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The "incredible" 90%+ figure is in fact incredible. I've seen this particular piece of misdirection ove and over, where "media" is redefined as "mass media", and then "mass media" is redefined as "national TV".

I'll have to dig out my copy of The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian but I recall "the media" being defined rather broadly to include books, magazines, newspapers, a/v recordings as well as broadcast.

Note, by the way, that my argument is not that there is *not* corporate news. Note that my argument is not even that the Bix 6 are a result of contraction. My argument is simply that expansion of media is outstripping the contraction.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying that. Certainly it can be agreed that since the 70's technology has expanded the amount and range of media experiences available to the individual consumer. Your phrasing of this reminds me of a speech by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America at a conference (sorry doesn't have his speech), in which he talked about how at the same time that we are seeing technology expanding media potential (and thus the potential of civil society) we are seeing a retreat (or contraction) caused by coporatization of this media. This seems to be very similar to what you just stated, since you acknowledge that coporatization is a countervailing force. Dr. Cooper however saw a potential for the concentration of media in fewer and fewer hands to ultimately reverse the gains the technology has made.

McChesney in particular is pessimistic about the Web's potential to correct the media's current defects. He believes that we're in a brief window of openess that will close once the major media oligopies get their act together and team up with the communications infrastructure providers to turn the Web into a hypercommercialized interactive TV system. From this interview I gather that you don't think consumers will accept that. Consumer spending power works well in competitive markets not so well otherwise. Given the concerns about media concentration I've raised do you think consumer power will ultimately be sufficient? What are your views on the potential for antitrust action in the media industry?

Do you think that this is an accurate characterization of their arguements and your position? I would be very interested in hearing you respond at more length and detail to their arguements, as I found your interview to be quite insightful.

Oh, I posted part of the interview to www.indymedia.org there was some discussion, not too insightful but I thought you might be interested.

The "incredible" 90%+ figure is in fact incredible. I've seen this particular piece of misdirection ove and over, where "media" is redefined as "mass media", and then "mass media" is redefined as "national TV".

I'll have to dig out my copy of The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian but I recall "the media" being defined rather broadly to include books, magazines, newspapers, a/v recordings as well as broadcast.

Note, by the way, that my argument is not that there is *not* corporate news. Note that my argument is not even that the Bix 6 are a result of contraction. My argument is simply that expansion of media is outstripping the contraction.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying that. Certainly it can be agreed that since the 70's technology has expanded the amount and range of media experiences available to the individual consumer. Your phrasing of this reminds me of a speech by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America at a conference (sorry doesn't have his speech), in which he talked about how at the same time that we are seeing technology expanding media potential (and thus the potential of civil society) we are seeing a retreat (or contraction) caused by coporatization of this media. This seems to be very similar to what you just stated, since you acknowledge that coporatization is a countervailing force. Dr. Cooper however saw a potential for the concentration of media in fewer and fewer hands to ultimately reverse the gains the technology has made.

McChesney in particular is pessimistic about the Web's potential to correct the media's current defects. He believes that we're in a brief window of openess that will close once the major media oligopies get their act together and team up with the communications infrastructure providers to turn the Web into a hypercommercialized interactive TV system. From this interview I gather that you don't think consumers will accept that. Consumer spending power works well in competitive markets not so well otherwise. Given the concerns about media concentration I've raised do you think consumer power will ultimately be sufficient? What are your views on the potential for antitrust action in the media industry?

Do you think that this is an accurate characterization of their arguements and your position? I would be very interested in hearing you respond at more length and detail to their arguements, as I found your interview to be quite insightful.

Oh, I posted part of the interview to www.indymedia.org there was some discussion, not too insightful but I thought you might be interested.

I won't try to speak about independent media generally but what motivates me to work on Indymedia is the goal of creating a space within the media for points of view that are excluded from the mainstream. I interpret this as a project to create media democracy (in contrast to media capitalism), as such it must grow beyond the progressive/radical constituency that founded it to address the criticism that you raise. While Indymedia grew out of the protest movement and is most well known for covering protests much effort is going into creating permanent grassroots community media centers.

This is a much larger project than "stick it to the man schtick". Our goal in DC has been to empower those that don't have access to the media to be able to produce media themselves by conducting trainings. This way there isn't a "we" that covers "them" as democratic media is something that everyone should participate in.

Is this objective? No, it doesn't try to be.

Really? Do you fail to note the incredible 90+% of media is controlled by 6 companies in the US? The news outlets that are being bought by the likes of Disney and GE? That the editor of the LA Times talks about taking a bazooka to the wall between marketing and editorial? Advertisers making demands to content providers?

Documenting the corporitization of the media and the risks to society that entails is beyond the scope of this comment :) However, that Mr. Shirky can so easily dismis these concerns without even acknowledging these issues gives me pause. If you'd like to learn about the corporitization of the media I suggest you check out Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Manufacturing Consent (documentary) by Noam Chomsky, and Rich Media, Poor Democracy by Robert McChesney.

On the topic of the media and Seattle protests, the mainstream media did not cover globalization issues at all prior to the protests. Virtually, all coverage of globalization was confined to the business pages for whom the terms of globalization were already written. There were no discussions of human rights and labor issues of globalization. Activists organizing for Seattle recognized this and saw the need to create their own media. Hence, Indymedia was born and now there are 40 spread throughout the world.

Indymedia - become the media

is slashdot's editorial policy that the more evil a company is, the more exciting the news when they use open source software? personally i'd like to see news stories about groups using open source to do something cool that they could not afford to do otherwise. but i guess that isnt as good as something that disney does huh. by the way, my use of the word disney throughout this post is probably illegal. fight corporate media! don't become corporate media!

Anyone who still believes that the US believes in the spirit of civil disobediance, or that American (or Canadian for that matter... see Quebec City, A20) citizens actually have the right to peacefully assemble, or a right to expression should check out "This is What Democracy Looks Like" produced by the Indy Media Centre.

It is a 72 minute documentary compiled from the footage of over 100 activists who attended the demonstrations. Lots of Universities have been doing screenings of the film leading up to the FTAA protest in Quebec City in April, so if you see a poster for it, whether you believe in globalization or not, you should check it out.

Not watching this film is remaining ignorant. You don't have to agree with everything in it, but be warned, if you have any respect for freedom, this film will make you ANGRY.

I think everyone is missing the point. Obviously rooting webservers and posting some shpeel about anything is lame... But what about the people pushing technology to help activists? What about the tech teams at the Independent Media Centers? Or the people at hactivist.com who do hacks that don't break the law?

Well, sorry to deflate your balloon, but our protesting does achieve results, otherwise the Canadian police right now wouldn't be building the Great Wall of Canada to keep us out of their April trade meeting. I speak as an organizer among the protesters and as a hacktivist who runs a popular activist website. I support all forms of hacktivism, although I prefer the variety that sets up web projects that provide an alternative to corporate web space. It tickles me to know that my website went online before most of the dot-coms and that it will be around after most of them cease business.

Most of in the anti-globalization movement are not in it for the sake of protest. Organizing actions and protests is hard work and sometimes involves jail time and getting whacked in the head by the cops. But we continue on because we're finally winning for a change. The capitalists can't have a meeting anymore in any of the favorite spots, so now they hold meetings in inaccessible places like Quebec City, Quatar, Hawaii, and so on. They understand the monetary damage that we've done to companies like Monsanto and McDonalds. The former has seen its market cap drop by billions as a result of effective anti-biotech direct action. Then there are those of us who were involved in the pirate radio movement, which put hundreds of stations on the air and so scared the FCC that they were forced to consider reforms.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we've accomplished in the past 5 years. Don't forget that when some of us aren't on the streets, we are busy helping develop Linux and Gnutella and Freenet. We're also building kick ass websites like Indymedia and Protest.net.

After reading your piece on the WTO, I have a question for you.

What do you think of the Indymedia phenomenon?

Or, more broadly, do you feel that the increasing accessibility of digital cameras and other tools, which lower the cost of putting a strong Web-based newsroom together, might challenge the increasingly corporate system of mainstream news?

Interestingly, you don't mention Indymedia in that article, but we're a collective of people who gets equipment out to intereted people, to cover the protests on the inside.

They have connected live, streaming news about protests all over the world, including the recent UN climate talks, the WTO, the World Economic Forum, and the march of the Zapatistas to Mexico City.

Although Indymedia started in Seattle, there are IMC bureaus all over the world now.

I think they've done two important things- popularized the "movement against corporate globalization," and created a forum for debate.

The debate you talk about- between the protesters who want to fix institutions like the WTO and the ones who want to abolish them- is taking place in the discussion rooms of Indymedia. Check it out!

-perdida

That's funny. your user info page says "Please donate your used, reliable PCs and Macs to independent journalists here". We should stop that, because it "will destroy the need for a computer hardware insdustry in certain sectors."

Also, this designs could be open-sourced.. That would be nice.

--

Take for example sites like indymedia which holds a public "tribune" where people can submit stories, video, audio and any kind of news, and, damn, get it KNOWN! The demos that happened in Seattle some time ago were covered, say, oddly by the mainstream media (e.g. CNN), that is: they conveniently omitted to mention that plastic bullets were being used and that people were basically getting their ass kicked. When indymedia and other sites published news contradicting this, with audio and video evidence, they had to change their story!

Of course, the problem is that not every one can afford a T1 and start an indymedia. (I'm sure some of ya slashdotters could, but whatever). The thing is that it's easier (or at least possible) to do that than to go broadcast on national tv! And you don't need much.. Just a bit of web space, a color scanner and you're on the run. I covered a demo down here in montreal that turned bad when the police came down on demonstrators with pepper spray and cavalry, I took some pictures and put it on the web. It makes quite an impression.

The industrial police has been there for a while, you know. Heck, thinking about it, police has *always* been industrial. Police forces were initially created by the state to force strikes to stop in the factories in the first days of industrialisation.

It's always been like this, police pretending to "protect and serve" when they "provoke and seize", the state pretending to have a "constitution" or "civil rights", when you're on paper or on a soap opera (like the evening news), it's all beautiful and nice, but when you get busted, it's not funny anymore. Just ask Mumia Abu Jamal...

I sincerely hope that the kids who have been making a joyful noise in Zurich and Davos hightail it to Belgium to give the anti-expression police their due.

I mean, seriously, folks. The value contained on a hard drive of pirated music may be more than it costs to bust the kid, but the actual value there- the kid wasn't intending to sell the music at ALL- makes this operation a huge, expensive waste of time.

The Euro Union loves to rule by fiat, and it loves to show international organizations that it's willing to play by the hard-bitten anti-fair-use rules promulgated in USia. Oh well, so much for enlightenment..

Trolls, listen up. This forum allows you to post comments with images. I've started the trolling by posting the "Giver" and "Comp-u-geek" pics, but it's not enough. Get your asses over to rotten.com, download all those awful photos, and let's show those liberal nutballs something really offensive.

Bruce's article is good and shows a lot of different viewpoints on the California "power crisis" ... but maybe if Bruce was more involved with everything that is going on, or if he talked to some people about it ... in a nutshell, PG&E is scamming everyone and outright threatening blackouts if they don't get their way (and they have had rolling blackouts here). San Francisco, in particular, is the only city in the entire country that is federally mandated to have cheap, public power... so PG&E has spent a lot of money to keep that law out of its way. And there's so much more. PG&E can go to hell, and there is a growing ratepayers strike happening in the SF Bay Area. For more information that is more specific than what Bruce writes, check out the SF Bay Guardian coverage or SF Independent Media Center coverage. The corporate media is just reciting press releases from PG&E and Gov. Davis.

And if so, what kind of standards would allow a 250 million gallon coal sludge spill in Martin County, KY (Oct 11, 2000) be blacked out from the media? This is at least an order of magnitude greater than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, and the clean-up is significantly more difficult because the sludge sinks to the bottom of the streams and rivers. (It can't be skimmed off the top.)

What about the Election 2000 fiasco with the major networks calling FL before the people in CA had finished voting?

How about the absence of news regarding civilian conditions in Iraq? If you think the NATO vets are suffering from a bad case of Gulf War Syndrome, think about the people that were continuosly bombed with depleted (though still radioactive) Uranium munitions.)

On the brighter side, the internet at least allows people to search and find alternative views on most events. John Q. Public doesn't have to swallow the official media stance on any issue anymore.

We need to wake up.

No matter who invented it, I am definitely thankful for it.

Radio has an intimacy, based on all of the associations humans have with the voice and the spoken word, that television and the Net can't surpass. It is also a low-cost technology that anyone can learn to use for communication.

I can listen to National Public Radio and hear all the news I want without having to train my eyes on one location, or hear (many) ads. I especially like the BBC world service when I am pulling an allnighter.

I participated in a live webradio broadcast at the Independent Media Center in Cincinnatti, and people from Prague, Los Angeles and London tuned in.

This is a cheap, ubiquitous technology that is easy to learn to use. I also had a low power (40 watt) FM transmitter with a few co-conspirators, we attached a 20 foot antenna to a 6 story building and reached 3 counties.

The FCC which has long kept the airwaves private, "legalized" low power FM but made the paperwork and technological threshholds insurmountable for community and home users. We want real free radio.

Tahing it further, the FCC screwed shit up royally when it allowed the same person to own radio stations and TV stations in the same market. Monopoly ownership breeds..well, what you probably have on most of your dial-

Top forty, Christian, country, and crap.

Patronize independently owned, low power, nonprofit and community radio and cable access TV in your town.

First of all, Indymedia is, perhaps even more terrifyingly to your p.o.v., a website that is produced by hundreds of people and read by thousands more. It's all Open Source, too. Indymedia started at the WTO protest in seattle and it got more hits that week than CNN did, thank you very much.

Secondly, De Beers certainly can see if it is using conflict diamonds. It is a diamond consortium (read trust) and has a lot of control over sources. That is why everyone is so nice to them when they graciously offer to do some sort of analysis that will enable them to see where their cut gemstones come from. Nice try guys but you really can't. You have to have personal knowledge of where they came from in your organization.

Thirdly, I voted for Nader thank you very much. Gore sucks as much as Bush does in my opinion. Go read my K5 diary, it has lots of stuff about the story I have been working on for the past month for national publication, it is about a coal mine that spilt 250 million gallons of coal sludge in 2 river systems, this company is owned by a company that is owned by Fluor Corp which gave half a Million to al gore the so called Environmentalist.

Fourthly, I think that people SHOULD be evenhanded. I would never write anything nearly as biased as what you will find on indymedia for the print publications off of which I make my living. I will however read indymedia as an antidote for the equally strong biases of the corporate media, which it openly tries to combat.

Thank you for your response, seriously.

There have been plenty of discussions on this thread about personal freedom and such. The fact is, that this political system was designed by and for corporations.

You have this lovely constitution image in the corner of the screen, but the constitution itself was designed for wealthy landowners to benefit. To paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, "them that owns the country should run it" is the name of the game.

I am personally a socialist but libertarians and other points of view also have some good critiques of the corporate control of American politics. In other countries this may be more or less the case. But as the most powerful country on earth the US needs to adopt a more stringent separation of cash and state than it has to date. Corporate control over politics has led us to 2 leading parties whose studied, too-similar stances during election season leave people stoned by boredom, yet unable to make the connections when "compassionate conservative" Bush nominates a largely hard-right cabinet.

The open source movement is about self-literacy in computer programming. to a greater or lesser extent the open source user should be a programmer, a self-diagnoser of problems and someone who knows where the best sources of information are should s/he need, or want, to share knowledge. Huge corporations have scarred the constitutional system, which for all its faults was designed to be an open source political system, in which any belief and any method of propagating that belief could compete for adherents. No more! The humorous, creative and powerful alternatives to the Republicrats need freedom to breathe and grow.

Please, please use your skills, hardware, and bandwith to support the radical political alternative of your choice. Check out this site for a structural model of how you can self-publish distinctly political content in a way that PEOPLE WILL READ IT, not your little rant sheet on your website. There is also a conservative/libertarian model . Also, read news sources you disagree with for healthy political thinking.

sorry about that.

music,, discourse, and protest.

You are right. The FCC had a proposal to grant thousands of low power licenses and the NAB poured millions into quashing this. Right now a bill that will kill this is on an appropriations bill, waiting for Congress to resume.

For more info see on the bill see this article.

For more on the media industry's lobbying to take away your airwaves see this report from the Center for Public Integrity.

I love watching techno-laden art house flix online. But what about the hope that digital film production could open up choice at theaters?

What costs lots of money, upfront, for a movie theater is the ability to pay distros for expensive first run movies. Hence you have the second run movie theater with the $1-$1.50 ticket.

This said, most movie theaters, even those with the expensive tix, make most of their movies through concession stand sales.

So, my hope is that digital filmmaking becomes enough of a popular activity that movie theaters can buy the digital films at low prices. This would allow for many more movie theaters specializing in genre showings, art movies, etc. Even those movie theaters which show major distro stuff could round out their stables with GOOD digital movies instead of B-movies as they do now.

For this to work, the digital producers need to get together and distro on a national scale, reaching out to indie and general movie theaters at cut-rate prices.

Just a note- the Independent Media Centers - my favorite thing to plug on slashdot - is an example of how digital video has already lowered the cost of news authored by multiple sources.

What timing-- I was just trying to work out an ideal scenario for event management for the Independent Media Center of New York.We're actually looking for people to help set up this system -- a volunteer effort, I'm afraid, we couldn't pay; you just gotta do it out of love of truth and hatred of corporate misdeeds ;) Most of what we have so far is set up in php or perl, I think.

Indymedia is unusual in that we need a system which is not for a paid staff in an office, but rather for a bunch of freelance volunteers and the activists whose events they cover. Our mission is to get coverage for events and perspectives the corporate media ignore. We do not have an editorial board which dictates content, so we need the calendar for egalitarian coordination of who's going to cover what. We need a better slingshot for David to fight Goliath.

Right now we are working off a calendar at protest.net which serves our needs OK: anyone can post events; the calendar is accessable through the web, and viewable in day, week, and month formats. We just need it to mail out a digest to a) reporters who want to know what is going on so they can cover things and b) other activists who want to be involved in these events too. (The creator of the software that protest.net runs on, which is called Calendrome, is working on this aspect now). We might want to have two different kinds of digest for these two categories of people.

Then we will need to make it so that people can either reply to the email or visit the website to register that they want to work on the article in a print, audio, photo, or video capacity. There should be a page people can visit to see who is covering the event and whether there are gaps in one medium or another. It would be nice if this could be worked seamlessly into a way (web chat? message boards?) that reporters could talk with each other about the event.

Once an event has been covered, it becomes an entity in our article system, where it may be combined with other coverage of that event by an editorial team. People who covered an event should still be able to hunt down the info about the event in the calendar or somewhere in our system, so they can look up who else covered the event to share notes, coordinate how the articles/clips are displayed on the site or used in other media, talk about future collaborations, etc.

A more "newsy" source is needed? By now, everyone should know that Independent Media Center provides live coverage of the anti-globalization, anti-corporatization protests, as well as continuing coverage of local issues that are censored by corporate media.

See: Philadelphia IMC

See: R2K Support Site

See: Independent Media Center

This is relevant to Slashdot readers for several reasons. The first being that Shapeshifter, who helps with 2600, was arrested and charged with FELONIES for simply being on the street with a cell phone. Another good reason is that some of us who were involved in the Philadelphia protests are regular Slashdot readers. The police affidavit that was used to justify the police raid on the puppet warehouse cited two geek media sources: IndyMedia and my site, Mid-Atlantic Infoshop. No surprise, the cops are using alternative media website to glean information about activists.

Finally, and most importantly, everybody who visits this site should be concerned with how the Philly cops took their anti-activist intimidation and violence to a new level. If you aren't mad about the cops holding activists on million dollar bails because they were talking on a cell phone, you should be outraged that they raided a PUPPET-MAKING WAREHOUSE and arrested everybody inside for "blocking a highway." Most of the arrests in Philadelphia weren't for ACTUAL LAWBREAKING, they were pre-emptive arrests deisgned to strike fear into activists and anybody who might be thinking of joining them.

On a lighter note, the police affidavit also said that we were getting money from the Soviet Union. I'd say that the Philly cops need to buy a wall map that was made in the 1990s.

The emergence of the Independent Media Centers is really re-defining not only what we mean by journalism, but also more specifically online journalism. A Slashdot format is one where a small group of people hype themselves and their website and eventually sell it to a larger corporate interest which (arguably) influences the stories reported. The Independent Media Center model builds on traditions in anarchist self-organization, and so far has been the most democratic journalism that USA has seen in recent decades.

Working class and community-centered journalism is almost totally extinct. In a country where there were thousands of union-sponsored and community-organized newspapers, all that is left are a few fledgling papers in a few cities. Corporatization and illegal union smashing took care of the working class movement to provide working class news and discussion.

The model for IMC is: 1) a website which allows anonymous, self-publishing of audio, video, images, hyperlinks or text, 2) a counterpart, organized in some kind of collective method (there are a million different methods from organic to consensus, etc), that meets face-to-face and plans editorial changes (i.e. what stories are on the homepage), organizes print versions, organizes co-operation with pirate radio and other independent media sources.

Our hits are through the roof, and the goal is that within a year or so, many people will be looking to democratic news sources instead of corporate news sources. At least a distinction should be made. The idea of objective journalism outside of scientific publications seems to be a quaint throwback or corporate PR. The idea is that other voices and other biases can be heard through the onslaught of corporate BS.

Your Vote Doesn't Count If They Don't Count It

according to Grolier encyclopedia:

The electors, popularly elected on election day, meet in their respective state capitals on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December in presidential election years. They vote by BALLOT separately for president and vice president. To discourage having a president and vice president from the same state, at least one of the candidates for whom they vote must not be a resident of the electors' own state. Certified lists of votes cast for the two offices are transmitted to the president of the U. S. Senate--since 1950 through the General Services Administration. On the following January 6 the president of the Senate, presiding at a joint session of CONGRESS, opens the certificates, and the votes are counted by tellers. The election is decided by a majority of the total electoral college vote.

doesn't this mean that, with the vote being this close and all, that we will have to wait until the electoral college actually meets (according to this - 01/06/01) and votes before we can be really sure which of half of the same man will be the future king of the usa?

and to top it off, no independent party (according to indymedia.org) received 5% of the vote - meaning they will not get federal funding. also meaning that this outdated, misrepresenting bi-partisan government system ain't goin' nowhere. damn the general public.

Please. Jon Katz, do you believe that what you are writing is relevant outside of a small group of naive geeks who have never seen beyond a suburban home or a dorm room? I would halfway consider your sincerity if you ever worked on anything besides advancing a journalism career that ends you up in Time Magazine more than anywhere else. When there are protests or movements to organize, neither slashdot nor jon katz appear to be willing to put themselves on the line. I guess that has to do with a certain corporate ownership, huh. Anyway. As Jon Katz pleads with Time and Newsweek to do one more introspective piece on columbine, the independent media movement will be doing exactly what slashdot and katz claim to be doing.

Independent Media Center

SF Bay Area IMC

Read Indymedia. Al Gore didn't claim to "invent the internet," he claims to have "taken the initiative in creating the internet." The difference? As a congressman, Gore pushed for funding for the development of networking digital communication.

And I'm still not voting for him.

Want an example of using technology in new and creative ways to effect policy makers? Let's all get together and treat the IMF with "indifference and contempt."

Toy Z Tech has a web page up outlining a call to action. The purpose of the action is to shut down IMF web sites (this is synchronous with the protests in Prague). Toy Z Tech offers a download (a web-based IRC client) that supposedly functions as a tool for electronic civil disobience.

wow, only 15 years or so to wait for the discourse to change? sounds good to me!

i think ralph nader is an easy way for hipster politics to seem different. it is hard for liberals these day to get radical cred if they are behind al gore, huh.

for people whose have real problems under this stinking system, the time has always been now. the problem is motivating those who sympathize to give up their comfort and security that the stinking system offers them.

anyway, this next week in san francisco, the NAB and the FCC will get a chance to see what this sense of urgency means when hundreds of like-minded people all decide to fuck with them.

so to get involved, organize with other humans. why waste your time volunteering for a nader campaign or casting a vote when you can cast your vote every damn day...

to get involved, checkout the san francisco independent media center...

Hey, pissed off at the FCC or NAB and don't have any way to release your anger except posting on slashdot?
Come to the huge protest/counterculture party outside and hopefully inside the annual National Association of Broadcasters meeting in San Francisco next week!

For details, see Media Democracy Now! and the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center.

Tons of pirate radio. Tons of pirating of corporate copyrighted muzak. Drown out corporate radio in San Francisco on the Day of a Million Microradio Broadcasts.

Brought you by the same discontent which was at Seattle, Washington, Philly, LA, the list goes on and on. The police have already been in touch to "work out details" and they were told to fuck off.

Be there, be creative, fuck shit up!

I think the emerging independent media centers present a real threat to the commercials disguised as corporate media.

During the conventions, CNN could barely come up with one or two boring comments a day about nothing, or just re-hashing press releases. The real news was on the IMC for LA, which showed audio, video and text of the convention as it was happening. When the police started a riot in a subway station, CNN still has not reported on this. IMC had reports online within 3-4 hours. When the police were firing rubber bullets at everyone, IMC readers knew almost immediately. CNN readers had to wait until sometime the next day.

Whoever still thinks that CNN or ABCNEWS or whatever has any kind of use in our society besides another commercial/advertising venue is gullible at best.

Meanwhile, execs at commercial media outlets should understand that their days are numbered. They can join the record industry execs on the welfare rolls (which will coincide with a decrease of the welfare-recipient-bashing stories in the commercial media) because with cool, internet alternatives, corporate media just cannot compete.

When Katz complains about the lack of interactivity at last week's DNC, that leads me to believe that he was either complacently watching the roboticians from the inside of the Staples Center or on TV. The 'Corporate Parties' definition of interactivity is some links to click on their webpage. Thousands of protesters, including myself, had a different definition at last weeks DNC, which involved pepper spray, batons, concussion grenades, and rubber bullets. My roomate got shot in the back... now that's interactive! Fuck voting... take politics to the streets.

Check out http://la.indymedia.org to get truly interactive with the DNC.

I think Katz may be overreacting a bit here...and I'm not one of the Slashdot Peanut Gallery members who flash their street creds by bashing Katz.

Some sites set up recently to help facilitate coverage of political convention related news from an "outside the convention" perspective. The news is posted in a strictly "ground up fashion," and tends towards a leftist and anarchist user base. Unsurprisingly, I find it refreshing.

Indymedia LA

Indymedia Philly (a neat implementation of slash)

And if you want to bypass the corporate press:

The Media Channel

Check out www.indymedia.org for links to the independent media centers that are covering the conventions (with as much access that they can get, which generally means the streets, and the shadow convention..) www.phillyimc.org for RNC and la.indymedia.org for DNC and www.freespeech.org for live and archived TV coverage or get it on Dish Network Channel 9415 ask your local cable company, public access, or public television station, or get it on your BUD (big ugly dish - KU band) Lots of other links for a few live radio/audio broadcasts can be had there...
And even if you dont agree with the politics one way or another (or arn't even from the US/care about the US) then at very least you might find it interesting that the IMC sites are based upon a hacked up version of slash that supports multimedia submissions

Check out www.indymedia.org for links to the independent media centers that are covering the conventions (with as much access that they can get, which generally means the streets, and the shadow convention..) www.phillyimc.org for RNC and la.indymedia.org for DNC and www.freespeech.org for live and archived TV coverage or get it on Dish Network Channel 9415 ask your local cable company, public access, or public television station, or get it on your BUD (big ugly dish - KU band) Lots of other links for a few live radio/audio broadcasts can be had there...
And even if you dont agree with the politics one way or another (or arn't even from the US/care about the US) then at very least you might find it interesting that the IMC sites are based upon a hacked up version of slash that supports multimedia submissions

(1) Political demonstrations are certainly interesting to me, but why is this "news for nerds", as opposed to just news?

(2) There are stories leaking about some *serious* abuses of police authority going down in Philadelphia, like severe beatings before and after arrest, protestors held for several days without a charge, and so on:
http://www.phillyimc.org/
http://www.indymedia.org/

(3) As far as I can tell, these stories are not making it into the print media. If you're not on the net, you don't even know that there are thousands of people protesting, and over 300 people arrested. Oh, wait a minute, I guess there was this *one* story in a local SF paper, I just missed it:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ex aminer/archive/2000/08/08/NEWS114 31.dtl

(4) If it makes you all feel any better, a bunch of the lefty activists I know are running down to Los Angeles to protest at the Democratic convention (anyone who's paying any attention realizes that the Democrats aren't all that much different from the Republicans these days):
http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/45/45nfdnc. html

indymedia.org

I'm sure that they would just frame you for something similar if they happened to get inadmissible evidence.

"Scott, Ann and Milo were transporting the other 16 people in their van to the scene of an area to protest. Kendall and I were going to be support people for the group. Kendall and I were supposed to rendezvous with the group at the Greyhound bus station at 3:00 p.m., at which point we would go to the scene of the protest (two blocks away) and perform the action we had planned. The group never showed up.

Finally, at 3:30 p.m., Kendall got a phone call on his cell phone. It was Scott. He told Kendall that 15 Philadelphia State Police officers had surrounded his van and arrested everyone in it. The 19 had not committed any crimes or actions of any kind. They were not anticipating arrest."

"Despite denials by the Philadelphia police to some Green Party members from Houston and me, Scott has confirmed the civil and human rights abuse stories. He says none of the prisoners were given food for 14 hours. He says they never had bathroom breaks. He was told by jail guards that an ACLU lawyer came to represent the arrested activists at their arraignment hearings, but that he was not allowed to meet with any of the arrested activists.

Scott says that asthmatics and diabetics were not allowed to have their medicines. He told me that one diabetic woman became sick and passed out from not having had her medicine, and that the arrested activists had to chant for several hours before the nurse finally came to check on her."

"But whatever the number is, the reports from the inside are not good. For at least ten hours there was no food, at one point the guards had suspended bathroom ?privileges?[MS '?' for "'" retained], the legal team representing those arrested had very little access to their clients, and many of those held were told that their lawyers were not coming to see them when in fact the real story was that the authorities were not telling the legal team who was being held where. On top of this, there are reports of police and guard violence against people in custody, and at least one woman was seen being dragged naked and bleeding. Several people have been held in isolation, including those identified as organizers, and are being given more serious charges. The medical needs of some of the arrestees are not being met, including the withholding of asthma inhalers and medication for hypoglycemia."

"Valocchi [a journalist arrested while covering the protests], still wearing a red jailhouse wristband, said he did not get food for 24 hours, and did not get access to a telephone for 48 hours, even though he cooperated fully with police. In all, he was held for 49 hours. "I hear my girlfriend's been looking for me for like three days," he said. He also said there was one man in a cell near him "vomiting profusely for at least an hour before he got any medical attention. And when he did, that medical attention was a cup of juice and a sugar pill."

Valocchi said he was not the only innocent bystander thrown into jail. "There was a jogger who got yanked in. He was just a scared mama's boy in running shoes and a security shirt. I heard him on the phone with his mom, and he sounded completely terrified, telling his mom they were treating us like pigs."

"As a journalist, I've always been a big defender of the Philadelphia Police Department in general," he said. "But no more. They were completely out of control." "

I'm so glad as well as a little surprised you decided to talk about this man Jon.

I was there in Millau among the 50,000 or 80,000 human beings gathered under the motto "The World Is Not For Sale.". Ambiance was incredible, everybody was kind to others, and the powerful feeling that we can do something against the marketization of life was in the air.

I can't tell you about American Values, but World Citizenship values were definitely there. Yes, healthcare, education, welfare, local identities and customs, free speech, etc are anything but marketable concepts. And yes, multinational trusts and Almighty Money try to have them under control these days.

I am rather addicted to the Internet, to Slashdot et al, and I am a Free Software aficionado too, but I don't run for stock-options and I don't agree with the ultra liberal freaks that will lead us to sell our mother, our soul and Earth for a few more 0 on a bank account.

Thank you Jon, I usually don't read your columns because I used to find them too American-centric. Not today

BTW, have a look at the IndyMedia network (this link is for France, covering Jose Bove's story). There is life after CNN...

--

I think it's really importiant to have both open media and open source. I'm one of the webmasters behind www.indymedia.org and we're working on building a new paradigm for news. One that is open and democratic, build on open publishing models and open source software.

That said the problems of a new open news media are very real. How do you organize all this content. What's worth promoting and what isn't? We've talked about building a slashdot type moderation system that molds and shapes how articles get listed. Kinda like a cross between kuro5hin's article moderation and slashdot's comment system.

One thing we've realized is that some people involved in the Independent Media Centers are trained journalists and some are less professional. You can really can tell the difference. Journalists will call up people for quotes, attempt to check their facts, writes in the second or third person, etc...

One of the things that has worked best at the IMC has been our comment system. We have an open publishing model, and when people post incorrect information it is quickly countered by somebody reading the site.

I think this kind of structured colloborative news is what makes a news site exist well within the internet as a medium. Much like the early TV broadcasts were just radio announcers on camra, most early news sites are just print or tv news jammed in to the new medium. Slashdot, kuro5hin, indymedia, and many others are starting to move forward in exploring how this new medium can really be used.

It's interesting that this push is coming not from journalists but geeks and the open source movement. It represents a potential major shift in power in who gets a say and control over this new medium. Take indymedia for an example, some of our tech collective members have worked on major commercial news sites, but because of the structure of those organizations we were only able to really use the medium in this seperate confrontational project. That the people who used to be minnions in the old world are taking power and shifting the terms of the public debate should scare the existing power structure as much as any molotov cocktail.

I was extremely excited to read this article, especially on slashdot; let's take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you're doing right now -- engaging yourself in a public discussion about a public essay -- is an exciting, important, and actually very old phenomenon that has been almost entirely negated by the rise of the mass media (Katz's Closed Media).

I can see why people are suspicious of Katz's assertions: we still live in a world where most people come to understand the world through a few standard troughs, peppered with sensationalism and corporate values.

But let me tell you: there is an Open Media movement. Slashdot is part of that movement. Hundreds of other sites are part of that movement.

But I hear you still: reporters reporting, for free? photographers photographing, for free? video reporting, for free? It's not happening.

Let me tell you, then, it is. Let me give you one example that I am involved with and excited about. During the Seattle protests, the Indepedent Media Center of Seattle (www.indymedia.org) drew a tremendous amount of web traffic because it provided a simple clearinghouse for news, editorials, photographs, audio, and video regarding the protests that were going on. Much of the corporate news at the time was confused and slanted; generally people wanted to know what was actually going on, and there were others that wanted very much to tell them what was actually going on. To be clear, the Independent Media Center was not a political organization, nor was it affiliated with an explicitly political organization. On the other hand, the IMC was an Open Media source; those who felt that they did not have an outlet in the mainstream media did use that opportunity to tell their story.

That precedent has been very exciting. There is now momentum behind the idea, and there are now quite a few (non-affiliated as such) Independent Media Centers throughout the US and, in fact, the world. The DC IMC, which largely covered the WTO/World Bank protests, was a vast success; many journalists convened and produced quite a few pieces of real quality and thoughtfulness.

We're hard at work, right now, extablishing a Philadelphia Independent Media Center; our jumping off point will be coverage of the Republican Convention in early August. There are a lot of tricky issues related to Open Media that we're struggling with -- the issue of moderation, for example, is important and hard to face with an effective but appropriately "open" solution. I'm on the web team, and -- let me say -- thank goodness for open source technologies. We're beginning an intensive coding process now, and we're actually thinking of trying to adapt the slashcode for our purposes. (Anyone interested in helping out with this effort would be greatly appreciated -- e-mail me at the address above.)

Keep your eyes out for the Open Media movement -- you're already a part of it, and it's not going away. --j

In contrasting these two types of coverage I have inoculated myself from the propaganda techniques of mainstream broadcasting. Mainstream broadcasts come with a specific agenda, a determined spin that filters the information down to sound bites and images. These impressions are targeted to leave an emotional charge. The goal of this emotional charge is to impress upon the viewer viewpoint of right/wrong.

A most interesting contrast was the "60-Minutes" shmear job of the independent media at the WTO. They aired raw "indie" footage of the protests sandwiched between discussions with skinheads and images of previous Oregon violence, and they labeled the whole episode "The New Anarchists." Anyone paying attention would quickly get the sickening message that the WTO protesters were terrorists-to-be. It was cleverly crafted and it's emotional impact was further heightened by following with a horrific story on the atrocities in Khmer Rouge.

When discerning media messages I ask myself "What is the goal of this communication?" and "How does this make me feel?" We can fine tune our internal lie detectors, but we must first turn them on.

I don't pretend that the Indymedia reporters were not holding the point of view of the person on the street. My point is that the coverage was authentic. It felt real. Open media/closed media: I'm not sure this is especially critical when compared to authentic media.

This is old news but, still, incredibly important.

This also goes way beyond the small confines of this computing community. Witness the recent large scale protests and riots against the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund in Seattle and DC and recent Mayday demonstrations. Thousands of people have already spoken up about neo-liberalism and free markets destroying the earth and developing nations.

I see the Internet as a means to subvert this growing problem. Check out some of the independent media sites on the web: indymedia. These sites provide alternative coverage of the events that the corporate backed media dismissed as bored youth movements. (one problem on these independent media sites is uninformed zealotry, just like some slashdot commentary. nevertheless, independent and free discussion and communication is always a good thing.)

some more links for info:
a16

50 years is enough

If anybody's looking for a good day to protest UCITA (or even out-of-control intellectual property rights in general), I would recommend May Day, on May 1, 2000. Chances are, if you're near a relatively large city, they're going to be having a May Day celebration.

The focus of May Day is going to be anti-globalisation/anti-corporate rule, with an emphasis on labor rights. UCITA ties in with this because most of these bills are meant to help out a few corporate interests despite screwing people (I refuse to call people "consumers").

I, personally, would love to see an anti-copyright contingent at one of the mayday celebrations.

Here's a couple links for you:

http://www.mayday2k.org - Has a list of which cities have celebrations planned, as well as links to the history of May Day and contact information.

http://mayday.indymedia.org - The same autonomous collective that brought you independant coverage of the Seattle and Washington D.C. anti-globalization protests will be helping to cover May Day around the world.

Even if you're not interested in protesting, I'd recommend you check May Day out anyways, since it should be just an all around fun time.

Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

I keep seeing these draconian laws being passed by our government, and these orwellian systems being created and implemented by profit- and power-hungry corporations. It seems every day there's a different post to Slashdot describing some new method for controlling the flow of information and the freedoms that we should be taking for granted...

And what are we doing about it? Why do we keep allowing our rights and freedoms to be taken away?

Why are those in power doing this to us? That's easy to answer: Because they can. Because anybody in power will seek to extend their power and control.

Why are we allowing this to happen? I don't know. Some of us are fighting back as much as we can, but most of us simply post to Slashdot and complain.

Listen up! All this bullshit that we've been fed ("We live in a free country!", "The economy is doing great!"), it's all just that: bullshit! We're losing our rights and freedoms on a daily basis, our economy is fake (the drop on last Friday was equivalent to Black Tuesday in 1929), people all over the world are being forced into sweatshop slavery in the name of "economic progress", and our environment is being raped and destroyed at an alarming rate in the name of profit.

And most importantly? The technology that we all love and support is being turned back on us in order to control and monitor people. They're usurping something that they have no right to usurp. We have to put the power of technology back into the hands of the people!

It's time to fight back! It's time for a revolution!

http://www.indymedia.org - Support independant media!
http://www.soaw.org - Why are our tax dollars being spent on training murderers?
http://www.corpwatch.org - So you think only governments can oppress and censor?

http://www.spunk.org
http://www.infoshop.org - Communism is dead, Capitalism is close to it. There is another alternative, and it's time we started exploring it.

http://www.adbusters.org
http://www.rtmark.com
http://www.subvertise.org - Subvertising (also known as adbusting) at it's best.

http://www.ainfos.ca - Keep informed on what is happening in the world, from an anti-authoritarian, grassroots perspective.

http://www.a16.org - Seattle and D.C. are just the beginning.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net

However, politically... those of us who actually work in the industry rather than own it (realizing that some folks do both), have very little influence. Politically, we are all over the map with a general spirit of libertarian ethics with a distrust of the megacorporation ingrained into our psyche by personal expierence and cyberpunk literature we have been gobbling for the last two decades.

And, if we formed our own party in the single member-district system of the U.S (sorry, I know the rest of the world is more democratic with parlimentary systems) such would be a third party which would never gain any influence outside of local elections in California and the Pacific North West. We also, as workers, don't have the money to buy...er...lobby politicans. Easy example... if you and AOL/Time-Warner lobby congress about MP3s, who do you think is going to win?

No, fellow workers... we get paid so much because we have power. Power, untapped and unrealized. Middle-management was gutted through downsizing and our network connections have given rise to more "just-in-time" capitalism. Our skills , if you believe the Software Labor Shortage Myth are in such short supply that we can not train and import workers fast enough. Imagine if we can collectively come to agreements in which we decide what things we will work for and will not. Not only can we have influence over technology, but a host of other things that need geeks to be accomplished.

Our power is in action, not the ballot box. We can vote with our feet. We can strike (here is the source. We can slack and slow down. We can sick-in. We can boycott. We can Direct Action. We can be as Electornically Civilly Disobedient, and we can be... it works like we did with Low Power FM through an organized political campaign of radio piracy, we were able to sieze part of the spectrum from corporate monoplization for community interests. We can break mass media blackouts of information, by making our own media, like we did in Seattle, and like we'll do again in DC.

Are you tired of 60-hour work weeks? Of corporations making deals with politicans to undermine over-time pay and encourage permatemping? We don't have to be slaves.

Are you tired of technology developing that penalizes both the worker and the consumer, to the benfit of a handful of the rich and power... anybody remember the Java Class War? Where was our class in that? Complaining about how the standards needed to be independent of propietary control, and largely doing nothing about it! We need to take control of training and make it clear that it is those of us work in the industry that can figure out who knows what, rather than some profiteering third party or a way for leading software companies to gouge folks for certification!

We need non-profit employment services (or hiring halls) so we can dump our contracting companies (ie. pimps, job sharks, etc... ) once and for all.

We need to organize, and organize in a way that maintains our autonomy and democratic values. We don't need any union bosses, telling us what we can and can't do... but we do need to be in solidarity with our fellow workers so we can support each other in struggle. Who among you wouldn't strike to help the workers in hardware manufacture to get a better shake? Some more pay, a safer environment, etc... Who among you wouldn't refuse to work, if you knew by refusing for a short time you could bring in ecological sound practices. We can bring on the Viridian revolution, but innovation won't be enough... we have to force the issue and force companies to clean up their mess.

We have to become responsible, or we have noone to blame for how bad work is but ourselves.

Solid,

Flint

Baltimore IWW Telecommunications and Computer Workers IU560

(San Francisco, Toronto)

Also check out: Syndicat de l'Industrie Informatique, Washington Technical Workers Alliance, FACE Intel, Alliance@IBM, BITE Division of NWU (Business - Instructional - Techincal - Electronic).

We Can Win! No Nerds, No Birds!

how about indymedia?
adbusters
the onion :-)
would slashdot be considered an alternative media source? probably?
anyone else got some good outside-the-mainstream media sources?
I don't know about you, but i still get all my news from everything 2 :-)

The worst scenario I can see is:

* Jon gets tried

* Jon gets aquitted because reverse engineering is legal.

* US trials note that the code was reverse engineered legally in Norway, therefor the "trade secret" is not a secret anymore.

The World Trade Organization strikes the Norwegian laws allowing reverse engineering preventing any future jeapordizing of trade secrets in this fashion. If you haven't been following the WTO, now might be the time to read up on them...
http://zmag.org/CrisesCurEvt s/Globalism/GlobalEcon.htm
http://www.indymedia.org/

check out this image