The Internet Needs to Always be Free and Clear for the People
By DaveyD
Davey D is a journalist, radio programmer, webmaster (daveyd.com) and media activist from the Bay Area. He pens a Hip Hop and Politics column for the San Jose Mercury news. He is also the co-host of syndicated radio show called Hard Knock Radio which focuses on Hip Hop, politics and social justice issues. He is the program director for Breakdown FM out of Los Angeles, California. He is also a member of the National Hip Hop Political Convention
Check out his most recent column on Internet Radio: http://www.mercurynews.com/daveyd
First I wanna thank Senator Durbin and his staff for reaching out to me and allowing me to be a part of this event.
There are a lot of things that I can and would like to say about the Internet and what it means for me and the communities I engage daily. I have been online since 1991 and when I was first introduced to the Internet and told that it was a place that democratized communication to the masses.
As an African American male I have long felt the frustration of confronting one side's perspectives of important issues as it pertained to my community. I have long been frustrated with rampant stereotypes that mass communication outlets have used to pigeonhole us. Ironically I was equally frustrated at the lack of accountability and broken promises by the handful of African American owned media outlets like Radio One and BET that initially gained our trust by positioning themselves as viable alternatives to what I and many others found as ongoing media assaults.
As a person who is deeply rooted in the Hip Hop community the Internet was a place where the playing field was leveled and we could find relief from the outlets that felt the only way they could be profitable was by highlighting material that fell under the themes of violence, misogyny, beefs and other types of controversy.
When the media consolidated in 1996 I was among the few voices on radio in major market (the Bay Area) who was able to go on the air in a prime time setting and speak out against it. At the time my objections fell on deaf ears and it would not be until 2001 as we saw increased marginalizing of other voices and communities in the mainstream media that the general public began to 'get it'.
DaveyD :: The Internet Needs to Always be Free and Clear for the People
As you know there was a huge media reform movement during the early part of this century that drew out millions of people who wrote to the FCC and members of Congress and the Senate expressing their concern that too many voices were systematically being stifled. The public airwaves were for many, no longer serving the public good. Relevant news and information were taking a backseat to sensationalism and over the top antics designed to spark controversy and cause uproar which in turn would garner more listeners or viewers which in turn would lead to higher ad revenues.
While one might wish to debate whether or not that formula actually worked and more listeners were gained is not that important with respect to this discussion. First for the record,, we know that traditional outlets ranging from terrestrial radio on down to broadcast television are losing listeners and viewers by the millions every year. A major destination point has been the Internet.
Its important to understand this backdrop when we consider what is going on today and how key players in these same corporations that many of us ran away from are now trying to harness the Internet and basically control it and take away its most appealing features -The democratic, equal access make up'.
The irony to all this is many of those same power players who wish to control the Internet in 2007 were dismissive to the concerns of millions just a few short years ago. Many of them stood solidly behind former FCC chairman Michael Powell who would flippantly tell the public that they had the Internet and therefore we should not be opposed to further consolidation. In fact he would often state that further consolidation was needed so that these large media corporations could keep pace.
Apparently millions of people took Powell's advice and did just that. They stopped protesting and started making paths for themselves on the Internet. Many became citizen journalists as they started blogging, doing photo essays. They popularized social networking spaces like Friendster and Blackplanet and later Myspace, YouTube and Facebook. More importantly people many discovered Internet radio and found it to be a welcome relief from the same top ten dribble we were being forced fed on terrestrial outlets.
But just as things started seriously moving along and more and more people broke their dependency on being fed news and information from a handful of sources along comes these big corporations with all sorts of fancy sounding schemes which ultimately would result in them controlling key provisions of the Internet, gutting Net Neutrality and rearranging how content would be distributed or not distributed.
The end game would be the general public being back at square one where we would again be totally dependent upon a handful of media giants who weren't really serving our interests in the first place.
As the Internet comes under attack by these media giants you are starting to see disturbing trends that give us a glimpse as to how corporate control can be excercised and eventually abused. For example, Myspace recently limited the amount of written material you can attach in a bulletin. That means after obtaining a large and loyal following over the past two years, without warning, rhyme or reason, I can no longer send out full copies of my own articles because Rupert Murdoch and his team made changes and didn't solicit any feedback from loyal users like myself. There was no phone number to call. Writing in only got you a form letter response that did not address the question at hand. How convenient of him to do this as many of us have just begun writing and debating the presidential elections.
On AOL, they routinely knock people off line who they feel are spamming the system. Spam in their case includes people who may have 50 or more people on an email list which red flags their staff and may result in you being bumped off their network. Getting back on and proving you are legit and actually have 50 friends who want what you are sending is difficult.
The case around Internet radio where local artists suddenly have a middle man (Sound Exchange) they had no idea about until recently collecting money on their behalf is more then disconcerting. It even more disturbing when they discover this same middle man organization has made it difficult for themselves or friends who are small webcasters to stream their music and not run into complications over royalty payments.
Recently we did several radio shows here in the Bay Area to ask local artists if Sound Exchange had ever done any outreach to them to either introduce themselves, explain how they work or even to get feedback, since this would directly impact them. What we discovered is Sound Exchange and none of the groups which supposedly sit at the table representing the interests of artists had even bothered advertising, pitching stories or requesting radio interviews with people, publications or outlets frequented by the many within the very community they are supposed to represent. Many of us find the whole business shady.
I could go on and on pointing out concerns, but unfortunately this can get complicated which is part of the challenge. Many of these issues can not be put in simple 30 second soundbites. When the mega corporations who are in opposition start hijacking words and phrases that connote a certain idea like 'independent', 'grassroots' or 'hands off the internet', those of us who are on the other side have to spend time defusing and dismantling this falsified image they set up in addition to showing exactly who and what they are connected...
The bottom line is that we have to first make sure the Internet remains free and clear from corporate control.
Hence keep Net Neutrality in place.
Second, the net should be affordable and accessible by all, not just those who can pay higher fees.
Three, companies that do get our trust and business have to have uniformed, streamlined ways to be accountable and not be in position to suddenly change the rules, close down people's email accounts etc In some respects we should look at some of these outlets as utilities and move away from a buyer beware mentality.
Last point, with respect to Internet radio we have to make sure there is a transparency in the way Sound Exchange and the RIAA does business. They should be required to do specific types of outreach in particular to communities that are often left out of the discussion. They should have a comment period that is made available to all before new policies go into effect. We should be able to know how much big companies like Clear Channel are paying in royalty rates versus non profits and small webcasters so we don't secret side deals being cut that favor the big guys while the little guy is left footing the bill.
The French Connections
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
There was a time when everyone thought that the Europeans and the Japanese were better at business than we were. In the early 1990s airport bookstores were full of volumes with samurai warriors on their covers, promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese business success. Lester Thurow’s 1992 book, “Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America,” which spent more than six months on the Times best-seller list, predicted that Europe would win.
Then it all changed, and American despondency turned into triumphalism. Partly this was because the Clinton boom contrasted so sharply with Europe’s slow growth and Japan’s decade-long slump. Above all, however, our new confidence reflected the rise of the Internet. Jacques Chirac complained that the Internet was an “Anglo-Saxon network,” and he had a point — France, like most of Europe except Scandinavia, lagged far behind the U.S. when it came to getting online.
What most Americans probably don’t know is that over the last few years the situation has totally reversed. As the Internet has evolved — in particular, as dial-up has given way to broadband connections using DSL, cable and other high-speed links — it’s the United States that has fallen behind.
The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.
Even more striking is the fact that our “high speed” connections are painfully slow by other countries’ standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.
As a result, we’re lagging in new applications of the Internet that depend on high speed. France leads the world in the number of subscribers to Internet TV; the United States isn’t even in the top 10.
What happened to America’s Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot — or was persuaded by special interests to ignore — the reality that sometimes you can’t have effective market competition without effective regulation.
You see, the world may look flat once you’re in cyberspace — but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.
America’s Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators didn’t let that happen — they forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to ensure that this open competition would continue — but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.
And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there’s little competition in U.S. broadband — if you’re lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there’s nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile, as a recent article in Business Week explains, the real French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competition. As a result, French consumers get to choose from a variety of service providers who offer reasonably priced Internet access that’s much faster than anything I can get, and comes with free voice calls, TV and Wi-Fi.
It’s too early to say how much harm the broadband lag will do to the U.S. economy as a whole. But it’s interesting to learn that health care isn’t the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic approach because they aren’t prisoners of free-market ideology, simply do things better.
By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, L.A. Times Staff Writer
Charles Tisdale purchased an innocuous, nearly defunct weekly newspaper in 1978, transformed it into a strident voice for African Americans and poor whites in Mississippi, then endured the wrath of those who wanted to silence the paper — and him.
The office of the Jackson Advocate was attacked — firebombed, riddled with bullets, burglarized, ransacked — at least 20 times over the years. Tisdale often received death threats.
Yet when Tisdale died July 7 at a hospital in Jackson, Miss., from respiratory failure at age 80, it was with the knowledge that his paper had never missed publishing an edition. After a devastating firebombing in 1998, Tisdale and his wife, Alice, refused to surrender their roles as journalists and advocates, choosing instead to lay out the week's paper in their home.
"It is widely accepted that there is no one who represents the black press' mission to fearlessly defend the rights of all better than he," said Ben Jealous, a former managing editor of the Advocate. "For him, the matter was simple: In order to live for your people, you must live beyond your fears."
During the civil rights movement, Mississippi and Alabama were hosts to some of the most infamous hate crimes of the era. By the time Tisdale moved to Mississippi in the late 1970s, the civil rights movement had ended and it seemed, to much of the nation at least, that a new South had been born.
But when Tisdale looked at the South through the eyes of a journalist and a man concerned with issues of race, he saw people in power using new ways of achieving old goals.
Before Tisdale purchased the Advocate, "it was just spouting the white folks' rhetoric," he told a reporter for now-defunct Emerge magazine in 1999.
In his hands the paper practiced a hard-hitting, in-the-trenches brand of advocacy journalism and tried to offer aggrieved people of all races a voice. The Advocate won awards and influenced major news agencies — and sometimes governmental bodies — to investigate the same incidents.
The paper exposed bribery and corruption among law enforcement officials in Mississippi in the 1980s and '90s. It brought national attention to Tunica, Miss., where in the early 1980s the town's residents were so poor they lacked indoor plumbing, instead dumping their waste into an area called Sugar Ditch.
The Advocate regularly covered the use of a local airport by drug dealers. Authorities' failure to intercept the contraband contributed to the drug problem in the African American community, said Alice Tisdale, who was associate publisher of the paper during that time.
The Advocate also ran stories about numerous black men who died while incarcerated in Mississippi jails. Officials ruled the deaths suicides, but it was suspected that the men had been victims of modern-day lynchings.
One of Tisdale's most prolonged battles was with a group of predominantly white business owners whose plans to revitalize Jackson's downtown were actually a strategy for gentrification that would leave behind poor black residents, the paper alleged.
Tisdale's muckraking crossed racial lines, however. If he thought black elected officials failed their constituents, the paper said so. In the black community — where he also had his detractors — Tisdale was a bridge connecting the haves and the have-nots who reminded the black middle class, which he accused of complacency, of its responsibilities, Jealous said.
"A newspaper has to mean something to people, has to represent something," Tisdale said.
Charles Wesley Tisdale was born Nov. 7, 1926, in Athens, Ala., the sixth of 15 children. Tisdale always wanted to be a newspaperman and began living that dream early: At age 7, he was working at a newspaper, pouring lead into molds in linotype machines.
At Trinity High School, Tisdale was editor of the school paper and excelled in academics and sports. But when he and others tried to organize a chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, "he was dragged behind an ox cart by white folks to punish him," Jealous said, recalling a conversation with Tisdale.
After graduating from what is now LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tenn., in 1950, Tisdale spent a few years at advertising firms but always kept a hand in journalism.
By 1954, he had joined the Tri-State Defender, one of many papers that carried his byline, including the Amsterdam News in New York and the Chicago Defender. He covered the 1955 murder of Emmett Till near Money, Miss., and the uproar surrounding efforts to integrate schools in Little Rock, Ark.
After his return to Mississippi in 1978, Tisdale met and married Alice Thomas, who survives him, as do their daughter DeAnna Tisdale, of Jackson, Miss., and two children from a previous marriage, Beverly Tisdale of Memphis and Charles Tisdale Jr. of Atlanta; a brother, William Tisdale of Los Angeles; and a sister, Nona Hollis, of Oxford, Ohio.
"We're eager in this country to feel like the past is behind us," Jealous said. Tisdale "was always here to remind people that the past is prologue."
Memorial donations may be sent to the Jackson Advocate, 438 N. Mill St., Jackson, MS 39202.
By Nicole Ozer (ACLU), Kurt Opsahl (EFF)
Municipal wireless programs help ensure greater access to information and bridge the significant disparities in technology access among community members, but without more privacy and free speech protections, San Francisco's pending contract with Earthlink and Google threatens to undermine these worthy goals.
As the contract stands, there will be no such thing as "free" municipal wireless in San Francisco. If city officials fail to bargain aggressively in the final stages of contract negotiations, San Franciscans will pay a high price for free Internet access -- with their privacy and free speech rights.
The current contract allows Earthlink and Google to track who you are, what you are looking at online and your location. That means if you're searching for private health or financial information, engaging in online political activism or searching for sensitive information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, the companies will know. And there is no guarantee that your private information will stay just with them. How comfortable are you using the wireless system to access sensitive information, if you have to worry about where your private information and what you search for online will end up or how it may be used?
In the last two years, AOL accidentally leaked the search histories of 658,000 customers and the U.S. Department of Justice used its subpoena power to obtain user search terms from companies such as Yahoo and MSN (Google fought it, but may not always avoid disclosure). In a world where our government is engaged in illegal, warrantless surveillance and private litigants routinely issue broad subpoenas, the best way to protect privacy and free speech is to limit collection and retention of sensitive information.
Rather than bridging the digital divide and creating equal access to information, the current wireless contract threatens to create a privacy divide. People who can pay money for the Earthlink service get some privacy and free speech protections, while people who need to use the no-fee Google service get few protections and pay with their private information. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin has pledged to rectify the inequity in the system and ensure that Google affords the no-fee users the same privacy and free speech protections that Earthlink has agreed for the fee users. This change is critical. Optimum user protections should be guaranteed, regardless of which service you use.
To ensure that the system lives up to its potential, San Francisco officials must define and limit the sensitive information that both Earthlink and Google can collect and require them to ask permission before storing records of users' Internet activities. Both companies should ask permission (opt-in) before tracking user location. As a minimum alternative, people using Google's no-fee service must have the same ability to opt-out of location tracking as those using Earthlink's paid service. Both contracts must require that any collected personal information be kept only as long as it is needed to operate the network -- and never longer than a few weeks. The less information that is collected and the shorter amount of time that it is stored, then the smaller the chance that private information can be misused.
Providing adequate user protections and maintaining profitability can go hand in hand. Wireless is estimated to be a $1.2 billion market in the next two years. The Philadelphia Earthlink contract gave subscribers the choice of opting out of data collection and receiving sales solicitations. Also, personal data cannot be sold, rented or given away to third parties. Earthlink expects a return on its Philadelphia wireless investment in two years and greater profits in future years Don't the people of San Francisco deserve this much and more?
San Francisco officials need not be timid at the bargaining table with Earthlink and Google. They should use their leverage to press for strong privacy and free speech protections and make San Francisco a model for how to do municipal wireless right.
Nicole Ozer is the technology and civil liberties policy director for ACLU of Northern California and Kurt Opsahl is a senior staff attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/17/EDG6QQ501G1.DTL
Plan delayed again as supervisors raise privacy questions
By Wyatt Buchanan, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Just last week, a proposed contract negotiated by the Newsom administration with EarthLink picked up key backing from Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who said that with changes to speed up the service and make it more reliable, he could support the deal.
But on Wednesday, Peskin and other supervisors raised more concerns at a City Hall hearing over whether the agreement adequately protects the privacy of users and whether it could turn into a monopoly giveaway of a public resource.
"I think many of us have learned from previous decisions that have happened over the last many, many decades," said Peskin, referring to city franchise arrangements with PG&E and cable TV companies.
Under the agreement negotiated by the Newsom administration, a partnership EarthLink formed with Google would pay the city for the right to install, manage and operate a citywide broadband wireless network.
Consumers would be able to use the network for free at a speed of 300 kilobits per second. Subscribers, who would pay $20 per month, would connect at 1 megabit per second.
Users of either service in some cases would have to purchase additional equipment to strengthen the signal between their computers and Wi-Fi receivers attached to city electrical poles.
Last week, Peskin told The Chronicle he wanted the proposed contract changed so the free network operated at 500 kilobits per second and that he wanted guarantees in the contract that the network would function in all parts of the city.
As a result, EarthLink asked for a delay on a vote on the deal by the supervisors' Budget and Finance Committee, which was scheduled for Wednesday, following a public hearing on the pact.
To relieve concerns about an EarthLink Wi-Fi monopoly, Peskin proposed cutting the term of the contract in half, from 16 years to eight years. He also wants the contract to include an option for the city to buy the network at the end of the eight-year term.
Another concern raised at the meeting was over privacy guarantees for people who use the network.
The contract as it is now written would require the contractor to get permission from users of its subscription service before it could share personal information, with some exceptions.
Users of the free service, however, have no such protections, though they would be providing less information than subscribers to access the network.
There also are concerns about EarthLink and Google's ability to collect information about Web sites people visit and where they are located when logging on.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has been pushing for more limits in these areas. "We would be a model on ensuring privacy and free speech are protected," said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the organization.
Cole Reinwand, EarthLink's vice president of strategy and marketing for the municipal network division of the company, attended the meeting Wednesday but declined "to comment on it at this point."
EarthLink has networks in five cities so far, including Milpitas and Anaheim, but San Francisco is the only city where free access is part of the contract.
It was clear on Wednesday that some members of the Board of Supervisors feel Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has failed to adequately include the board in discussions with the EarthLink-Google team.
"The Giants are more than Barry Bonds and this deal is more than the mayor," said Supervisor Tom Ammiano, a member of the board's Budget and Finance Committee.
A spokesman for Newsom said the administration is optimistic that a Wi-Fi deal will eventually win approval from the board.
"The tide has turned," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's spokesman. "A few months ago we were having difficulty scheduling a hearing on Wi-Fi."
Peskin said later that he did not think any of the proposed changes would undermine the deal. "The sense that I get is none of these proposals are deal-breakers," he said.
Ammiano said he thinks if the host of concerns are addressed that the Wi-Fi contract eventually could pass the board unanimously. But Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, the project's strongest critic, disagrees.
In an interview after the hearing, McGoldrick said the city has not considered enough options -- that it's essentially a giveaway of a public resource -- and that the contract has not been sufficiently vetted. For example, city agencies like the police and fire departments would have to pay for the faster service as the contract is now written.
"The contract as it is written borders on the ludicrous," McGoldrick said.
E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.
Is July 15 the beginning of the end for small webcasters?
UPDATE 7/13: SoundExchange offers to extend previous rates
Take Action: http://www.savenetradio.org/
By Dawn Morgan
Wayne Schrader, 35, of St. Petersburg, is a techie with a love for vintage music of the early 20th century, especially jazz. A few years ago he came across an online radio station called Absinthe Radio that specializes in jazz from the '20s and '30s. It's one of thousands of net radio stations, or webstreams, hosted by the website Live365, available 24/7 and free to the listener. The niche developed a dedicated audience of several thousand, but the founder of the show found it difficult to keep up and was looking for a successor. Schrader took over in August '05. It's a "tremendously important genre," he says. "It has the roots of a lot of different trees."
Like any serious hobbyist, Schrader pays a lot to support his passion. He combs used music stores for out-of-print albums and CDs, and pays Live365 $335.52 a year to store 500 MB of music on its server; the cost also includes the licensing fees paid to the major composers' organizations like BMI and ASCAP. "It doesn't benefit me at all," Schrader says of the financial investment in his hobby.
Nielsen Media Research estimates 70 million Americans listen to webstreams. Live365 boasts 3-million-plus listeners. In the last 30 days, 4,493 of them listened to Absinthe Radio.
Schrader's listeners have never heard his voice -- Absinthe Radio is a D.J.-less station. Still, he keeps them updated on the station's website, absintheradio.com, and he says he receives "an occasional e-mail from France. There's always a story attached to it. Like, 'My grandfather used to play that in the war.'" A thousand songs automatically cycle through and Schrader tries to change them up a couple times a month to keep his listeners, and himself, from getting bored.
Unfortunately, within the next week, Schrader and his listeners might have to resort to their own collections or, gasp, the smooth sounds that pass for jazz on commercial radio. On July 15, a royalty increase is set that would have a disproportionately damaging effect on small webcasters -- including one-man shows like Schrader's.
"If royalties go up dramatically, I can see Live365 bumping up their fees over 1,000 bucks," says Schrader. "If I had to pay more, it would tip the apple cart."
Broadcasters on radio and the Web have long paid royalties to composers. But it wasn't until the onset of Internet radio that recording artists and record labels could get a piece of the pie, too. Radio stations had always argued that airplay was free promotion, but with the Net came the possibility that "perfect digital copies" of recordings could be made.
That argument led to the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act (DPRA) of 1995. DPRA gave record companies and recording artists the right to license and collect royalties for the public performance of their sound recordings on the Internet, cable or satellite radio services. The Recording Industry Association of America established the nonprofit SoundExchange to collect the resulting revenue stream.
Paying artists for their work is a good thing. But the stated mission of SoundExchange, which includes fostering "the development and growth" of the Internet, is contradicted by its actions.
SE pushed the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) for rate increases that charge small webcasters like Schrader, community radio stations like WMNF and behemoths like Clear Channel and AOL the same amount: $0.0008 per song in 2006 and climbing to $0.0019 per song in 2010 -- an increase of 300-1200 percent over the next five years. For noncommercial stations and smaller companies with revenues of less than $1.2 million annually, this can equal more than 100 percent of revenue. The CRB ruled in favor of SE in March for these rates to go into effect on the 15th, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006.
Tim Westergren, CEO of Internet radio site pandora.com, says there's no way Pandora would survive under a business model "that's evaporated." Pandora.com has 7 million registered users, and any given listener can create up to 100 streams of personalized radio. Pandora, which made a profit of $400,000 last year, would pay $600,000 under the new rate system. Kurt Hanson, CEO of Accuradio, an online multichannel radio station and publisher of the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN), said, "The law told the judges not to look at the effects of their decision in the real world." Sites like Pandora and Accuradio stream music below CD quality and give exposure to artists who don't get mainstream airplay, which they believe leads to increased record sales.
Most net radio stations across the country participated in the Day of Silence on June 26 to raise awareness and a little hell. They chose to trade in their music streams for public service announcements on savenetradio.org, urging listeners to call their congresspeople and support the new H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act. The bill was introduced in April by Jay Inslee, D-WA, to counteract the CRB decision (it was followed by a companion bill of the same name in the Senate). H.R. 2060 would set rates at 7.5 percent of total revenue, .5 percent more than the rate satellite radio currently pays SoundExchange.
"There has to be a business model that allows creative webcasters to thrive, and the existing rule removes all the oxygen from this space," said Inslee. His bill most likely won't get through the House in the next few days, but the game isn't necessarily over after July 15. Negotiations continue between SoundExchange the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (which represents college radio stations like Sarasota's WSLR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which represents NPR and community radio stations like WMNF).
"Small webcasters have been very successful in getting their stories out to the public," says Jenny Toomey of the Future of Music Coalition, a not-for-profit collaboration that's seeking balance among the various parties in the controversy. "The pressure is on SoundExchange to settle."
Dawn Morgan, an editorial assistant at Creative Loafing, is also a volunteer programmer with community radio 88.5 WMNF.
Board President says modifications to mayor's proposal could sway progressives to vote for it
Heather Knight, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, gave
qualified support Friday to Mayor Gavin Newsom's proposal for free,
citywide Internet access -- signaling the mayor's long-delayed initiative
could finally be passed by the board with some modifications.
The Newsom administration proposed a free Wi-Fi system two years ago and
has negotiated a contract with EarthLink to provide it. The company, which
formed a partnership with Google to pursue the deal, would pay the city $2
million over four years in exchange for building, owning and maintaining a
network strung across city light poles.
Some progressive members of the board said that the contract isn't good
enough for the city and that San Francisco should consider running its own
Wi-Fi network.
Peskin said Friday that after studying the proposed contract and talking
to experts, he has decided it would be a benefit to the city -- with some
significant changes that are likely to make the plan more palatable to his
colleagues. Peskin said he is in talks with officials at EarthLink about
the proposed amendments.
"They seem willing to discuss these things," Peskin said. "With those
modifications, this will be beneficial for the city and county of San
Francisco."
Nathan Ballard, Newsom's press secretary, said he was glad that the plan
may actually become reality.
"We are pleased that Supervisor Peskin is showing leadership and moving
his colleagues on the board toward approving free Wi-Fi," he said. "It's
an idea whose time has come."
Peskin is proposing speeding up the connection for those receiving Wi-Fi
for free. Under Newsom's contract, those customers would be connected at a
slower rate of 300 kilobits per second, while those paying about $20 a
month would be connected at a faster rate of 1 megabit per second. Peskin
said the speed of the free service should be 500 kilobits per second.
He also wants to ensure that the network is operational in all parts of
the city, and that the requirement is enforceable. Some supervisors have
questioned whether the contract -- praised by Newsom as "bridging the
digital divide" between those who have Internet access and those who don't
-- would provide decent service to the southeast sector, where a
comparatively high percentage of San Franciscans lack Internet access.
Peskin said he wants to ensure the city is compensated for letting
EarthLink affix antennas to its poles. He also wants the 16-year contract
Newsom has negotiated to be shortened to eight years.
One small aspect of the Wi-Fi proposal will be before the full board on
Tuesday. In April, the city's planning department said the Wi-Fi proposal
is exempt from environmental review, a decision being appealed by a group
called the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union.
On Wednesday, the board's budget committee will take up the proposal as a
whole and consider Peskin's proposed amendments. It is almost certain to
be approved by the panel because three of the committee's five members --
Peskin and Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Sean Elsbernd -- have said they
will support it.
Passage is looking more likely at the full board, as well, which will take
up the matter in late July or early August, Peskin said. It would need six
votes to pass. In addition to Peskin, Dufty and Elsbernd, Supervisor
Michela Alioto-Pier has said she will support it.
Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval said Friday he is also likely to back it,
meaning the mayor needs just one more supervisor to vote in favor of it.
Several supervisors said Friday that they are wavering, but may wind up
voting in favor of the contract with Peskin's amendments.
"It's definitely heading in the right direction," said Supervisor Ross
Mirkarimi.
Supervisor Tom Ammiano said he didn't appreciate the mayor suggesting that
supervisors' concerns about the deal his administration negotiated weren't
valid. Newsom has accused supervisors who don't like his plan of playing
politics, including in a speech in February to the San Francisco Planning
and Urban Research Association when the mayor said, "I encourage the board
to look beyond their personal opinions of the guy up here and talk about
real people."
But Ammiano said he's open to hearing more about Peskin's amendments and
discussing the matter further.
"That would be helpful," he said.
Newsom, who faces no serious challengers for re-election in November, has
made free Wi-Fi a cornerstone of his campaign. Asked whether he worries
about handing the mayor a victory as campaign season heats up, Peskin said
the merits of the contract have to trump politics.
"I don't even see it in that lens," he said. "People run for office every
several years, and that shouldn't stop the board or the government from
moving forward. My job is to make sure it's a good thing for the city, and
the contract is the best contract for the city." ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle
The Bancrofts are supposed to use their control of the WSJ to veto buyouts, not to extract a huge premium. If Murdoch buys the paper, the Bancrofts should forfeit their windfall.
By Peter Scheer, Director, CA First Amendment Coalition
In making his bid to buy Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, media baron Rupert Murdoch’s crucial insight was that everyone has his (or her) price, even the thirty-five members of the Bancroft family who control ownership of the venerable newspaper company.
This may seem obvious now, but until Murdoch made his $5 billion offer for Dow Jones, the conventional wisdom was that the families that control the country’s preeminent newspapers—the Sulzbergers (who own control of the New York Times), the Grahams (Washington Post) and the Bancrofts (Wall Street Journal)—could not be paid enough to induce them to sell off their legacies.
Although these newspapers are public companies—in the sense that they have sold stock to outside shareholders—the families retain control through ownership of a class of vote-rich stock. This arrangement, despite its disenfranchisement of public shareholders, is defended on grounds that newspapers are a public trust, to be managed in the public interest by owners willing to forego short-term financial gain in order to safeguard the newspapers’ editorial integrity.
Clarence Barron, who purchased the Wall Street Journal in 1903 and created the family trusts through which the Bancrofts exercise control, would roll over in his grave to learn that his family, upon receiving Murdoch’s lucrative offer, didn’t JUST SAY NO. That’s why they were given their majority-voting stake, after all: to block attempted takeovers of the newspaper, not to use it as leverage to extract a windfall.
The Bancrofts are like the proverbial prostitute who, when a customer inquires about a discount, declares indignantly: “What kind of woman do you think I am?” Murdoch, the consummate dealmaker, understood this. He knew that, while the Bancrofts were committed in principle to preserving the Journal’s independence, that principle could be bought at the right price.
Murdoch set his bid for the company at $60 per share, a whopping 67% above Dow Jones’ share price before the bid became public. This huge premium, offered at a time of collapsing valuations for most newspaper companies, was high enough to both preempt competing bids, and to make the Bancrofts---each of whom will be roughly $14 million richer, on average, than before Murdoch appeared on the scene---reconsider the family’s commitment to resist takeovers.
In fairness, the Bancrofts might have worried about being sued by Dow Jones’ public shareholders had the board, at the family’s direction, rejected Murdoch’s offer out-of-hand. The public shareholders, however, knew when they bought stock having little or no voting power that they were ceding to the company the right to subordinate their financial interests to the public interest---as the Bancrofts perceived it---in preserving the Journal’s independence.
Also in fairness, the Bancrofts may believe that Dow Jones is so weakened financially that it needs to be part of a larger company—other than Murdoch’s News Corp., that is--with deep pockets and a willingness to invest heavily in the Journal. But if they are serious about pursuing alternative buy-out options, the Bancrofts will have to consider offers below Murdoch’s $60 per share bid---something they thus far have shown no inclination to do.
At this writing the Bancrofts and Murdoch are still negotiating, with the Bancrofts insisting unrealistically that Murdoch keep his hands off the news and editorial sides of the newspaper, and Murdoch making promises about editorial independence that, based on past experience, he probably has no intention of keeping. It is a dance choreographed by Murdoch to burnish his own image and to make the Bancrofts feel less guilty about selling out.
If, as seems likely, the parties come to terms on a deal, the Bancroft family members should be shamed into forgoing their windfall. They should be compensated for their stock, of course, but only for its value before Murdoch made his buyout offer. The huge premium in Murdoch’s $5 billion bid---amounting to some $495 million for the Bancroft family’s shares---should be put in a trust to underwrite the kind of investigative and enterprise journalism at which the Journal has long excelled.
That would be a gesture worthy of the family owners of what may be the best newspaper in the world.
Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, is executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.