shouting loudly

I was dismayed to learn that AT&T is trying to buy T-Mobile for a whopping $39 billion. AT&T can use the extra towers to improve reception in very crowded metropolitan areas, but the decrease in competition and likely resulting increase in price is a big problem. People who sell a product charge what the market [...]

Professor Lessig is presenting on Institutional Corruption today at the Kennedy School as his first public appearance at Harvard since his return a few months ago. Professor Lessig likes to introduce three ideas to frame his talk today: 1) influence, 2) independence and 3) responsibility. Relying on his framework of the four modalities of control [...]

Most of you perhaps don’t know that I am writing my dissertation about Global Voices. But this is an incredible group of people who make sure that parts of the world that otherwise gets ignored in the mainstream media get their voices heard. They are currently looking for donations that will help them sustain the [...]

Why are media and power always a bad combination? Whether it is the elite who is abusing the media for its own purposes (in the words of Chomsky and Herman, to ‘manufacture consent‘) or whether it is the media themselves who are powerful, often heard as in ‘the media are biased‘, the message seems clear [...]

In a series begun yesterday, the Seattle Times is taking on the sorry state of the media industry and media policy. Editorial Page Editor James Vesely has a brief introduction. Yesterday, they ran an opinion piece by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Today, it’s Penn Law School luminary Ed Baker. Today, they also ran a scathing [...]

In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, an excellent profile of music mogul Rick Rubin suggests Sony’s recent hiring of Rubin as Columbia Records co-head just might save both the company and the music industry. Rubin certainly seems bent on changing the music industry. He sounds like a Free Culture activist, scolding the industry for [...]

There are often times when I wish I had my trusty digital voice recorder—the one that sent Senator Ted Stevens’ “series of tubes” anti-net neutrality speech into the Internet Meme Hall of Fame. Yesterday afternoon at the annual convention for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the most poignant such moment came [...]

As Verizon moves forward with installing FiOS fiber optic phone/internet/TV service in (mostly wealthy, white) neighborhoods throughout the country, it is taking the time and expense to pull out copper wires. Why spend the money? As explained on the Consumers Union blog, Hear Us Now, there are two obvious incentives. First, consumers can’t go back. [...]

When Bob McChesney personally emails everyone in his personal email address book, you know something serious is afoot, and this is no exception. Low-volume periodicals–and not large-circulation magazines–are about to be hit with a postage rate increase of as much as 30%. To help deal with rising costs, the USPS last year proposed a simple [...]

In an open letter (NOT a pdf for once), Apple CEO Steve Jobs blamed the big four music labels for forcing Apple to use DRM in iTunes and called for DRM-free licensing for the sale of online music.