FCC Update

According to the nytimes there is mounting controversy surrounding Kevin Martin’s plan to relax the rules surrounding media ownership.

Jeff Jarvis, author of the blog BuzzMachine, has a different take on the Kevin Martin’s plan to relax media ownership laws. Unlike Robert McChesney (see previous post) he thinks the FCC allowing cross-platform media ownership is a good thing and should in fact go further. He writes: “Why not give them a chance to invent new ways to gather and serve journalism across all media and all distribution channels?”

Beat Reporting With a Social Network: Can it Work?

Jay Rosen describes his new project Beat Blogging as follows: “Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a “live” social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.” So he and David Cohn have created this network with 13 professional beat reporters (complete list). This collaborative experiment is interesting in that is melds citizen journalism with professional standards: “Bring knowledge, contacts and interests of many different people from around the beat into the production of news, views and information for the beat, by making use of social networking tools that lower the cost of collaboration and make it viable for dispersed groups to become an editorial force.”

Since privacy is an illusion anyway…

Daniel Kerr argued that anonymity should no longer be the goal of privacy legislation. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information. Kerr: “Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that.” Currently the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn’t require the gov’t to obtain a warrant for communication between someone on American soil and someone in another country. Kerr wants this to include anyone, anytime, period. Some are arguing that this legislation is coming on the heels of lawsuits against the big telecommunications companies that shared info with the US gov’t. This would grant immunity to these companies. (link)

Earlier this week it was leaked that the FBI had considered tracking the sale of falafels in order to catch Iranian terrorists…

the next president better know how to use a computer

TechPresident is doing some really interesting stuff:
“TechPresident was started by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry as a new group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.

The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who’s got the fastest growing group of friends on MySpace.”

It’s really worth a look-see.

facebook is watching you…

Facebook is creating a whole new way for companies to advertise using information generated from user profiles.  The problem is that ads Facebook get ignored because people are too busy checking on the status of their first high school girlfriend or editing their profiles.  Facebook is developing a system that will use all this great information to create a network in order to display ads on other sites.  Facebook claims that the info on its website is accurate as people are inclined to tell the truth because they use the site to communicate mostly with friends.  Here is a New York Times article with some pretty scary although probably realistic predictions for this technology as well Facebook’s own press release.

Bob McChesney on the FCC and net neutrality

Bob McChesney, keynote speaker at the Citizen Media Forum on November 3rd, discusses new FCC chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to relax rules regarding media ownership at a public hearing tomorrow with the Minnesota Monitor as well as issues surrounding net neutrality. He cites as an example the Telus incident in Canada, pointing out that there are no net neutrality laws here. Speaking of which, according to BetaNews, Sympatico admitted just a few days ago to many of the same internet filtering techniques as Comcast.

She’s Oprah..of course

Oprah has had her own YouTube channel for 6 whole days now (here is the story). She introduced her channel by hosting a television show with all the YouTube “stars”. Her favorite was Tyson the skateboarding dog: “If we all had the passion of that dog everyone would be successful”. Really Oprah? A passionate dog? Either way I find Oprah-juggernaut terrifying. YouTube has clearly cemented itself as commercial venture, as Oprah is using YouTube celebrity cache to hawk her show, the veneer of equality is clearly gone. Oprah is the new YouTube star.