Blog Posts

Can't Buy Me Laws: Congress Must Give Back Chris Dodd's Dirty Money

Joel Kelsey,

January 24, 2012

People inside the D.C. bubble often tell stories about lavish fundraisers and the use of campaign cash to shore up votes in Congress. Conspiracy theories about who uses their PAC money, or direct contributions, to bend the ear of powerful committee chairmen and party leaders circulate throughout the capital faster than the Metro.

Still, the stories are usually hard to substantiate, and publicly members of Congress and their staffs are quick to deny that money has any influence at all. Rarely is the systemic corporate capture of Washington, D.C., on display in such a transparent and ugly way as it was last week.

more »
Media Literacy Students Create Anti-SOPA Video

Josh Levy,

January 24, 2012

Under the leadership of our friends at New Mexico’s Media Literacy Project, ninth graders Jack Folkner, Martin Jencka and Jay Jewell-Roth created a video about the recently shelved Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

more »
Web Blacks Out, Senators Defect [UPDATE]

Josh Levy,

January 19, 2012

Yesterday was unbelievable. In an unprecedented show of strength, millions of Internet users rose up against the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect IP Act, with Wikipedia, reddit, Boing Boing, SavetheInternet.com and thousands of other sites going black to join in the protest (even Google hid its logo behind a black bar for the day). Millions sent letters to Congress, and tens of thousands picked up the phone to urge their senators to vote “no” on PIPA, which is scheduled for a Jan. 24 vote.

more »
Why We Went Black

Tim Karr,

January 19, 2012

Wikipedia and Google blacked out? Redditers in an uproar? Thousands of geeks abandoning their cubicles to take to the streets?

What's happening here?

more »
Momentum Builds Against SOPA and PIPA

Josh Levy,

January 17, 2012

Tomorrow you might be wondering who turned out the lights. Don’t worry — it will simply be one of the biggest days in the history of the open Internet.

Thousands of websites — including Wikipedia, reddit, BoingBoing, FreePress.net and SavetheInternet.com — will go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), bills in the House and Senate that could open the door to widespread censorship online.

more »
Does Corporate Cash Explain the Networks' Silence on SOPA?

Josh Levy,

January 12, 2012

Earlier this week we pointed to a Media Matters for America study showing that most of the major networks — ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC — have failed to cover opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Online piracy is definitely a problem. But these bills would do little to solve it. They’re the latest effort in Hollywood’s Sisyphean quest to close the open Internet — and slow down the kinds of online innovation that threaten the old-school media masters.

more »
Charitable Donations Given Via Cellphones on the Rise

Amy Kroin,

January 12, 2012

The first-ever study on mobile donors found that charitable donations made via cellphones have jumped in recent years. The report from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Pew Research Center analyzed the “Text to Haiti” campaign that followed the devastating 2010 earthquake.

The study shows that most text donors contributed on impulse as news about the campaign spread via friend networks. “Three quarters of these donors contributed using their phones on the same day they heard about the campaign,” the study notes, “and a similar number say they typically make text message donations without conducting much in-depth research beforehand.”

more »
Topics:
- Wireless
The News Networks' SOPA Blackout

Josh Levy,

January 9, 2012

You may have heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. Simply put, it's a bill in the House that could open the door to widespread Internet censorship.

Opposition to the bill has reached a boiling point. Millions of activists, hundreds of startups, social media sites like Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter and even big companies like Google, Yahoo! and eBay have joined with Free Press and other Internet advocacy groups against it.

more »
Verizon's Deal with Big Cable Spells the Demise of the Telecom Act

Joel Kelsey,

January 5, 2012

We all remember the 1980's and its awesome fashion and music. While some may want to revisit those aspects of the past, I don't think anyone wants to return to the era of the cable and Ma Bell monopolies.

Opening up communications markets was the purpose of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The Act was designed to help phone companies get into the pay-TV business, and cable companies get into the phone business. Yet after a series of regulatory blunders, this promise of increased competition and lower prices has become a distant memory, like 7-Up Gold. And the situation is only getting worse.

more »
Topics:
- Broadband
Big Win! AT&T Drops Its T-Mobile Takeover Bid

Craig Aaron,

December 19, 2011

This is huge: AT&T just announced it’s finally abandoning its doomed merger with T-Mobile.

For nearly a year, we've been showing that this deal would have only meant higher prices, fewer choices and tens of thousands of lost American jobs. Free Press knew it; the Department of Justice agreed; so did the FCC.

more »
Topics:
- Wireless