Civil Defense - a weblog by Joshua Breitbart

Allied Media Conference
“Breaking Silence, Building Movements”
Detroit, MI
June 22-24, 2007
www.alliedmediaconference.org

In just three weeks, hundreds of independent media-makers and social justice activists from around the country will convene in Detroit for the 9th annual Allied Media Conference.

The AMC provides three days of hands-on media trainings, accessible discussions and exceptional dance parties, with the goal of advancing the human right to communication. This conference is unlike anything you’ve ever been to before (unless you’ve been to the AMC before).  It combines DIY media, women of color feminism, youth culture, and popular education.

The organizations and individuals who travel to the Allied Media Conference from across the country represent the cutting edge of the independent media movement, from radio producers and magazine publishers to hip hop artists and youth organizers.

Prometheus Radio Project from Philadelphia will light up Southeast Michigan with tools and tactics for expanding access to low power FM radio. People’s Production House will lead a session on “Reporting Immigration: Strategies for Avoiding Myths and Broadening Debate.” There will be workshops on stencil-making, DIY animation, and how to wi-fi.

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence will host an entire track of sessions on everything from zine-making to online organizing.  Detroit Summer, a local youth organization will collaborate with youth organizations from around the Midwest to present a youth-led track of workshops. And the pre-conference Symposium on Popular Education will bring together youth and educators using media as a tool for liberatory education.

Detroiters will represent in full force at this national conference, leading
sessions such as “The History of Black America as told through Music,”
“Community-based Literacy Campaigns,” and “the Future of Public
Access.” Youth from Detroit Summer, will share their trail-blazing community media model, Live Arts Media Project, on the opening plenary.

Veteran movement leader Grace Lee Boggs says, “If you come to Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, you’ll  be astonished at  what young people are  doing here and around the country to transform the media from the ground up.”

She and Detroit pioneers Charles Simmons and Elena Herrada will welcome visitors to Detroit at the Opening Ceremony Friday night, followed by a bowling party at the nation’s oldest bowling alley. The Saturday night show will feature Detroit pillars of independent music—D. Blair, Invincible and Underground Resistance.

Conference registration is on a sliding scale. The deadline for low-cost
housing, bike rentals, and childcare is Wednesday, June 6. Visit
www.amc2007.org for registration details and up-to-date information about the program schedule.

NEW YORK CITY BROADBAND ADVISORY COMMITTEE
PUBLIC HEARING

The New York City Broadband* Advisory Committee is gathering public testimony on the state of Internet access in New York City and is seeking suggestions for improvements.

Broadband Advisory Public Hearing
Tuesday, May 22nd
Noon to 3 pm
in the Courtroom hearing room in the Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street in downtown Brooklyn

(*Broadband means fast Internet, though how fast is up for debate.)

For updates from People’s Production House and recordings of previous hearings, visit www.digitalexpansion.net.

It is especially important for people and organizations that aren’t connected to the Internet to attend this hearing. The Committee will be recommending solutions for extending Internet access throughout the five boroughs. If they only hear from business leaders or laptop-toting hipsters, then that is who their solution will serve. But if you engage this process now, you have an opportunity to shape how we will communicate across our city for the next 100 years. The Committee and the city need to know that you are paying attention to this process and care about its outcome.

People’s Production House is working to ensure that all New Yorkers get heard as these critical decisions are being made. We encourage you to attend this hearing and to share what you know about how the Internet works or doesn’t work for you and your community.

Please contact us if you have any questions or if we can help in any way. We’d be happy to talk to you or your members in person, over the phone, or through email to explain more about the process, and help you envision New York’s Internet future.

More details…

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Starting today, the Department of Defense will begin blocking soldiers from accessing some of the most popular websites on the Internet, including YouTube and MySpace.

The increasing use of such sites compromises the security of the DoD’s unclassified Internet known as NIPRNET, according to a newsletter put out by the Commander of US Forces in Korea. The newsletter also warns soldiers to be alert against identity theft and the sharing of sensitive information.

The website blocking comes less than two weeks after the military imposed new restrictions on soldiers’ blogging.

The May 11 “Bell Sends” newsletter from Commander B.B. Bell describing the new restrictions says,

To maximize the availability of DoD network resources for official government usage, the Commander, JTF-GNO, [Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations] with the approval of the Department of Defense, will block worldwide access to the following internet sites beginning on or about 14 May 2007: youtube.com, 1.fm, pandora.com, photobucket.com, myspace.com, live365.com, hi5.com, metacafe.com, mtv.com, ifilm,com, blackplanet.com, stupidvideos.com, filecabi.com”

(You can see the full newsletter from this website here or from the original military website here. From what I gather, this journalist broke the story.)

The banned websites all promote online interaction based on the sharing of photos, videos, music, musical tastes, or personal information. Some, like MySpace offer the opportunity for soldiers to blog their experiences. The Pentagon operates a channel on YouTube.

Last year, the then-Republican House of Representatives passed legislation that would bar access to such sites for minors using government-funded Internet access, for example in schools or libraries. The “Deleting Online Predators Act” (DOPA) died in the Senate.

The bill would have forced libraries and schools to bar minors from accessing any websites or chatrooms where they “may easily access or be presented with obscene or indecent material; may easily be subject to unlawful sexual advances, unlawful requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults; or may easily access other material that is harmful to minors.”

I’m with Seth Johnson and the Dynamic Platform Standards
Project on this one, that you can’t block such sites and still honestly call it the Internet.

I’m heading up to Troy, NY, this morning for a “New York State Strategy Session for the Future of Community Media & Media Justice.”

Today’s get-together at the Sanctuary for Independent Media is a precursor to a larger event tomorrow called interAct Troy!, a community driven skill share and party. It’s a great chance to check out the Sanctuary, visit friends up there, and promote the Allied Media Conference.

There will also be the second round of the strategy session with Dee Dee Halleck, George Stoney, Michael Eisenmenger, and Steve Pierce, which is a not-to-be-missed combination of folks, especially if you care about New York and the future of public access television.

The focus of today’s discussion is the “Omnibus Telecommunications Reform Act of 2007,” sponsored by State Assembly Member Richard Brodsky. The bill is a mammoth one that would have extensive impact on the lives of every single person in New York who uses the Internet, telephone, or television.

This bill represents an interesting moment in the life of state franchising for video service. Last year, as you may recall, Verizon and AT&T spent tens of millions of dollars trying to pass national franchising legislation called the COPE bill through Congress. Simultaneously, they pushed similar legislation in a number of statehouses.

The telcos’ goal was to smooth their entry into the TV market and they did not mind clear-cutting local media in the process. Many cities in Texas have already lost their public access channels as a result of the state franchising legislation there.

From what I know, the idea of proactive, public interest-based state franchising legislation was initially put forward in Pennsylvania by Beth McConnell, then of Penn PIRG (now with the media reform umbrella group the Media and Democracy Coalition). Here’s Beth’s August 2006 testimony on a Verizon-sponsored state franchising bill:

While we do not believe state-level franchise legislation is necessary, we would support streamlining the franchise negotiation process by creating a strong, pro-consumer state agreement that could serve as a fall-back in instances where a local agreement cannot be reached in a reasonable period of time.

The idea emerged from the unique circumstances in Philadelphia, where I was briefly the coordinator of the Philadelphia Grassroots Cable Coalition that included Penn PIRG and others. TV watchers in that town were suffering under a Comcast monopoly.

The cable giant is based there and basically gets to write its own franchise agreement, with little oversight from the local government. It also controls all of the local sports programming, which it has historically used to its competitive advantage. (Much to the surprise of Free The Flyers followers, Verizon was able to ink a deal late last year for Philly sports programming on its FIOS system.) Philadelphia also has no active public access channels.

So, from that perspective, Philadelphia residents had nothing to lose and maybe a little to gain from a Verizon statewide franchise. I laid this out pretty extensively back then in a post called “Is there hope for pay-tv competition in Philadelphia?“

Since the local franchising process was so clearly broken in Philadelphia, it would seem to make sense to seek redress in Harrisburg (where Verizon holds greater sway).

(The idea of a ‘good’ state franchising bill also has roots in the Alliance for Community Media’s pragmatic approach to the COPE bill. Vermont has a statewide franchise and a healthy public access system, but that comes from an earlier era and the state’s size makes franchise aggregation sensible.)

The main extra-legislative force behind the NYS bill is the Communication Workers of America, especially the New York Local. They think “The NYS Telecommunications Reform Act is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread…“

The fact that CWA wants the state to require and to subsidize telecommunications deployment is no surprise. But the bill contains provisions for net neutrality, which CWA has previously opposed. Seems like the influence of the Local may have had something to do with that.

Albany being Albany, there is no way to know what will happen to this bill (A03980 for those of you keeping score at home). Spitzer might try to kill it so he can push his own plan for broadband deployment in New York. Or telco lobbyists could try to rewrite the bill.

The CWA and Brodsky, along with media reform organizations like Consumers Union, NYPIRG, Common Cause, and Free Press, will be holding a press conference to tout the bill in Albany on Tuesday, the 15th. Stay tuned here for my thoughts on that, a report on today’s meeting in Troy, and a breakdown of the bill itself.

On Monday, April 30, the City Council Committee on Technology in Government held a hearing on Resolution 712, “Establishing Strong Network Neutrality Principles In Order To Protect The Internet.”

The Resolution calls on the US Congress to “codify strong network neutrality principles in order to ensure that the Internet will continue to foster innovation, increase competition, and spur economic growth as well as making the Internet faster and more affordable for all.”

In my testimony, I encouraged the Committee to extend its support for net neutrality to Internet service over cell phone. You can listen here: