• American Censorship Day

    Josh Levy
    November 16, 2011

    Try it. Go to BoingBoing and try to read some blog posts. Or try to make out the logos at Reddit or Metafilter.

    Those sites and logos are blacked out to draw attention to American Censorship Day, a major effort by a coalition of dozens of groups including Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla and Free Press (longer list here) to kill the “Stop Online Piracy Act.” SOPA (H.R. 3261) is a bill moving through the House of Representatives that could rip apart the fabric of the open Internet — and introduce a new regime of online censorship.

  • Occupy Crackdown Targets Journalists

    Josh Stearns
    November 15, 2011

    For the past two months I have been tracking journalist arrests at Occupy protests around the country. Tuesday, Nov. 15, was the worst day yet in terms of police suppression of the press.

    It all began in the middle of the night, when police moved in at 1 a.m. to forcibly evacuate Zuccotti Park, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment. Not long after the park raid began, journalists on Twitter began to report that they were being blocked from covering the police actions.

  • No Robots on My Phone

    Josh Levy
    November 15, 2011

    If a new bill gets through Congress, marketing robots will invade your cellphone.

    The bill, called the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” (H.R. 3035), would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to allow marketers and bill collectors to make endless calls to your mobile phone — just like they currently can on your landline, but this time using minutes that you are paying for.

  • Life in the Fast Lane

    Josh Levy
    November 15, 2011

    Opponents of Net Neutrality often argue that Internet Service Providers need to divide the Internet into fast and slow lanes — providing a fast lane for those who can pay, a slow lane for everyone else — to invest in a fast Internet for all.

  • New Report Highlights Impact of State Budget Cuts on Public Media

    Josh Stearns
    November 14, 2011

    We have a new report that describes half a decade of budget battles at the state level that have eroded funding for public broadcasters around the country. In the last year, governors and state legislatures have dramatically reduced public media budgets and even zeroed out all state funding for local stations.

    According to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, more than 95 percent of public TV stations and 77 percent of public radio stations receive some kind of support directly from a state government or indirectly from a state-funded college or university.

  • Victory for Net Neutrality

    Craig Aaron
    November 10, 2011

    Your phone calls, emails and persistence have paid off: Today the Senate voted down the resolution that would have shuttered the open Internet.

    This outrageous measure would have stripped us of our right to communicate freely online and handed control of the Internet to companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

  • Airing Industry's Dirty Laundry

    Libby Reinish
    November 10, 2011

    This is big. Yesterday our campaign to uncover covert media consolidation in communities around the country made the New York Times.

    This chronically ignored crisis is getting a national spotlight. And it would never have happened had it not been for the thousands of activists who spoke out against the practice of covert consolidation and helped us document its impact on local news broadcasts across the country.

  • Sen. Kerry's Speech: Protect Open Internet from Threat

    Sen. John Kerry
    November 9, 2011

    Below is a transcript of the speech Sen. John Kerry delivered today on the Senate floor in opposition to the "resolution of disapproval," a measure that would strip the FCC of its authority to protect consumers and the open Internet.

    This is one of those times when on the floor of the United States Senate we hear a proposal that people characterize as one thing but it is, in fact, anything but what they're characterizing it as. What Senator — I just heard the good senator from Mississippi talking about this, “We don't want to slam the brakes on development,” he said. “We don't want to have the F.C.C. intrusion.”

  • Saving the Democratic Internet

    Timothy Karr
    November 9, 2011

    Opponents of the open Internet like to portray its guiding rule, Net Neutrality, as "a government takeover of the Internet."

    They argue that from the day of its inception the Internet has existed free of regulation — a perfect expression of the marketplace at work.

  • Sen. Kerry Speaks Out for Net Neutrality

    Amy Kroin
    November 4, 2011

    Sen. John Kerry — a longtime Net Neutrality champion — today sent out a letter to his Senate colleagues urging them to vote “no” on an upcoming resolution of disapproval that would wreck our ability to communicate online.

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