Digital Future of Public Media

Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554

In the Matter of Petition for Declaratory
Ruling Regarding Public, Educational, and
Governmental Programming

MB Docket No. 09-13; CSR-8127; CSR-8128

The undersigned organizations urge the Commission to immediately act to protect
Public, Educational and Government (PEG) access channels from unfair
discrimination by cable providers.  We support the request made on behalf of the

This post concludes New America’s coverage of the 2010 IGF in Vilnius, Lithuania. Two weeks ago, we explained the non-traditional, multi-stakeholder composition of the IGF and expressed hope that its vision of Internet governance would continue to reflect its structure. Last week, in highlighting some of the discussions from the first two days, we noted that most participants - while not breaking new ground - reaffirmed the need for IGF to maintain its open, multi-stakeholder approach. Now we turn to the second half of the 2010 IGF.

It’s a good thing for community news start-ups that the web is not dead.

Indeed, for the more than 100 online community news founders, innovators and researchers expected at the RJI Reynolds Block by Block Community News Summit in Chicago on Friday, the web is the future.

As previously noted, the 2010 IGF Meeting recently completed in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The IGF schedule for Day 1 (Sept. 14), though including several morning workshops, was dominated by the Opening Ceremony during the afternoon main session. The fan favorite of the Ceremony was Vytautas Grubliauskas playing trumpet and singing What a Wonderful World. As a Lithuanian Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Internet Governance for Development main session (Day 3, afternoon), Mr. Grubliauskas personified the transnational nature of the Internet.

With the 2010 IGF Meetingcurrently underway in Vilnius, Lithuania (Sept. 14-17), it seems appropriate to describe briefly the Internet Governance Forum, and why it matters.

The IGF site itself explains its origins in the IGF Mandate calling on the UN Secretary-General to convene “a meeting of the new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue.” This description belies the true nature of the IGF, for as soon as most people hear about a UN-created body, their minds usually conjure images of stately delegates endlessly debating minutiae, agreeing on little. To be sure, such debates are not unheard of at IGF meetings (see blog post on whether round-table type discussions should be allowed), and stately delegates are part of the IGF. However, the forum has two interesting features.

• First of all, we would like to announce that Version 1 of Daniel Amzallag and Amalia Deloney’s information community case study on Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota: Adapting business models to digitalized information demandhas been completed and posted to the Media Policy Initiative’s website.

I. Introduction

We are submitting this filing in response to the FTC’s August 17th, 2010 notice of public workshop and request for comments on the future of journalism, News Media Workshop – Comment, Project No. P091200 (the “Request”).1 We appreciate the opportunity to respond to
the FTC Discussion Draft published on the FTC website prior to the June 15th 2010 workshop and specifically to Section I.A, “Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators.”

Originally published at the Center for Media Justice’s Media Action Grassroots Network.

Minneapolis, MN — From a Latino leader in South Minneapolis, to a Seneca Nation elder, to a South Minneapolis hip-hop artist and organizer, to a rural newspaper editor, more than 700 Minnesotans demonstrated that the future of the Internet matters during an August 19th, 2010 Townhall with FCC Commissioners Copps and Clyburn—while 1,100 more watched online through a live feed by the Uptake MN.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission will be in Minneapolis for a public hearing on the future of the Internet. The big question now looming over this hearing is whether the fate of the Internet has already been decided behind closed doors before the FCC has heard what the public has to say.

If local visionaries have their way, Humboldt County's General Plan will include a new Communications Element focusing on fundamental policies to develop local communications infrastructure and services to meet local needs.