The Broadband Institute of California and Media Alliance filed this amici brief in United States Telecom Assn vs FCC, one of the lawsuits seeking to overturn the February 26th net neutrality regulation passed by the Federal Communications Commission.
Continue reading Broadband Institute and Media Alliance Amici Brief in USTA vs FCC
Twitter shut down a tool that helps people hold politicians accountable in 29 countries around the world. The Netherlands-based civil society group Open State Foundation created Politwoops, which scans the Twitter accounts of politicians for tweets they’ve deleted. Deleted tweets can provide insight to the viewpoints of public officials, and journalists have been using Politwoops to keep representatives accountable for what they say publicly. In the spirit of transparency, Open State allowed other organizations to use the code of the tool, and use it they have, everywhere from Argentina, to Turkey, to Spain, to the United Kingdom.
Update: The campaign to save Politwoops was successful and the applications has been restored.
Update: After 56,000 signed the petition, Comcast upgraded speed and added seniors to the digital inclusion program. We won! Continue reading Speed for Some
67 civil society groups around the world write open letter to Facebook questioning the Internet.org program to provide walled garden Internet service to underserved populations in the developing world.
The government of India prevented internet.org from being marketed in the country after the campaign was launched.
To join the campaign against Internet.org, click here. Continue reading International Webtivists Question Facebook’s Internet.org
Here’s our individual filing in the FCC Net Neutrality proceeding.
MA is also signed onto several larger group filings. Continue reading Media Alliance Filing – Net Neutrality
Media Alliance joined sixteen other grassroots media group in a letter to the White House embracing a rights-model for the handling of big data.
The letter states “we believe that big data creates significant new risks of racial injustice. In order to ensure a fair and inclusive future for our nation’s communities of color, and to enable the potential benefits of these new technologies to be fully realized and broadly shared, it is vitally important that the emerging policy framework for big data explicitly acknowledges and address issues of racial discrimination”. Continue reading Big Data and Privacy
The Center for Digital Democracy, joined by a coalition of public health, child advocacy, and media justice groups, today filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in a case concerning teen privacy online. In Fraley v. Facebook, the social networking company was sued for violating the privacy of users of all ages, and the company settled with class-action attorneys before going to litigation. Facebook’s proposed settlement, which was eventually approved by the U.S. District Court, does not protect teen users from appearing in sponsored advertisements on Facebook, even though seven states forbid this kind of appropriation without parental consent Continue reading Coalition Demands Privacy Protections For Teens on Facebook
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(Full report available below).
Snipped excerpt:
A greater proportion of rural Americans continue to lack access to broadband at all speeds compared to their urban counterparts. Continue reading Rural Broadband Lag Persists
