An op-ed on the FCC review of retransmission rules and their potentially destructive impact on low-income audiences whose access to pay TV and high-speed broadband is limited due to affordability issues.
A founding principle of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is protecting the public interest in communications – in television, radio, internet and new emerging mediums. In a country of increasing diversity, the public interest is not a “one size fits all” proposition. In the United States of 2016, the public interest must serve a Spanish-speaking mother in Los Angeles as well as it serves a rural rancher in South Dakota or a millennial urbanite in Brooklyn.
Posted by Media Alliance, TURN, Greenlining Institute, Milestone Consulting on March 2nd, 2016
As the FCC debates the modernization of the Lifeline telephone subsidy program to include Internet access for the first time, Media Alliance and the Media Action Grassworks Network (Mag-Net) are taking action to make sure the agency hears from the program’s users, its potential users in the future, and the communities most impacted by lack of broadband access.
The Lifeline Story Bank will collect written testimonies, pictures and short audio or video clips and deliver them directly to the policy makers and the press to make sure DC just doesn’t just talk to themselves. Continue reading Lifeline Story Bank→
On Thursday June 2, 2016,, I joined dozens of people who live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District at the San Francisco Planning Commission to speak up against yet another huge luxury housing development proposed for the neighborhood. The activist-dubbed “Beast on Bryant” adds 196 more luxury units to a neighborhood already built out way in excess of the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, and removes tens of thousands of square feet of badly needed light industrial space. The project was opposed by the San Francisco Labor Council and the Building Trades Council.
While the Planning Commission’s tendency to rubber stamp housing projects is infamous and nobody really expected the project would go down to defeat, the surprising part of the day and evening spent at City Hall was the full court press of the San Francisco Sheriff’s department. Why were the sheriffs intervening in Planning Commission decisions? Was this on someone’s order? Continue reading Fighting the Beast on Bryant at City Hall→
This blog entry was written by Media Alliance ED Tracy Rosenberg for the ACLU as part of a national rollout of surveillance equipment transparency ordinances developed and implemented by Bay Area anti-surveillance activists.
**
Interrupting Surveillance in Silicon Valley and Beyond
September 21, 2016
Issues : Privacy and Government Surveillance, Racial Justice, Technology and Civil Liberties
By: Tracy Rosenberg follow @twrling
Public cynicism about government is at an all-time high – and we all know the reasons. That’s why it’s pretty remarkable when activists use public government processes to attack a scary and overwhelming problem like surveillance – and it works.
Bay Area activists have seized on a strategy to localize the fight against government spying and enlist city councils and county supervisors – who are far more approachable and accountable than remote DC officials – as allies in building community control of surveillance equipment. City by city and county by county, transparency regulations are being discussed. As the motto of one of the most active community groups in the country Oakland Privacy says, “I’ve Been Watching You Watching Me.” Continue reading Interrupting Surveillance-In Silicon Valley and Beyond→
Charter Communications likely has headed off many broadband-related merger conditions by addressing them early on, experts said. But multiple broadband and cable matters likely will be brought up by and before regulators as Charter seeks approval to buy Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable,they said. Charter agreed “from the get-go” to some of the most obvious potential conditions—net neutrality and discounted broadband offerings to low-income populations—said Barry Orton, telecom professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That, plus that Charter, TWC and BHN don’t share a “bully” reputation with Comcast based on complaints about strong-arm tactics, indicates the deals could have a relatively easy time winning approval, especially compared with Comcast’s aborted attempt to buy TWC, industry officials said. Continue reading Charter Deal Conditions Could Run Gamut From MFN Clauses to Rate Hike Caps→
WASHINGTON — A power-increase proposal is stirring new debate about low-power FM broadcasters and has LPFM and translator advocates again taking up positions on the subject.
Through a petition for rulemaking, REC Networks asked the Federal Communications Commission to consider allowing eligible 100-watt LPFM stations to boost power to 250 watts in order to increase building penetration and overcome the effects of multipath in their coverage areas. REC also seeks other benefits for LPFMs including second-adjacent channel protections from FM translators and boosters.
