Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Business > Powell Is Stepping Down as Chairman of F.C.C.” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/business/21cnd-powell.html?ex=1264050000&en=704d891842c25da8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland”>Powell Is Stepping Down as Chairman of F.C.C.

This just in from the NY Times: Michael Powell is stepping down as FCC Chair in March.

The list of replacements includes: another Republican member of the commission, Kevin Martin; Becky Klein, a former head of the public utility commission in Texas; Patrick Wood III, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and Michael Gallagher, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the Commerce Department.

Free Press News : FCC media rules remain in limbo

Consumer activists, backed by smaller and independent media concerns, challenged the rules and won. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled in June 2004 that the FCC had failed to justify its overhaul of the media regulations. It ordered the agency to reconsider the rules, which were stayed. The deadline to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court was originally set for Dec. 3. But the latest extension to the case eliminates any chance that it could be argued in late winter and decided before the court adjourns at the end of June, said Harold Feld, associate director of Media Access Project, a Washington-based public interest law firm that challenged the FCC rules.

Podcasting is DIY radio for programmers and listeners alike. Will it save us from corporate radio? Or further isolate us inside our own miniature media worlds?
BY DAN KENNEDY. The Boston Phoenix,
January 3, 2005.

Thanks to MediaCitizen

OFAC reverses embargo ruling By John Dudley Miller
The Scientist December 16, 2004.

In a reversal of almost all of the controversial prohibitions enacted in September 2003 that led to a lawsuit against it by a coalition of US publishers 3 months ago, the Treasury Department reauthorized American authors and publishers to collaborate with and edit the scientific and other manuscripts of citizens in trade-embargoed countries yesterday (December 15)….

…[P]ublishers are not yet ready to drop their lawsuit, filed September 27, because the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), by granting a general license, continues to assert that it can regulate informational materials. The plaintiffs argue that OFAC has no such authority.

Will voices of dissent still be heard? By Scott Martelle Los Angles Times (Dec 7 2004)
Part E; Pg. 1. [free registration required]

In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American firms from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first get U.S. government approval.

The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the 1st Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States, a country that prides itself as the international beacon of free expression.

…spokeswoman Molly Millerwise described the sanctions as “a very important part of our overall national security.”…

The regulations seem shaded by Joseph Heller’s classic novel “Catch-22.”
American publishers are allowed to reissue, for example, Cuban communist propaganda or officially approved books but not original works by writers whom the Cuban government has stifled.

More information:

• IEEE OFAC Information page
• ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PRESSES
• Nobel Winner Ebadi Sues U.S. to Publish Memoirs, By Claudia Parsons, ABC News /Reuters
  Nov 3, 2004.
• AT THE LIBRARY by JULIE WINKELSTEIN,
  Contra Costa Times, Nov. 19, 2004.

Michael Copps: An FCC Commissioner taking on Big Media

Read on to learn more about what FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is doing about media consolidation. The quote below just makes one want to *sigh*!

Indeed, Copps says his town hall meetings were mostly ignored by news media, including cities where they took place. At a hearing in Phoenix, Copps recalls asking someone in attendance how he got the word. “He said, `I heard about it on the BBC.’ It’s a real conspiracy of silence, and I think it goes all the way to the top.”

Arts > Frank Rich: Will We Need a New ‘All the President’s Men’?” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/arts/17rich.html?ex=1255492800&en=8c2a594add800736&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland”>Frank Rich: Will We Need a New ‘All the President’s Men’? (NYT: 10/17/04 Arts section)

“The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before,” wrote William Safire last month.

Wow, you know it’s getting scary if Safire, once a Nixon speechwriter, is getting nervous.

This is an interesting study where the combination of uber secrecy in the Whitehouse combines with media consolidation to create the situation where Sinclair broadcasting can air an anti-Kerry infomercial disguised as “documentary” days before the election and Fox News can pander to the republican party in return for favorable rules changes by the FCC. Read on.

Outfoxed interviews released under Creative Commons

Go to Torrentocracy to download all the interviews used in the movie, “Outfoxed”. Robert Greenwald has agreed to release the interviews within Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism under a Creative Commons non-commercial license (press release).

“maybe, just maybe, we can paradigm shift ourselves to a place where all the established players don’t own the turf.”

[Originally read on Lessig's blog]

Who Owns What

The Columbia Journalism Review web site offers a searchable list of media properties, timelines for six major media conglomerates, and links to nearly six years of the Review’s articles about media ownership in its Who Owns What section.

Copyrighting the President Wired 12(8), August, 2004.

Laurence Lessig raises a very interesting point here. Basically, copyright can have a negative affect on political discourse, especially given our 21st century reality of media consolidation and concentration. Read on!

The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise. The president, in this sense, is “free.” But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show appearances? Who controls his words and images then?