UPDATE:
It is so disappointing to me - when people shoot themselves in the foot
and
that is exactly what the readers of this entry are doing.
You are going to end up with some DAMN old fart from the Telecom industry running the FCC - because you are choosing not to take this blog entry viral - Shame on you. Don't you dare complain about Comcast. CenturyLink, AT&T screwing you - here you have the chance to make a major contribution to something really important and it is evident 5 days later you are choosing to do nothing. I can't express how f#cking disappointed I am.
Sunday Feb 10
Susan Crawford will be on Moyers & Company this
Sunday Susan
Crawford, author of Captive
Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age will be
interviewed on this week’s edition of Moyers & Company on PBS. Most
stations - Sunday Feb 10.
. >>>HERE<<<<
I received an email through a listserve I belong to tonight that brought something to my attention that I want to bring to your attention.
We really need this to go viral. REALLY!!!!
Most of the time it is important for the people to speak.
Most of the time we don’t get a chance.
Here is our chance and we must take it.
We need to tell the White House what we want.
The FCC – your phones, your TV, your radio, your
internet, community broadband.
This is BIG stuff kids and you can make a difference by
signing a petition.
Most times the voice of the public is ignored in the
areas of the FCC - we don't have lobbyists – where the voices of the billionaire telecoms are heard and they get their way. Much of that problem stems from who is
running the FCC.
A new appointment to chair the FCC is coming up and we
need to let the White House know we want someone who is concerned about the public and not just in the pockets of big telecoms.
Do you really want an old white guy who doesn't understand technology appointed to this position?
NO you don't.
Do you really want an telecom exec appointed to this position?
NO you don't.
Do you want an executive from the telecoms making believe they are a public servant?
NO you don't.
the rumored other contenders for
FCC chair are problematic. Tom Wheeler, a total industry guy (he was President
and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association) and Jason Furman, Walmart apologist and National
Economic Council member, who doesn't have communications industry experience at
all.
Crawford would be a much better
choice.
Katrina vanden Heuvel Editorial
So here’s a modest proposal: Make
Susan Crawford the next FCC chair.
She is ideally qualified. In
addition to her deep knowledge and expertise in this issue, she understands the
landscape, players, and technology well, without being entrenched in the
culture of big business. She knows that democratic freedom of information is at
stake — and she knows that the FCC has the power to fix it.
She offers a new vision for the
future of broadband. Crawford would preempt the unfair and uncompetitive state
laws that infringe on the rights of local communities to expand broadband access.
To support local efforts to build out fiber-optic networks, she proposes
creating an infrastructure bank that would provide long-term, low-interest
financing. And to ensure that every American has access to high-quality
Internet, she advocates subsidies to increase competitive offerings.
Given telecom’s powerful lobby,
this is not a task for the faint of heart — but Crawford has the requisite
political chops.
I would not lie to you!!!!!
Petition Text:
America is ranked #16 in the world
for broadband penetration, speed and price. Where high-speed service is
available, it is often expensive and unreliable — and frequently there is only
one monopoly service provider.
The United States needs new
leadership at the Federal Communications Commission to help establish a
competitive regulatory climate and to encourage new entrants into the market.
Susan Crawford has spent her career studying the global telecommunications
industry and has a keen sense of the history that brought us to this point.
Ms. Crawford would facilitate
changes at the Federal level which could help America become the leader in
global telecommunications innovation again. President Obama, please appoint her
as FCC Chairman in 2013.
Read this article about Susan Crawford’s philosophy on broadband:
Should broadband Internet servicebe treated as a basic utility in the United States, like electricity, water,
and traditional telephone service? That’s the question at the heart of an
important and provocative new book by Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and
professor at Cardozo Law School. In Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and
Monopoly in the New Guilded Age, released Tuesday by Yale University Press,
Crawford argues that the Internet has replaced traditional phone service as the
most essential communications utility in the country, and is now as important
as electricity was 100 years ago.
“Truly high-speed wired Internet
access is as basic to innovation, economic growth, social communication, and
the country’s competitiveness as electricity was a century ago,” Crawford
writes, “but a limited number of Americans have access to it, many can’t afford
it, and the country has handed control of it over to Comcast and a few other
companies.”
SNIP
By taking on one of the most
powerful industries in the United States, Crawford knows that she will not
endear herself to the CEOs of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon.
“I’m not going to be on their Christmas card lists this year,” she quips. And
given the entrenched influence of these companies in Washington, D.C., many —
if not most — of her policy prescriptions seem a tad far-fetched. Is the U.S.
government about to mandate low-cost broadband Internet access for all
Americans? It’s not likely any time soon. But her book does provide a vivid and
eye-opening description of what ails America’s cable and telecom market, and
for that reason, it should be required reading for anyone interested in tech
policy. Crawford’s book also lays out a road-map for solutions, quixotic as
they may be. But, as Crawford says: “There is always hope.”
Most time we don’t get a say – have your voice heard
today.
Chairman G wants to spur hundreds
of David's while refusing to curb Goliath's power. Bad news, Mr. Chairman,
Goliath actually wins most of the time. Rather than doing his job, Genachowski
is begging others to do it for him.
More and more, he sounds more like
a cable lobbyist than a public servant. This is actually a pattern: the head
cable lobbyist in DC is a former FCC Chief himself and a recent FCC
Commissioner left for a job at Comcast just months after pushing for the
Comcast/NBC merger.
The revolving door helps to
explain why the FCC has refused to take meaningful action that might threaten
the cozy relationship between supposed competitors that have divided the market
to their benefit.
SNIP
We need an FCC Chair that will
wrestle with the real problem: far too much of our essential telecommunications
infrastructure is controlled by de facto monopolies unaccountable to the
communities that depend upon them.
Having Susan Crawford as the Chair
of the next FCC would do wonders to making the FCC responsive to the needs of
all America, not just the cable and telephone companies.
THIS is in YOUR best interests!!!
Most time we don’t get a say – have your voice heard
today.
"The television is just
another appliance -- it's a toaster with pictures." That statement was
made by Mark Fowler, Ronald Reagan's FCC Chairman who spearheaded a deregulatory
trend that has continued for over three decades. … Fowler
and the FCC have one thing right: with markets like these, consumer choice is
toast.
It's as if we've allowed General
Electric to have a monopoly on selling electricity to your home and then
allowed them to leverage this advantage into the market for their toasters.
Imagine the spiel: "If you buy our GE toaster, you get higher-speed
electricity that will cook your bagels faster. But only our bagels fit in the
GE toaster." Today, rather than tangling with your tastebuds, Comcast is
making decisions that affect what your ears hear, what your eyes see, and what
your keyboard can reach. Comcast can give its own video on demand service an
advantage via its Internet connections by removing it from the constraints of a
monthly data cap. But unaffiliated content like Netflix - that'll cost you
extra. It's the price you'll pay because you like a different brand of bread.
We are stuck in this primitive
state with company lobbyists who are buttering up policymakers just to jam
consumers.
THIS is in YOUR best interests!!!
Most time we don’t get a say – have your voice heard
today.
More on Susan Crawford.
Andrew Rasiej sez, "If you're
disappointed in the speed, quality, and cost of broadband service in the US
you should learn about Susan Crawford who is the greatest US expert on the state of
broadband and how the Federal Communications Commission has failed to properly
regulate and spur competition or innovation in the marketplace
Read her article here:
By Susan Crawford 03.22.12 3:56
PM
Susan Crawford
Susan Crawford is the (Visiting)
Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard's Kennedy School and a
Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. She was a board member of The
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2005-2008, and
served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and
Innovation Policy in 2009.
Surely we shouldn’t slip farther
behind as a country to serve the interests of a few large companies.
In 1901, Republican Theodore
Roosevelt took on another utility industry that had consolidated and was
gouging Americans. “The railway,” he said, “is a public servant. Its rates
should be just to and open to all shippers alike. The government should see to
it that within its jurisdiction this is so and should provide a speedy,
inexpensive, and effective remedy to that end.”
Leadership within the FCC and
oversight by Congress will provide those remedies. Strangling the FCC’s ability
to regulate will drive us backwards.
AND She has experience
Susan Crawford, Kevin Werbach Named Obama's FCC Review Team Leads
Nov 14, 2008 7:01 PM PST
We'd like to congratulate our long
time CircleID participants, Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach for being named
today as Obama-Biden FCC Transition Team Leads.
Susan Crawford, is a professor at
the University of Michigan Law School who recently ended her term as a member
of the Board of Directors of ICANN and is the founder of OneWebDay. Kevin
Werbach, is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder of the Supernova Group and
the organizer of Supernova, a leading executive technology conference.
And you need to read this – here’s a snip from the NY
Times– please read the whole thing.
Op-Ed Contributor
By SUSAN CRAWFORD
Published: April 10, 2010
But if the F.C.C.’s labeling of
high-speed Internet access providers undermines its ability to tell them what
to do, how can it ensure that consumers get the information they need about
real speeds and prices? How can it ensure that basic communications services —
which, these days, means Internet access — are widely available?
The F.C.C. has the legal authority
to change the label, as long as it can provide a good reason. And that reason
is obvious: Americans buy an Internet access service based on its speed and
price — and not on whether an e-mail address is included as part of a bundle.
The commission should state its case, relabel high-speed Internet access as a
“telecommunications service,” and take back the power to protect American
consumers.
100,000 signatures.
PLEASE MAKE THIS GO VIRAL
Sign the White House Petition
It is in YOUR best interests to sign this petition.
I would not lie to you!!!
