higher speeds. |
| Openness | Every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination. |
| Innovation | The Internet should continue to create good jobs, foster entrepreneurship, spread new ideas and serve as a leading engine of economic growth. |
These fundamental demands would seem ludicrous in a more digitally adept country like South Korea, where digital communication is already fixed in cultural space. Here in the U.S. we still fork over inflated monthly bills for mediocre service to companies who use the money to lobby congress in an attempt to deregulate the infrastructure so they can control the content we access as well. What a great system.
Intellectuals on both sides of the debate use the word innovation as a crutch. Whether you are for the corporatist-driven anti-interventionist pro-pilfering or strict mandated 'neutrality' the word innovation is thrown around like the only battle axe in the stadium. Very little time is spent attempting to define the 'public interest' or reify benefits to be had from either choice.
>> Information week's Mitch Wagner on the nationalization of the internet
With all this talk of the internet being free, the act of journalism spreads itself to those unaffiliated with journalistic institutions (large papers, networks, magazines) and as Scott Gant details in his book "We're All Journalists Now," this gives rise to some serious problems with our current legislative approach to defining journalism. Who gets access to The Supreme Court? The prison system? Congress? Who gets White House Press Passes?
This will only get more convoluted: the AP reports that "more than two-thirds of state attorneys general now back the right of reporters to withhold the identity of their sources in most federal court cases."
Shield laws are tricky: the Reporter's Committee for the Freedom of the Press has done an excellent job of eliciting opinion on both sides of the story from journalists, lawyers and legislators. It is truly a conundrum for governance.
RSS 2.0 (All Posts)
Subscribe by Email
