Category: Issues and Actions

The creation and distribution of content must have equal access for all.

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Issues and Actions

Even More Than Net Neutrality: Common Carriage On All Infrastructure

Last Monday I was on a panel on Net Neutrality at Independent Film Week in NYC that was moderated by David Rosen.   David knows of what he speaks.  He recently penned an article in Filmmaker Mag that is available right here.  

Rosen chronicles the Telecoms and Cable Controllers attempt, with endorsement from the MPAA mind you, to create a separate — but far from equal — internet for exclusively video content that seeks to be fully immune from the demands of common carriage.  He takes our battle a step forward:

“Net neutrality is a distraction,” argues Bruce Kushnick, of Teletruth, a broadband customer advocacy group. “As long as the telco and cable companies control the infrastructure and are allowed to vertically integrate all products (i.e., offer local and long distance, connection to the Internet, broadband and even wireless), they can control any activity or any competition over the networks, including all video. The only next step is to have common carriage returned: While the underlying infrastructure may be controlled by the incumbent, all applications and services should be allowed by all parties.”

Maintaining equal for all is the biggest battle the independent film community currently faces.  Without Net Neutrality there is no assurance that information will be “distributed on a first-come, first-served basis no matter from which applications provider they come from or to which destination they are intended” (Rosen) — you know?  Equality.  Remember that?
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Issues and Actions

Dancing Baby Expands Fair Use

Mark Hefflinger at Digital Media Wire reports:

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that copyright holders must consider the potential “fair use” of their works before sending copyright takedown notices to online video sites. “In order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with ‘a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,’ the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote, in his ruling.

This is a great mandate and clearer definition.  As you listen to “Let’s Go Crazy” on the clip, it is clearly in the background and not added later.  It’s documenting a moment. This is that baby and his dance that we can all thank for it:

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Issues and Actions

We Own The Spectrum, But…

Broadcasters fight hard against public use of the blank spectrum, popularly know as “white spaces”.  It could be made useful, and it’s the public’s, so what gives?  Tech companies and Digital Rights organizations have been fighting hard to make the blank spectrum available for broadband use.  Me, believing that Television’s days are numbered, see no reason not to adopt the future right now and make those white spaces available to everyone.  Info wants to travel where it can travel, every where.

You can read more about it on BoingBoing here.  And go even more in depth with Ars here.
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Issues and Actions

Net Neutrality Is Not The Fairness Doctrine

The Conservatives at The FCC have been up to the old dis-info game.  Robert McDowell, one of the two FCC commisioners to recently vote AGAINST the Comcast judgement, tried to rally the right by linking Net Neutrality to the abandoned Fairness Doctrine.  

I, for one, would love to see the Fairness Doctrine return, and with it the respect for all voices that the “public” in public airwaves demand, but find this sort of deliberate confusion quite frustrating.   
Read the Portfolio artcicle here.
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Issues and Actions

Humanity Lobotomy

The team behind the indie hit FOUR EYED MONSTORS is making a doc on Net Neutrality and needs everyone’s help.  They have a trailer up here.  Check it out.


Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

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Issues and Actions

Major Magazines For Free

As you know, “the future of everything is free”.  Certainly in the digital world, if you want anyone to read anything, you have to give it away.  It brightens my day to be able to get any major publication for nothing, even when they are magazines I wouldn’t normally read.  Now if someone will only give me the time it takes it look at them.

Fortunately, the device I found allows me to look at magazines on my iPhone, so the next time I am stuck with nothing to do (when was the last time that happened?), I can browse NME, Technology Today, or even Playboy.  Check out:   .  It’s very simple to set up when you do it directly from your iPhone.
Digital Inspiration also has a neat simple hack to be able to do it from your computer if you like a bigger screen.
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Issues and Actions

Do They Have The Right To Peer Inside Your iPod?

Should others have the right to see what you have on your hard drives?  

Should custom agents be able to check to make sure no one is importing stolen intellectual property (aka bootlegs) via their MP3 players and laptops?
You may not have anything to say about the issue.  The G8 has met, and many other countries are considering whether to pass the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  As a filmmaker, I am certainly in favor of protection of Intellectual Property Rights, but the enactment of Draconian laws will never be the solution.  
What is the ACTA?  Well, it seems no one fully knows what’s in it.  Public Knowledge has  a good overview here.
What’s to be upset about?  Well, read what the Free Software Foundation has to say about it right here.
And what The Guaradian had to say here.
The G8 was supposed to ratify it at the end of July.  I haven’t yet found out where it currently stands.