Podcasts about Communications Act

(AURN News) — Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has formally introduced legislation aimed at redefining how “obscenity” is treated under federal law — potentially laying the groundwork for banning pornography nationwide. The Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, amends the Communications Act of 1934 to create a uniform legal definition of “obscenity” across state lines. According to Lee's office, the goal is to make it easier to prosecute the transmission of obscene material both between states and from abroad. “Obscenity isn't protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee said in a statement. “Our bill updates the legal definition of obscenity for the internet age so this content can be taken down and its peddlers prosecuted.” The bill defines “obscene” content as visual material that: “taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion”; “depicts, describes, or represents an actual or simulated sexual act… with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person”; and “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The legislation would also strike the phrase “with intent to abuse, threaten, or harass another person” from a section of the Communications Act dealing with obscene or harassing phone calls and transmissions. According to The Daily Caller, the bill “would pave the way for the prosecution of obscene content disseminated across state lines or from foreign countries and open the door to federal restrictions or bans regarding online porn.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"IPS Morning D Program" on May 6th, 2025, focusing on the idea that many widely reported events and prominent alternative theories are actually government psychological operations (psyops). The speaker discusses how events like the Austin Metcalf and Shiloh Hendricks incident might be engineered for the purpose of implementing stricter speech restrictions, potentially leading to an "internet lockdown" as a "mind virus." They also challenge the views of commentators like Matt Walsh who dismiss the idea that "everything is an op," arguing that psyops are prevalent in media and even history.The discussion branches into criticizing various conspiracy theories, such as the Epstein files, UFO sightings (linked to an alleged disinfo agent), chemtrails, and the moon landing hoax, suggesting these are also government-created "guardrails" or "truther bait" to control dissenting views and mislead those questioning the mainstream. The speaker also explores the notion of underground cities, the potential for automated disinformation through AI, and expresses concern about the "Mandela Effect" being a form of deliberate psychological manipulation and indoctrination, particularly of children.Here is a summary of the "IPS Morning D Program" drawing on the provided sources:The program, dated May 6th, 2025, begins by mentioning the Communications Act of 1996 and setting the stage for discussing current events and topics through the host's feed.

"IPS Morning D Program" on May 6th, 2025, focusing on the idea that many widely reported events and prominent alternative theories are actually government psychological operations (psyops). The speaker discusses how events like the Austin Metcalf and Shiloh Hendricks incident might be engineered for the purpose of implementing stricter speech restrictions, potentially leading to an "internet lockdown" as a "mind virus." They also challenge the views of commentators like Matt Walsh who dismiss the idea that "everything is an op," arguing that psyops are prevalent in media and even history.The discussion branches into criticizing various conspiracy theories, such as the Epstein files, UFO sightings (linked to an alleged disinfo agent), chemtrails, and the moon landing hoax, suggesting these are also government-created "guardrails" or "truther bait" to control dissenting views and mislead those questioning the mainstream. The speaker also explores the notion of underground cities, the potential for automated disinformation through AI, and expresses concern about the "Mandela Effect" being a form of deliberate psychological manipulation and indoctrination, particularly of children.Here is a summary of the "IPS Morning D Program" drawing on the provided sources:The program, dated May 6th, 2025, begins by mentioning the Communications Act of 1996 and setting the stage for discussing current events and topics through the host's feed.

The Communications Act of 1934 requires that licensees operate consistent with the “public interest convenience and necessity.” Broadcast licenses, held by broadcast TV and radio stations as trustees of the public’s airwaves, must use the broadcast medium to serve the public interest and their local communities. In recent years, concerns have been raised about how broadcasters are fulfilling these obligations, particularly regarding the nature of their news programming. Complaints have been filed at the FCC against all of the major broadcast networks raising concerns about the quality and reliability of their coverage. Our panel will examine these issues, the role of government in policing broadcasters and the First Amendment protections afforded to broadcasters’ speech. Featuring: Bob Corn-Revere, Chief Counsel, FIREDavid Gibber, Executive Vice President/Chief Legal Officer, Sinclair Broadcast GroupDaniel Suhr, President, Center for American RightsModerator: Patricia J. Paoletta, Partner, HWG LLP

The Supreme Court is set to hear argument this term in a case raising both the nondelegation and private nondelegation doctrines.On July 24, 2024, the en banc Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal Universal Service Fund (“USF”), which funds broadband service for rural areas and hospitals, schools, libraries, and low-income individuals, is an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’s legislative authority. In the Communications Act, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to collect contributions, or payments, from certain providers of telecommunications. The FCC employs the private Universal Service Administrative Company (“USAC”) to administer certain aspects of USF, including calculating the contribution factor based on the needs of each program established by the FCC pursuant to the Communications Act.The Sixth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as a panel of the Fifth Circuit, had previously upheld the constitutionality of the delegation of authority. And the FCC defended the Act against delegation challenges. It argued that the Communication Act provides an intelligible principle by which USF is to be administered and that USAC plays only a ministerial role.But the July en banc ruling by the Fifth Circuit held this regulatory revenue-raising program unconstitutional. It acknowledged “grave” concerns that the Act may have unconstitutionally delegated the taxing power to the FCC to impose a contribution amount, or tax, on America’s telecommunications carriers, and ultimately paid by consumers. Then it similarly concluded there were serious constitutional concerns about the FCC’s subdelegation to private parties, most notably USAC’s role in determining the contribution amount that will be charged to telecommunications carriers. The Court’s ultimate holding, however, was that the combination of these delegations violated the nondelegation doctrine.A petition for certiorari was granted on November 22, 2024. This roundtable will discuss this case and the broader legal issues it raises, including (1) is there a nondelegation doctrine?, (2) if there is, what should it look like?, and (3) how should the Supreme Court decide this case in light of the above discussion on the nondelegation doctrine.Featuring:Sean Lev, Partner, HWG LLPTrent McCotter, Partner, Boyden Grey PLLCProf. Nicholas Parrillo, William K. Townsend Professor of Law and Professor of History, Yale Law SchoolProf. Alexander Volokh, Associate Professor of Law, Emory LawProf. Ilan Wurman, Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law SchoolModerator: Adam Griffin, Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation--To register, click the link above.

It's Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, to discuss the recent overturning of net neutrality. Then they speak with Joshua Kaplan, reporter at ProPublica, to discuss his recent piece entitled "The Militia and the Mole." First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the DoJ's release of details related to Trump's Jan 6th- and Stolen Documents-related cases, mass evacuations amid wildfires in LA, Dem's retaining of the Virginia legislature, the North Carolina Supreme Court's anti-democratic move, the House's massive anti-immigration bill, DoJ action over the RealPage rent-fixing scheme and the prior weaponization of the department under Trump, Israel's ongoing slaughter of Gazans in supposed safe zones, and ACA expansion, before unpacking a recent report on the unsurprising misinformation around gender-affirming care for adolescents. Lee Hepner then joins, jumping right into an extensive history of Net Neutrality, stemming from the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under FDR's New Deal to preserve open networks and fair communication, with the 1996 Communications Act expanding its coverage to the internet and contributing to the arguments to expand to full Net Neutrality building under Bush before coming to fruition under Obama, only to be killed and restored by Trump and Biden respectively, all leading to the recent 6th Circuit decision to, once again, kill it. After tackling what Net Neutrality exactly is (the mandate for providers to serve websites equally) and expanding on the particular role the overturning of the Chevron Deference Doctrine played in this decision, Hepner wraps up with tactics to push back against this decision, and whether federalism will help keep these corporations in line. Joshua Kaplan then walks Sam and Emma through his extensive reporting on the far-right militia American Patriots 3% (AP3), tackling their role within the wider extremist militia ecosystem and how they used that to distance the organization from the January 6th insurrection attempt before having a wider discussion on the initial backlash (even internally) to these organizations in the wake of 1/6 before a steady rhetorical pivot from Trump and the GOP reversed the tides completely, and why that should concern us heading into a second Trump Administration with threats of mass pardoning for violent participators and organizers of 1/6. After expanding on AP3's odd “big tent” identity amid right-wing militias, Kaplan touches on his extensive conversations with a mole from AP3 and the role Facebook played in the militia's outreach, before wrapping up with the genuine threat posed by the extensive military training of these groups, both offered by the groups themselves and aided by their extensive connections to police, military, and veteran organizations. And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma unpack the response from Mexico's President Scheinbaum to Trump's absurd statements on the US' territorial rights, the passage of the GOP's Lincoln Riley Bill with support from myriad Congressional Dems – including John “Manchin 2.0” Fetterman – to hand over immigration enforcement to the states (alongside the right to deport without criminal conviction). Chris Hayes reflects on the short history of Facebook's moderation team, John from Montreal on Trump's antagonization of US allies, and Kowalski from Nebraska parses through the future of farming amid threats to land ownership and more. Comrade Oz from the International Party of Antarctica provides some insight into Trump and Musk, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Lee on Twitter here: https://x.com/leehepner Check out the American Economic Liberties Project here: https://www.economicliberties.us/ Follow Josh on Twitter here: https://x.com/js_kaplan Check out Josh's piece here: https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole Check out Josh's previous piece "Armed And Underground" here: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-secret-ap3-militia-american-patriots-three-percent Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! 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Understanding the Federal Universal Service Fund, Podcast ,Three Methods for Determining FUSF Contribution “It's not a tax. It's a fee,” Jeff Lytle, of Sandy Beaches Software. “And it's assessed on telecommunications companies.”  According to the FCC, “Prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Universal Service Fund (USF) operated as a mechanism by which interstate long-distance carriers were assessed to subsidize telephone service to low-income households and high-cost areas. The Communications Act of 1934 stated that all people in the United States shall have access to rapid, efficient, nationwide communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the traditional definition of universal service - affordable, nationwide telephone service to include among other things rural health care providers and eligible schools and libraries.” In this podcast, Jeff, whose company and career have been dedicated to helping organizations stay in compliance with the FUSF, brings us up to date on what that challenge looks like today. “Every telecom company in the United States, VoIP or otherwise, contributes to the Universal Service Fund, and this funds the libraries, and hospitals. It funds the phones for poor people or the undeserved and allows them to have communication services. the fund was created in 2000 and at that time the rate was 5.7 percent and now it's grown to where it's 35.8 percent of the build revenue. Now, when the FCC created this back in 2000, they gave three different methods for calculating your contribution rate. It's called a contribution. It's not a tax, dog It's a contribution you're making to fund these services. The government's But if you don't pay it, you do get heavy fines.” When a tax is not a tax, and fee might not be a fee As we learn in this podcast, the FUSF is not so cut and dry. As a specialist on this matter, Jeff outlines how companies can be looking at a less steep fee. But you will need a deep understanding of this matter, and likely, specialized help. Jeff and his team at Sandy Beaches Software are headquartered in Oklahoma City, a city noted for sunshine, but often beaches. We learn that their made (and supported) in the USA offer, also represents an advantage. “If you were working in all 50 states and had to file for every single jurisdiction, you'd have 48,000 returns per year that you would be filing. You need a compliance company at that point. When you're only working in one, two states, a lot of times you can do it on your own and you don't need that third party. But your billing company works in between all of these folks to make that happen. You need a solid billing company that's experienced with the tax piece to get it right.” Visit www.sandybeachessoftware.com  

On the show today with Stefan Borge:The office of the Public Services Ombudsman marks 25 years. The current Ombudsman, Wendy Cumming and former ombudsman Mario Hook join us in the studioNews reporter Iain Triay Clarence updates about GibFibre reaction to bill passed in Parliament relating to the Communications Act: no more communications' licences to be issued.Petra Boddington is a certified Menopause Champion with extensive experience in women's health. She describes recent workshops, awareness raising campaigns and menopause support. Theatre Makers present six spooky stories to get us in the mood for Halloween this Wednesday and Thursday. Andrew Dark is directing the Halloween fundraiser, joining us with Sylvana Felice and Harry Kumar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Read the full transcript here. What's the reality of how politicians get elected in the US? How much of a role does gerrymandering play? Are Democrats and Republicans equally guilty of gerrymandering? Do the parties secretly collaborate on gerrymandering? Is gerrymandering legal? What determines who wins a primary election? What percent of all government positions are actually contested? What are the five main types of politicians? We use our phones to manage our bank accounts, medical records, and other sensitive information; so why can't we vote from our phones yet? Should prediction markets be allowed to bet on elections? What makes a regulation too lax or too restrictive? When should government provide goods, and when should it provide services? Should today's big tech companies be broken up? Should Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 be repealed? How can AI be used to make government more effective?Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. He is the CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, the world's first venture capital fund that invests solely in early stage startups in highly regulated industries, and the founder of political consulting firm Tusk Strategies. Bradley's family foundation is funding and leading the national campaign to bring mobile voting to U.S. elections and also has run anti-hunger campaigns in 24 different states, helping to feed over 13 million people. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Before Vote With Your Phone, Bradley authored The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death by Politics and Obvious in Hindsight. He hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics, and recently opened an independent bookstore, P&T Knitwear, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In his earlier career, Bradley served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg's 2009 mayoral race, as Deputy Governor of Illinois, overseeing the state's budget, operations, legislation, policy, and communications, as communications director for US Senator Chuck Schumer, and as Uber's first political advisor. Connect with Bradley on Substack and LinkedIn.Further reading:Vote With Your Phone: Why Mobile Voting Is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy, by Bradley TuskThe Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics, by Bradley Tusk"Wisconsin's Legislative Maps Are Bizarre, but Are They Illegal?", by Megan O'Matz (gerrymandering examples) StaffSpencer Greenberg — Host / DirectorJosh Castle — ProducerRyan Kessler — Audio EngineerUri Bram — FactotumWeAmplify — TranscriptionistsMusicBroke for FreeJosh WoodwardLee RosevereQuiet Music for Tiny Robotswowamusiczapsplat.comAffiliatesClearer ThinkingGuidedTrackMind EasePositlyUpLift[Read more]

The law in question is the Communications Act.

Net Neutrality Insights: Consequences & Predictions with Dan McVaugh   In this episode of 5G Guys, Dan McVaugh revisits the topic of net neutrality. Dan shares personal stories from his telecom career, highlighting potential unintended consequences if the FCC reinstates net neutrality by classifying telecom providers under Title II of the Communications Act. He explores the impacts on network performance, advanced 5G features, and critical services like FirstNet for first responders, ending with cautious predictions on the future judicial outcomes and their implications.     __________________________ Link to Episode 63 with Nathan Leamer __________________________      Nathan Leamer on 5G Guys Podcast ➡︎ https://5gguys.com/podcast/63-net-neutrality-with-nathan-leamer/   __________________________ Connect With Our Sponsor __________________________      Vertex Innovations ➡︎ https://vertex-us.com/   __________________________ Connect With Us __________________________      5G Guys Website ➡︎  https://5gguys.com        Social:        ·       Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/5Gguys      ·       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12515882      ·       X: https://twitter.com/5gGuys   _______________________________ Submit Your Ideas or Feedback ➡︎ https://5gguys.com/contact-2 _______________________________ Subscribe to the 5G Guys Weekly Newsletter ➡︎ https://mailchi.mp/5gguys/subscribe-to-the-5g-guys _______________________________ ⏰Episode Minute-by-Minute⏰ 00:00 Introduction to Net Neutrality Discussion 00:46 Understanding Net Neutrality 01:34 Real-World Experiences and Stories 04:59 Potential Consequences of Net Neutrality 06:13 Current Status and Predictions 07:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

On this episode of Full Spectrum, we discuss the FCC's decision at its May 2024 Open Meeting to reclassify broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) from a lightly regulated information service to a telecommunications service regulated under Title II of the Communications Act, as well as adopt bright line net neutrality rules for BIAS providers. During the episode, you'll hear from partners Tom Cohen, Chip Yorkgitis, and Hank Kelly, special counsel Mike Dover, and senior associates Jenny Wainwright and Winafred Brantl.

The history of public media is the history of fidelity to an idea: access to public education is “not only a service but a right.” On this episode we're joined by Dr. Josh Shepperd, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (University of Illinois Press, 2023). Josh describes how this democratic ideal evolved, clumsily, into the material and institutional practices we've come to associate with NPR, PBS, and other public media. We discuss how the Communications Act of 1934 fundamentally changed the trajectory of this movement, the impact of the Rockefeller Foundation and early communications research, and the pioneering role of Midwestern and Western university stations. We also chat about Josh's work as director of the Library of Congress Sound Submissions Project. Make sure to tune in to catch a special cameo by Theodor Adorno…

In recent months, the U.S. Senate confirmed a third Democratic Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, putting the agency in full force for the first time since January 2021. This panel will focus on the FCC’s likely agenda as we look to 2024. It will also explore the bounds of the Communications Act of 1934, as updated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, when applied to modern technology, areas for possible legislative reform, and how the existing regulatory authority provided by Congress impacts the Commission's initiatives in the year ahead.Featuring:Hon. Jonathan Adelstein, President & CEO, The Wireless Infrastructure Association; Former Commissioner, Federal Communications CommissionHon. Brendan Carr, Commissioner, Federal Communications CommissionHon. Mignon Clyburn, Principal, MLC Strategies, LLC; Former Commissioner, Federal Communications CommissionHon. Nathan Simington, Commissioner, Federal Communications CommissionModerator: Hon. Michael H. Park, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

In episode 2, host Josh Bercu, vice president of policy and advocacy at USTelecom, sits down with Loyaan Egal, Bureau Chief of the Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau. The two talk all things illegal robocalls, including how they impact the lives of consumers and businesses, new tools and strategies the FCC is using to combat them, and how the bureau is staying ahead of future challenges. Show notes Loyaan A. Egal is the Bureau Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. He leads the FCC unit (including regional and field offices in 13 locations across the country) responsible for enforcing violations of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and FCC regulations under Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Mr. Egal previously served as a Deputy Chief in the Foreign Investment Review Section (FIRS) of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) National Security Division (NSD). In his capacity as Deputy Chief, he directly oversaw FIRS's and NSD's roles in representing the Attorney General as the Chair of the “Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector,” which is also known as “Team Telecom,” pursuant to Executive Order 13913. In addition, he supervised the coordination of parallel reviews involving Team Telecom and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), as well as DOJ's referrals to the Department of Commerce, pursuant to Executive Order 13873, involving foreign ownership, control, or investment in the U.S. telecommunications and information and communications technology services (ICTS) networks and infrastructure supply chains. Mr. Egal worked closely with the FCC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Community, the U.S. Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, State, and the Treasury, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, among others, to reach consensus on policies and actions that impacted U.S. national security, law enforcement, diplomatic, economic, and trade equities in the telecommunications and ICTS sectors.   Bytes & Bandwidth is produced by Association Briefings.

On this episode of Full Spectrum partners Tom Cohen and Chip Yorkgitis discuss the Notice of Proposed Rule Making adopted by the Commission at its October 19 Open Meeting in its newly-commenced Open Internet (or Net Neutrality) proceeding proposing to reclassify broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) from a lightly regulated information service to a telecommunications service regulated under Title II of the Communications Act (01:19). The Commission's Notice proposes to adopt Open Internet rules that are very similar to those previously imposed in 2015 and largely rescinded in 2017. Additionally, Chip discusses a Second Report and Order adopted at the Open Meeting (but only released on November 1) that expands unlicensed use in the 6 GHz Band in the face of opposition from licensed incumbents by permitting very low power devices to operate in two sub-bands both indoors and outdoors, and both fixed and mobile (15:30). He also explains that the Commission continues to consider other proposals to expand unlicensed power and flexibility – both from a 2020 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that accompanies the Second Report and Order. Finally, Tom and Chip give a brief preview of the Digital Discrimination item that is on the Commission's tentative agenda for its November 15 Open Meeting (35:25).

This week Senator Kevin Cramer joins The Ask Noah Show and we discuss net neutrality! It's a more complicated and nuanced issue than most people give it credit for. Our access to the internet these days is like running water. -- During The Show -- 01:50 Senator Kevin Cramer Interview Common Carrier - treat all traffic equally Net Neutrality - ISPs must treat all traffic equally History 1934 Title 2 1980 Computer 2 Policy 2002 Cable Broadband gets an exemption 2005 All ISPs ARE NOT common carrier 2015 ISPs ARE Common Carrier (Gov Take Over) 2017 Ajit Pai repeals net neutrality If the infrastructure has been subsidized by tax dollars, should that infrastructure be common carrier? Would it make more sense for this to be under the FTC rather than the FCC? What would you say to people who only have one good choice for internet? Ma Bell Sweet Heart deal Chevron doctrine Openness principles throttling blocking price discrimination Blocking World of War Craft ISP deals with apartment complexes to block other providers Digital divide Universal Service Funds ISPs are independent businesses What stops companies from putting smaller players in the "slow lane" Bot Question - Also, aren't the ISP's notorious for promising expanding broadband in the past, but they deem arbitrary numbers as "enough" for consumers, yet countries like Sweden & South Korea are thriving with broadband putting the US to shame. What impact if any do you believe net neutrality would have on ISP competition? Do you think the Communications Act needs a complete overhaul to bring it in line with today's technology? Should the federal or state government step in to break up local monopolies that are not serving their customers well? 42:00 Expand pfSense VLAN? - John PFSense "automatic fix" Subnet masking check for a /24 reboot networking devices 47:38 Virtual pfSense? - Rhett This works! Steve did this for years VHost goes down, internet goes down 49:26 Thoughts on Emergency Alerts - Chris Third party service Gov Regulated Service There is no other option 51:20 News Wire Samba 4.19.2 - Samba.org (https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.19.2.html) Geany 2.0 - Geany (https://www.geany.org/news/geany-20-is-out/) Peazip 9.5 - Peazip (https://peazip.github.io/changelog.html) Ardour 8.1 - Ardour (https://ardour.org/whatsnew.html) Virtualbox 7.0.12 - OMG Ubuntu (https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/virtualbox-7-0-12-released) Firefox 119 - Mozilla (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/119.0/releasenotes/) Moonlight 5.0 - GitHub (https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/releases/tag/v5.0.0) Real Time LInux RISC-V - Phoronix (https://www.phoronix.com/news/RISC-V-Linux-RT-Support-Patches) Removing Qlogic 10GBE Support - Phoronix (https://www.phoronix.com/news/QLogic-10Gb-QLGE-Driver-Dropped) Blackcat using Munchkin Linux VM - Bleeping Computer (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/blackcat-ransomware-uses-new-munchkin-linux-vm-in-stealthy-attacks/) TensorRT-LLM - EE Times (https://www.eetimes.com/nvidia-boosts-llm-inference-with-open-source-library/) LLEMMA a LLM for Math - Venture Beat (https://venturebeat.com/ai/meet-llemma-the-math-focused-open-source-ai-that-outperforms-rivals/) -- The Extra Credit Section -- For links to the articles and material referenced in this week's episode check out this week's page from our podcast dashboard! This Episode's Podcast Dashboard (http://podcast.asknoahshow.com/360) Phone Systems for Ask Noah provided by Voxtelesys (http://www.voxtelesys.com/asknoah) Join us in our dedicated chatroom #GeekLab:linuxdelta.com on Matrix (https://element.linuxdelta.com/#/room/#geeklab:linuxdelta.com) -- Stay In Touch -- Find all the resources for this show on the Ask Noah Dashboard Ask Noah Dashboard (http://www.asknoahshow.com) Need more help than a radio show can offer? Altispeed provides commercial IT services and they're excited to offer you a great deal for listening to the Ask Noah Show. Call today and ask about the discount for listeners of the Ask Noah Show! Altispeed Technologies (http://www.altispeed.com/) Contact Noah live [at] asknoahshow.com -- Twitter -- Noah - Kernellinux (https://twitter.com/kernellinux) Ask Noah Show (https://twitter.com/asknoahshow) Altispeed Technologies (https://twitter.com/altispeed) Special Guest: Senator Kevin Cramer.

Travis King, the American soldier who crossed into North Korea two months ago, is back on U.S. soil. The Federal Communications Commission plans to reinstate net neutrality protections that were nixed in 2018 during the Trump administration. The proposal aims to reclassify both fixed and mobile broadband as an essential communications service under Title II of the Communications Act, akin to water, power and phone services.  Thursday - 9/28/2023 - Hour 3See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Liz Hyman President and the CEO of the XR Association (XRA), which is a non-profit, industry trade association representing 47 XR companies including major players like Meta, Google, Microsoft, HTC, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Unity, and HTC. XRA has been collaborating with XR Access from the beginning, and they collaborated on Chapter 3 of their an XR Developer's Guide Series focusing on Accessibility & Inclusive Design in Immersive Experiences. At the XR Access Symposium, Hyman moderated a breakout session focused on public policy. I had a chance to unpack the three major points from the group discussion that included educating policy makers about accessibility, brainstorming bluesky legislation to lift up accessibility tech, and identify gaps in public policy so that they can be addressed. A common theme that I heard at the XR Access Symposium again and again is that accessibility hardly ever is prioritized with emerging technology platforms. XR Access co-founder Shiri Azenkot told me "But it was always a retroactive thing. So that's a pattern that we've seen with technology a lot, many times -- every time there's a new technology." There are laws on the books like the American Disabilities Act and Section 508, but this doesn't always apply to XR technologies. "Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to ensure that their information and communication technology (ICT) is accessible to people with disabilities." Section 508 would only apply to XR experiences produced by the federal government. And Hyman told me, "I will say the thing is that I notice is [that XR] is an emerging technology. And I think even within a program like 508, there's an acknowledgment of the emerging nature of technology that should not be something that is a permanent barrier. We need to make steady progress." She is likely referencing some recent rulings about Section 508 to bring it more up to date since it was originally passed in 1998 and 2000. I was able to find a couple of relevant passages that support Hyman's interpretation on the Section 508 website which says, "The U.S. Access Board is responsible for developing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility standards to incorporate into regulations that govern Federal procurement practices. On January 18, 2017, the Access Board issued a final rule that updated accessibility requirements covered by Section 508, and refreshed guidelines for telecommunications equipment subject to Section 255 of the Communications Act. The final rule went into effect on January 18, 2018." I found a copy of the final rule from the Access Board ICT in the Federal Register from January 18th, 2017 and there is a mention of virtual reality that says, "The Board expects that an agency that decides to use a conforming alternate version of a Web page as opposed to making the main page accessible will typically do so when, as the W3C® explains, certain limited circumstances warrant or mandate their use. For example, W3C® has noted that a conforming alternate version may be necessary: (1) When a new emerging technology is used on a Web page, but the new technology cannot be designed in a way that allows assistive technologies to access all the information needed to present the content to the user (e.g., virtual reality or computer-simulated reality); (2) when it is not possible to modify some content on a Web page because the Web site owner is legally prohibited from modifying the Web content; or (3) to provide the best experience for users with certain types of disabilities by tailoring a Web page specifically to accommodate those disabilities." The bottom line is that the 2D web is a mature platform relative to paradigm shift into VR, 3D, and spatial computing, which means that the US government can more heavily lean upon established guidelines from organizations like the W3C that has produced a number of different Web Content Accessibility Guideline...

Section 230 of the communications act in America, has proven to be a seminal piece of legislation when it comes to social media giants. That's because it offers protections to the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook when it comes to the dissemination or spread of controversial content. But now there are two cases before the US Supreme Court, which could amend or even tear up section 230 and in the process, transform social media companies as we know them. To discuss this further Joe spoke to Eoin O'Dell an Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College, Dublin.

Joe spoke with Kurt Volker, Former-United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations and Former-US Ambassador to NATO on President Biden's trip to Kyiv and Vladimir Putin's announcement to pull out of the New START treaty. As well as Bloomberg Supreme Court reporter Greg Stohr on looming Supreme Court decision concerning Section 230 of Communications Act of 1996.   Plus, our politics panel, Bloomberg Politics Contributors Jeanne Sheehan Zaino & Rick Davis on Biden's trip to Kyiv, China and Russia's strategic relationship, SCOTUS tech lawsuits, and the fight between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Andrew spoke to YouTuber Mark Meechan, who vlogs under the name Count Dankula. He was prosecuted four years ago under the Communications Act for posting a controversial video online. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, freedom of the press would be guaranteed by the First Amendment. Originally a tool for criticism, investigation, and the spread of information to the populace, reportage became a rapidly growing medium with increasing popularity. In 1934, The Communications Act ensured that the "airways are public property", with the main condition of use being whether the broadcaster served "the public interest, convenience, and necessity". Media consolidation has been a huge issue, and over the last few decades, it turns out that a total of 6 major corporations, and 15 billionaires, own most of the media within the United States. Isn't that a problem, especially when most of those organizations wear their bias "on their sleeves"? By definition, "fake news" is "untruthful-on-purpose stories... which have a purpose of misleading the reader to think one way." Join us in episode 52 as we discuss the history of the mainstream media, the current state of decay that it's in today, and what the future may hold for journalism as it applies to American society. New episodes are released every week! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wolf-and-the-bull-podcast/support

With the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, freedom of the press would be guaranteed by the First Amendment. Originally a tool for criticism, investigation, and the spread of information to the populace, reportage became a rapidly growing medium with increasing popularity. In 1934, The Communications Act ensured that the "airways are public property", with the main condition of use being whether the broadcaster served "the public interest, convenience, and necessity". Media consolidation has been a huge issue, and over the last few decades, it turns out that a total of 6 major corporations, and 15 billionaires, own most of the media within the United States. Isn't that a problem, especially when most of those organizations wear their bias "on their sleeves"? By definition, "fake news" is "untruthful-on-purpose stories... which have a purpose of misleading the reader to think one way." Join us in episode 52 as we discuss the history of the mainstream media, the current state of decay that it's in today, and what the future may hold for journalism as it applies to American society. New episodes are released every week! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wolf-and-the-bull-podcast/support

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 continues to be a hot potato as far as Congress – and lots of others – is concerned. But why? Why do both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, who agree about very little, both say that the law needs to go, or at least change significantly? Here’s why. About the host: Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon's words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station's sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage. The post Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/3/22: Section 230 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 continues to be a hot potato as far as Congress – and lots of others – is concerned. But why? Why do both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, who agree about very little, both say that the law needs to go, or at least change significantly? Here’s why. About the host: Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon's words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station's sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage. The post Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/3/22: Section 230 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Josh Shepperd joins Money on the Left to discuss the research and activism that hastened the rise of public media in the United States. Assistant Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Shepperd shows how public-interest broadcasting platforms like NPR and PBS exist in the U.S. today in large part as a consequence of hard-fought battles by committed scholars and advocates throughout the inter- and post-war periods. In particular, Shepperd traces the untold aftermath of the Communications Act of 1934 which, in addition to creating the Federal Communications Commission, gave overwhelming legal support to private for-profit networks, while stripping radio licenses from public and educational broadcasters committed to serving the common good. Deepening this narrative, Shepperd draws special attention to the Princeton Radio Research Project, spearheaded by noted sociologist and communication studies scholar Paul Lazarsfeld. Through the Project, Lazarsfeld developed influential quantitative research methods that fundamentally shaped the discipline of communication studies. Fascinatingly, however, Lazarsfeld hired then-immigré critical theorist Theodor Adorno to assist in the research program. As Shepperd tells it, Lazardfeld welcomed and even incorporated the critical theorist's incisive contributions into the Project. Yet, Adorno ultimately repudiated the Project's efforts to build a robust U.S. public radio system, unfortunately divorcing the developing tradition of Critical Theory from the domain of public media research and advocacy. Fast-forwarding to the present, we ask Shepperd about his argument that contemporary humanities research ought to be politically constructive. We then conclude by exploring his important archival work for the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress.See here for Shepperd's article, “Theodor Adorno, Paul Lazarsfeld, and the Public Interest Mandate of Early Communications Research, 1935–1941,” published by the journal Communication Theory in August 2021.Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructureMusic by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

With the Senate now adjourned for the holidays and Joe Biden's “Build Back Better” social and climate package stalled if not dead (Senator Joe Manchin went on Fox News yesterday to announce he won't support it)*, Biden's remaining agenda is now at the mercy of the 2022 midterm election year — a perilous time to get anything enacted. So what should be Biden's and the Democrat's first priority when the Senate returns in January? I'm sure Biden still wants his Build Back Better package passed. But it's more important that the Senate now make voting rights its priority.Republican state legislatures will soon begin drawing partisan congressional maps that federal legislation could outlaw. Several states have already changed election laws in ways making it harder for people in minority communities to vote and giving Republican legislatures greater power over election outcomes.To be sure, any new national voting rights legislation depends on altering the senate filibuster so that the fifty Democratic senators (plus the Vice President) can pass it. (Senate Republicans have made it clear they won't support any voting rights legislation.) Hence the necessity of senate Democrats agreeing to carve out voting rights from the filibuster (back to Manchin again). I want to emphasize the urgency of this. Since the 2020 election, the foundations of our democracy have been gravely weakened. Just last Saturday, three top retired generals warned of a potential civil war in 2024 unless action is taken soon. Saving American democracy requires stopping three powerful forces on the way to destroying it.The first is Trump's big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It's now believed by some 60 percent of Republican voters. The lie conveniently fits with the Republican Party's insight that demographic trends work against it unless it shrinks the electorate.The second is big anger spread by the media, especially Fox News and Facebook. It's boosting their ratings and revenues by inciting divisiveness, racism, panic, and paranoia. As a result, it's undermining the trust that democracy depends on. The third is big money from large corporations and wealthy individuals. It's inundating political campaigns, supporting one-sided issue ads, and bribing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to support measures that will further enrich corporations and the wealthy and block measures that will cost them.The big lie, big anger, and big money reinforce each other because they all depend on Americans believing that democracy is rigged against them. And, to a shameful extent, it is. Urgent steps must be taken to counter all three.The first step is to set national voting-rights standards in light of Trump's Big Lie. Senate Democrats must enact the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as soon as possible in January, when they have a chance to prevent even more Republican state efforts to suppress votes and take over electoral machinery. If they fail to do this, they will be complicit with the Republican Party in using Trump's big lie to shrink the electorate.Trump and his Republican co-conspirators must also be held accountable for their attempted coup in the months after the 2020 election, leading to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Hopefully, the House committee now investigating it (with the crucial and courageous participation of Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) will report its findings early in the new year. Timing is essential. Republicans must not be allowed to delay the committee's work. If they take control of the House next year they surely will shut the committee down. Armed with the committee's findings, the Justice Department must take legal action against Trump and all lawmakers implicated in the attempted coup. Even before the committee reports, the Justice Department should impanel grand juries to weigh the evidence in its possession. The second step is to constrain big anger instigated by social media, Fox News, and other outlets. There are two ways to do this without undermining freedom of speech: Revoke Section 230 of the Communications Act, which now protects digital media providers from liability for the content posted by their users even if that content is harmful, hateful, or misleading. There is no continuing justification for this legal protection, particularly at a time when the largest of these providers have become vast monopolies. Create a new “fairness doctrine” requiring that all broadcasters, including cable, cover issues of public importance in ways that present opposing perspectives. This will be difficult to enforce, to be sure, but it would at least affirm the nation's commitment to holding broadcasters to a higher standard than merely making money.  The third step is to get big money out of politics. The current Supreme Court won't reverse the Court's shameful decision in Citizens United vs. FEC and related cases. A constitutional amendment allowing the government to limit money spent on campaigns is extremely unlikely. But campaign finance reform is possible by matching small donations with public dollars. This was in the original For the People Act and should be added to the Freedom to Vote Act.These are the minimal essentials for containing the big lie, big anger, and big money. All three steps are urgently needed. There is no time to waste. Biden, Democrats, and any remaining principled Republicans – along with the leaders of nonprofits, universities, labor unions, major foundations, grassroots organizations, racial-justice and environmental advocates, and business – must wage a war to save American democracy. This war must start immediately. Nothing else we do for America is as important. Nothing else that needs doing in America is possible unless we do this.  What do you think?__* I can't resist opining on West Virginia senator Joe Manchin's motive for announcing yesterday he won't support the “Build Back Better” social and environmental package. He delivered the deathblow on Fox News Sunday (after refusing to take Joe Biden's phone call presumably asking him not to make the announcement).The reasons Manchin gave are absurd on their face. He must know that.He said he's worried about inflation and the national debt. But Build Back Better would be paid for with tax increases on big corporations and the wealthy — so it won't have any bearing on inflation or the debt. More to the point, its sticker price of $1.75 trillion covers 10 years, during which the Congressional Budget Office projects $288 trillion worth of economic output. So a Build Back Better plan of $1.75 trillion would amount to roughly 0.6% of gross domestic product — or slightly more than the 0.5% of GDP Americans spent last year on tobacco. And that doesn't begin to cover all the benefits to the economy of investing in K-12 education, childcare, and so on. Manchin also claimed he's worried about the impact of the latest COVID surge on the economy. But if COVID slows the economy, that's even more justification for federal spending that strengthens social safety nets. And even more reason to support a program that could possibly stimulate the economy in the short run. He said he can't face his constituents in West Virginia without renouncing “Build Back Better.” But on a per-person basis, West Virginians would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation in all America. One out of four West Virginians over 65 have no natural teeth, for example — the highest rate in the nation. Biden's original bill provided dental benefits under Medicare.So what's really motivating Manchin? Four possibilities:West Virginia is a coal state, and Manchin doesn't want to do anything that might dampen coal production (the bill has a number of environmental measures). Possibly, but Manchin must know there's no long-term future in mining coal regardless of what happens to this legislation. There are far fewer coal jobs left in West Virginia than there are jobs in health care. The legislation would, however, help West Virginians transition from coal to new and better jobs. And help them survive in the meantime.He's self-dealing. He owns stock valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm he founded in 1988? Last year he made half a million dollars in Enersystems dividends (roughly three times the $174,000 salary he made last year as a senator).He's takes bribes. He collects more campaign money from coal, oil, and gas companies than any other senator. (In June, Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy told the Greenpeace investigative unit that Manchin participated in weekly meetings with company operatives.)He loves the power and attention. Who ever heard of Joe Manchin before the Biden administration? A minor-league Democratic senator from a small, poor state suddenly has the national spotlight and has become the biggest spoiler in the Democratic Party.Frankly, your guess is as good as mine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Tomorrow begins Joe Biden's two-day “Summit for Democracy,” whose avowed goal is to rally the nations of the world against the forces of authoritarianism.Yet some of the authoritarian forces that pose the gravest threat to American democracy (and to other democracies around the world) are homegrown in the U.S. -- such as the former guy's Big Lie and refusal to concede the 2020 election, his attempted coup, his instigation of the deadly January 6 insurrection, and his open encouragement of Republican state legislatures to suppress votes and take over state electoral machinery. And then, of course, the GOP's willingness if not eagerness to go along with all this. My newsletter on power, politics, and the real economy is reader supported. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you'd like to support this work, please consider a paid subscription. And then there's Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook — both of whose relentless and intentional promulgation of lies and paranoid fantasies have done much to poison the American mind. (Not to be outdone, the former guy is about to launch his own media company, to be headed by Devin Nunes, the crazed pro-Trump California Congressman.) American business groups have been invited to the Summit, despite their nonstop lobbying against proposed voting rights legislation in Congress and their increasing pollution of politics with corporate money.Small wonder that Freedom House's 2021 Freedom in the World report — which scores countries on a scale of 0 to 100 — has given the United States a score of 83, a major drop from America's score of 94 just a decade ago.With all this in mind, I thought today's Office Hours would offer a good opportunity for us to speculate about the future of American democracy. Please answer this question: What will American democracy be like ten years from now unless … [you fill in the blank]?Eager to have your views. As usual, I'll chime in around 10 am PT, 1 pm ET.***Your comments so far are so thoughtful that you've prompted me to jump in earlier than I'd planned. Many thanks for this wonderful forum! First, to summarize points that several of you have made, I see three existential threats to American democracy: (1) Big money, from large corporations and wealthy individuals, that goes into political campaigns and into issue ads. The money is essentially bribing lawmakers. There's almost no countervailing sources of big money. Labor union contributions don't come close. (2) Authoritarian, anti-democratic moves by Trump Republicans to rig elections in ways that suppress the votes of likely Democratic voters and give Republican legislators power over election officials – based on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen,” but really based on the Republican Party's assessment that demographic trends work against it unless it shrinks the electorate. (3) A media (especially Fox News and Facebook) that lies incessantly to spread outrage, anger, panic, and paranoia in order to boost ratings and revenues. Unless these three threats are contained and reversed, I see little hope for American democracy as we know it. Ten years from now we'll be an oligarchy. We might still call ourselves a democracy. Hopefully we'll still maintain the rule of law. But America will a democracy in name only. What can we do? Fortunately, there are four immediate things we can do. But time is wasting. Each can be accomplished now, but each will become harder to achieve in coming months and years as anti-democratic forces gain ground. 1. Get big money out of politics. The Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse its shameful decision in Citizens United vs. FEC and related cases, especially given the current makeup of the Court. And a constitutional amendment allowing government to limit amounts of money spent on campaigns is extremely unlikely. But campaign finance reform is possible, especially reforms that provide matching public dollars for every small donation. Such a reform was in the original “For the People Act.” It can and should be added to the Freedom to Vote Act, now in the Senate. Small versions of it can and should be enacted in your state. 2. Enact the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Amendment Act. Both are necessary to set national voting rights standards. Both have been passed by the House. Almost every Democrat in the Senate supports them. But because no Republican senator supports them, to be enacted the filibuster must be abolished or at least altered to carve out voting rights. This is where Manchin and Sinema come in. If they fail to join other senate Democrats in this, history will remember them as traitors to the cause of American democracy. 3. Hold Trump and his authoritarian lawmakers accountable for their anti-democratic moves, particularly those that entailed an attempted coup in the months after the 2020 election. Hopefully, the House investigation will reveal the coup in all its disgraceful detail. (When the history of this shameful period is written, lawmakers like Rep. Liz Cheney will be remembered as heroes.) The Justice Department must take action against Trump and all lawmakers implicated in the coup. 4. Constrain the divisive lies coming from social media, Fox News, and other outlets. How to do this without undermining freedom of speech? Two ways: (1) Revoke Section 230 of the Communications Act, which protects digital media providers from liability for the content posted by their users—even if that content is harmful, hateful, or misleading. There is no continuing justification for this legal protection, particularly at a time when the largest of these providers are vast monopolies. (2) Create a new “fairness doctrine,” requiring all broadcasters – including cable -- to cover issues of public importance in ways that present opposing perspectives. Obviously, this will be difficult to enforce but at least it would affirm the public's interest in knowing more than one side of a controversial issues. These four fixes are only a start. Over long term, as several of you have noted, we need an educational system that emphasizes civic virtue and citizen responsibilities; a Supreme Court more dedicated to constraining big money than suppressing votes, and which respects the critical wall between church and state rather than the weaponizing of religion; and a broad rejection of the use of racism to undermine our democracy. Hope this helps. I'll add more thoughts in response to yours, below. Thanks again for your thoughtfulness and respectfulness. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

FCC v Prometheus Radio Project was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with media ownership rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can set under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The case dates back to Third Circuit rulings from 2002 that have blocked FCC decisions to relax media ownership rules related to cross-ownership of newspapers with television and radio broadcast stations. In the present case, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in April 2021 that the FCC had not made arbitrary and capricious rulemaking decisions in the context of the Administrative Procedure Act, nor had the requirement to review minority ownership of stations under Congressional mandate as stated in the Third Circuit's ruling, reversing this last ruling and allowing the FCC to proceed to relax cross-media ownership rules. Background. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had been given authority under the Communications Act of 1934 to set media ownership rules of broadcast services such as radio and television that served the same community as to manage the broadcasting spectrum. In 1975, the FCC enacted a rule restricting cross-media ownership, preventing newspapers from also owning broadcast services, as to reduce concentration of media ownership that had been occurring in the years prior. While the FCC could not regulate newspapers, they could extend their regulation on broadcast services to cover cross-ownership. The 1975 rule led to a number of debates on the cross-media ownership rules, as they were found to become barriers to entry into the market. Among other functions, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 instructed the FCC to perform a review of its rules related to media ownership every four years and repeal rules that no longer made sense in the current market as to foster competition within the communications industry. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Welcome back to Frown Town! This week, Vee and J talk about the Truth social network and how it exploits Section 230 of the Common Decency and Communications Act of 1996 to an extreme degree. Special thank you to FCON for loaning us their song Liquid Fury for our intro! Their bandcamp: https://fcon206.bandcamp.com/track/fcon. Relevant Links: Donald Trump Is Launching a New Social Network called Truth Social - https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/donald-trump-is-launching-a-new-social-network-called-truth-social/ 47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Section 230 Explainer: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Only Fans has become a favorite pastime for some. Well, it depends on what content you are looking for. "Certain content" will be banned after Oct 1 so find out why their main income generator is slowing down the revenue in that sector. Just like social media companies, payment processors are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. That's the signature law that grants broad legal immunity to Facebook and Twitter for many of the content-moderation decisions they make — and the law that SESTA-FOSTA amended to create an exception for *** ads. To watch my previous video on "Apple to Scan USA iPhones and iCloud for Child Abuse" https://youtu.be/-TdCph0e_oQ Check out this and other videos on my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP--id6nvHQiAq2xckPPF4A Podcast on 9 platforms including Spotify, Apple, Google, and Anchor. Check out Anchor for all links https://anchor.fm/lalanews3 Business and Bookings https://form.jotform.com/212356525421146 LMFierceReview@gmail.com IG @LalaNews3 #lalanews3 #onlyfans #banned #content #vlog #paymentprocessor #visa #mastercard #mc #section230 #SESTA #FOSTA #merchant #podcast #news #entertainment #entertainmentnews --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lalanews3/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lalanews3/support

This episode explores what trolling is and looks at what is being done to prevent it from happening in the UK. It takes a look at the UK laws and what regulation social media companies, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are doing to prevent online abuse. It also talks about celebrity trolling cases, such as the recent racist online abuse English football players faced in the final of the 2020 Euros football tournament. Link to socials and other places you can listen to the podcast

An amendment to the Harmful Digital Communications Act is expected to create a new offence, making it a crime to share intimate images or recordings without the person's explicit consent. Labour MP Louisa Wall's member's bill would close a loophole that means people won't be charged, if it can't be proven they intended to cause their victim harm.

In Today's "Moment of Truth," Saurabh and Nick sit down with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to discuss China, 5G, Huawei, ZTE, Apple, Facebook, Google, and the forthcoming political realignment when it comes to section 230 reform and breaking up Big Tech. Plus, why it's bad for ZTE equipment to operate 5G towers next to our nuke silos in Montana.Commissioner Brendan Carr is the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, and he served previously as the agency's General Counsel.Described by Axios as “the FCC's 5G crusader,” Carr has led the FCC's work to modernize its infrastructure rules and accelerate the buildout of high-speed networks. His reforms cut billions of dollars in red tape, enabled the private sector to construct high-speed networks in communities across the country, and extended America's global leadership in 5G.Commissioner Carr leads a groundbreaking telehealth initiative at the FCC. The Connected Care Pilot Program supports the delivery of high-quality care to low-income Americans and veterans over their smartphones, tablets, or other connected devices. The Program is helping to drive down health care costs while improving patient outcomes.Commissioner Carr brings over a dozen years of private and public sector experience in communications and tech policy to his position. Before joining the agency as a staffer back in 2012, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP in the firm's appellate, litigation, and telecom practices. He litigated cases involving the First Amendment and the Communications Act. Previously, Commissioner Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd. And after attending Georgetown University for his undergrad, Commissioner Carr earned his J.D. magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law where he served as an editor of the Catholic University Law Review.Learn more about Brendan Carr's work at the FCC here: https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/brendan-carr––––––Follow American Moment on Social Media:Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmMomentOrgFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmMomentOrgInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/ammomentorg/YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qmB5DeiFxt53ZPZiW4TcgRumble – https://rumble.com/c/c-695775BitChute – https://www.bitchute.com/channel/Xr42d9swu7O9/Check out AmCanon:https://www.americanmoment.org/amcanon/Follow Us on Twitter:Saurabh Sharma – https://twitter.com/ssharmaUSNick Solheim – https://twitter.com/NickSSolheimAmerican Moment's "Moment of Truth" Podcast is recorded at the Conservative Partnership Center in Washington DC, produced and edited by Jared Cummings. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the beginning of 2021, more than two dozen class action cases have been filed in Florida state court under Florida's Security of Communications Act. The act has, in some form, been on the books for more than 50 years. It is modeled off of the Federal Wiretap Act and has traditionally been thought of […]

Free Speech Hate Speech Counter Speech The first crossover episode between May it Displease the Court, which looks at corruption in the courts from judges through dark money anti-democratic far-Right donors, and RhetoricLee Speaking, banishing banality one speech at a time. Your co-hosts, Mary and Lee, look at censorship, free speech vs. hate speech, and counter speech. Here are the highlights:   1) as much as we may want the law to recognize hate speech sometimes when truly vile opinions (in our opinions) are being circulated, the law does not recognize a hate speech exception to the first amendment that guarantees the right to free speech and    2) if there were such an exception it would be used to suppress minoritized people and their fight for civil liberties more often than it would be to silence transphobic, racist, sexist, and other kinds of exclusionary speech.   We take you through a few cases that have been instrumental in establishing the “no hate speech” exception including Snyder v. Phelps SCOTUS 2011 (Westboro Baptist Church) and Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence , 468 U. S. 288    We also look at some personal examples. Mary discusses an experience at the Anne Frank House right after 9-11 and Lee discusses a current campus event where the free speech of a racist and transphobic student is being protected. They also discuss potential alternative terms to replace hate speech, including “racist erasure” and “transphobic erasure.”   Finally, Mary explains the issue of “school-sponsored speech,” in which first amendment rights come up against the purpose of educational institutions and the need for more counter-speech on the Left as the corrective for hateful-speech-that-isn’t-hate-speech by the anti-democratic far-Right funded by pro-corporate dark money donors.   Check out May it Displease the Court on Apple Podcasts, Podbean, and Spotify!   Resources The Dark Money Behind Campus Speech Wars First Amendment | US Constitution Harry CONNICK, Individually and in His Capacity as District Attorney, etc., Petitioner, v. Sheila MYERS. CITY OF SAN DIEGO ET AL. v. ROE William P. CLARK, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Petitioners v. COMMUNITY FOR CREATIVE NON-VIOLENCE et al. Fairness Doctrine: History and Constitutional Issues Local and Independent Television Protection Act would overturn a Trump-era rule that’s permitted… Watch Field of Vision - Do Not Split about the suppression of Hong Kong pro-democracy protests   Read the blog version: https://rhetoriclee.com/free-speech-hate-speech-counter-speech/   *Learn more at https://rhetoriclee.com  *Follow the show  on Facebook and on Instagram @rhetoriclee  *Subscribe to the show on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on Stitcher, on Youtube, on Spotify, or via RSS *Take 20 seconds to leave a short review and 5 star-rating (I’ll even take 4 stars, I’m not greedy). Reviews help future #rhetoricnerds find the show! *Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or Gmail @rhetoriclee   Free Speech Hate Speech Counter Speech   Mary: I was flying back from France when the planes hit the Twin Towers. After US airspace was closed my plane was turned back to Amsterdam. I spent an extra week in Europe until I was able to get back home. After a few days of securing funds bc I had no money and no credit card. We decided to do a little sight seeing and went to the Ann Frank House. I had been interested in the Holocaust since I was in elementary school and had read and studied it extensively.    Set the scene  - First you went on a tour and saw the attic where Ann and her family and another family hid out from the Nazis. I saw her bedroom and the pictures she pasted on the walls. We saw the hidden bookcase entrance. It was really emotional to be stranded in another country, far away from family.    Describe the exercise –Then you descend into a part of the House that is more like a typical museum exhibit. They have the tour group sit around a table and in front of each person were two buttons, red and green and above the table were two lines of lights. At the end was a screen and on came a film that showed footage of far right Austrian politicians saying racist, hateful things and then the moderator asked whether we thought that speech should be protected, hit the green button or censored hit the red button. We did and the vast majority supported free speech. This process was repeated several more times and each time the speech got more extreme and then they started adding in comments that made it seem as if more people were supporting these hateful politicians and the votes became 50/50 free speech and censorship and by the end the vast majority had shifted from supporting free speech to supporting censorship of speech they didn’t like. I have never been a part of anything like that type of indoctrination before or since.   My reactions - I was pretty pissed because it was clearly a pro-censorship propaganda tool and it worked with the people in my group. Kind of soured my opinion of the Ann Frank House. I mean, I’m an American so the 1st Amendment; Freedom of Speech is beat into our collective identity. I was a law student at the time. I had recently taken Constitutional Law and studied this very topic. So I fully believed that the best medicine for hate speech was more speech, not censorship. Now, of course this was 2001, Fox news was 5 yrs old, it was just starting to ruin my former mother-in-law. Charles Koch and his brother were still toiling away in secret trying to remake the way American think. But I did get where the museum was coming from. Some ideas aren’t just offensive, they are dangerous and what do we do with those?   What is a Hate Crime?  the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” including skin color and national origin.  Hate crimes are overt acts that can include acts of violence against persons or property, violation or deprivation of civil rights, certain "true threats," or acts of intimidation, or conspiracy to commit these crimes. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that either criminalize these acts or impose a harsher punishment when it can be proven that the defendant targeted the victim because of the victim's race, ethnicity, identity, or beliefs. A hate crime is more than than offensive speech or conduct; it is specific criminal behavior that ranges from property crimes like vandalism and arson to acts of intimidation, assault, and murder.  Victims of hate crimes can include institutions, religious organizations and government entities as well as individuals.   1st Amendment  - What does it say? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.   What is Hate Speech? – Hate speech is subjective, meaning it means different things to different people. It’s a term that is thrown around as if it has a set definition. But, it doesn’t. Hate Speech is not a legally defined term.  The 1st Amendment protects the free exchange of ideas even if the expression of those ideas is considered offensive or hateful.  Matal v. Tam (2017) SCOTUS 8-0  Held that a fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that the government may not punish or suppress speech based on disapproval of the ideas or perspectives the speech conveys. It does not permit discrimination based on viewpoint and like it or not giving offense is a viewpoint. Any oft repeated idea in Sup Ct case law is "the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.   What do most people mean when they use the term hate speech? Typically it is used to describe speech designed to demean, vilify or incite hatred against a group or class of people because of their race, religion, sexual or gender identity, disability or national origin.   If this speech is copacetic with the 1st Amendment, are there any legal limits on speech?   Yes Speech becomes criminal when it is a specific threat of violence or incites imminent criminal activity targeted at a specific person or group. “fighting words” — face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn’t limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements. other narrow exceptions, such as for true threats of illegal conduct or incitement intended to and likely to produce imminent illegal conduct (i.e., illegal conduct in the next few hours or maybe days, as opposed to some illegal conduct some time in the future). Indeed, threatening to kill someone because he’s black (or white), or intentionally inciting someone to a likely and immediate attack on someone because he’s Muslim (or Christian or Jewish), can be made a crime. But this isn’t because it’s “hate speech”; it’s because it’s illegal to make true threats and incite imminent crimes against anyone and for any reason, for instance because they are police officers or capitalists or just someone who is sleeping with the speaker’s ex-girlfriend.   For example, two years ago two students at another SUNY school posted a snapchat of the two of them just lying in bed on Halloween and the caption said “gonna lynch some ni…. tonight.” To me, given the history of lynching, given the way it was phrased, given the use of the racial slur...that should be hate speech.   Problems with excluding Hate Speech from 1st Amendment protection So, eventually a Judge is going to have to decide whether specific words are hate speech or not, not a good idea to give Judges this power. Why?    Speech that makes people angry, or upset is protected by the 1st Amendment – example the Westboro Baptist Church    Snyder v. Phelps SCOTUS 2011 (Westboro Baptist Church) for 20 yrs this group has picketed military funerals to express their belief that God hates the US bc of it’s tolerance for homosexuality. Fred Phelps is the leader the other members are all his relatives. They traveled to Maryland and picketed 1,000 feet from the Church, on public property, in accordance with instruction from local law enforcement by silently holding up signs for 30 minutes that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” “Fags Doom Nations” “Priests Rape Boys” “You are Going to Hell''. The soldier’s father filed suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress. A jury awarded him millions in damages. The 4th Circuit reversed the conviction holding that the 1st  Amendment shielded them from civil liability because the statements were on matters of public concern, were not provably false, and were expressed solely through hyperbolic rhetoric. “[S]peech on public issues occupies the ‘ “highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values” ’ and is entitled to special protection.” Connick v. Myers , 461 U. S. 138 . Although the boundaries of what constitutes speech on matters of public concern are not well defined, this Court has said that speech is of public concern when it can “be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community,” id., at 146, or when it “is a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public,” San Diego v. Roe , 543 U. S. 77 .  Court must independently examine the “ ‘content, form, and context,’   Even protected speech is “subject to reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions.” Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence , 468 U. S. 288 . Because this Nation has chosen to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that public debate is not stifled, Westboro must be shielded from tort liability for its picketing in this case.  Robert’s opnion – 8-1 (Alito dissenting)   Lee: and when you listen to these examples like Westboro Church of course you want to call it hate speech. I want to call it hate speech. But we always have to remember that even though the law does NOT equally apply to everyone, it pretends as if it does and so any law you want to make would apply to everyone. So you can only imagine what would happen if hate speech were enforceable and Black Lives Matter protests happened…   So while I can really understand wanting the law to step in and shut down some of these vile opinions, I also realize that if hate speech were regulated then it would be used against minoritized persons WAY more often than it would against homophobic speech, racist speech, etc.   How do we get social change if hate speech isn’t a crime? Punishing people for speech we don’t like – slippery slope – Watch Hong Kong Doc – Oscar Nom Don’t Split This is what happens when an authoritarian government – China, wants to stifle pro-democracy speech and to criminalize it. The GOP are authoritarian and anti-democratic as evidenced by their attempts to overthrow the government, propagate the big lie to undercut democracy and the 361 voter suppression bills currently being pushed by Republican state legislatures. What will they do to speech they don’t like if they get back in power?    Counter Speech is the antidote for hate speech – examples, strategies – in the US we believe that the remedy is more speech, not stifling speech. The First Amendment protects the right to advocate and agitate for a change in 1st Amendment law. And you could argue that the law should be changed to exclude hate speech, but this advocacy needs to define what constitutes hate speech, bc it is an undefined term and highly subjective. If the law is changed then it will be up to Judges to apply the new definition of hate speech to whatever circumstances brings about an alleged violation. Eugene Volokh who teached free speech law at UCLA law school, and used to clerk for Sup Ct justice Sandra Day O’Connor and also 9th Cir Judge Alex Kozinski (side note he retired after several law clerks accused him of workplace sexual misconduct including showing them porn at work on multiple occasions)  suggests advocates of this expanded area of non-protected  speech “should explain just what viewpoints the government would be allowed to suppress, what viewpoints would remain protected, and how judges, juries, and prosecutors are supposed to distinguish the two.”   Problems with continuing to say hate speech when it just legally isn’t defensible   --keeps us trapped in a binary of free speech/hate speech. so one side says hate speech the other side says free speech and it’s so obvious a slam dunk for whatever side claims free speech. --in fact, quote-unquote “american” who protect “free speech” are hoping you’ll scream about hate speech because they know it strengthens their position. I’ll give you an example on my campus a bit later when we talk about school sponsored speech   So I actually put a post on my Facebook page asking my rhetoric/communication scholar hive mind what options they suggest for navigating this binary between hate and free speech. What other options are there.   Here are some of the terms they suggested.   Symbolic racism.  Aversive racism.  Implicit racism.  the step below racism “racial animus.” symbolic racial violence overt racism racist erasure   The point isn’t to choose any one of these. The point is that when you’re willing to agree that the binary isn’t working and that counter speech is the only action we have THEN you start getting creative about inventing language to create arguments that short circuit the free speech logics of the opposition. Sure, it’s free speech. That isn’t the point. It’s also racism.    One thing I’ve heard a lot is “hateful speech” because it’s not “hate speech” but it’s close. To me, it’s too easily perverted. The other one suggested by Judith Butler and Wendy Brown is "injurious speech”--granted they’re writing about legal theory and not public protest--but even that seems to imply that we gauge the effects of speech by how HURT or INJURED the person on the receiving end is. I think that’s also a losing battle because it’s based on a subjective experience of injury that the far Right will just deny. We’ve seen this again and again with cancel-culture. “Who could get so upset over some drawings in a Dr. Seuss book?”    So I don’t use those two but I do use the earlier list and try to make the claim that I don’t care if your speech is free or not, it’s still racist, homophobic, etc. And, if necessary, I use a modifier like “symbolic racism.” Not to minimize the effects of the act but to think about what, argumentatively, I can sustain.   Mary what do you think?   Mary: concerns about many of the terms from a legal perspective but racist erasure is compelling and the most accurate description of what’s happening.   Now we are facing new challenges with the proliferation and popularity of propaganda right wing media Fox News, Oann, Newsmax, right wing radio, podcasts facebook, the internet.   Fairness Doctrine – what was it, who got rid of it. A quick google brings up some historical discussions and some negative opinion pieces about how unfair and awful the Fairness Doctrine was by the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute – Koch It was adopted in 1949 - The Fairness Doctrine required that stations provide balanced coverage of all controversial issues of public importance. The Fairness Doctrine never required “equal time” in the sense of strict equality for each side of an issue on a minute-for-minute basis. In talk programs and news coverage, a station just had to make sure that both points of view were presented in such a way that the listener would get exposure to them. How that was done was left to theon’s discretion, and the FCC intervened in only the most egregious cases. By contrast, “equal time” or “equal opportunities” stems from a different source in the Communications Act – the Section 315 provisions on the treatment by broadcast stations (and local cable systems) of candidates for public office. Essentially, equal time requires that, if a broadcast station gives one candidate free time, all other candidates can get the same amount of free time    The Reagan-era FCC eliminated this rule, which was never reinstituted in subsequent decades under either party. a subsequent Trump-era 2017 FCC decision loosened ownership restrictions on stations. In combination, these two decisions not only allowed given stations to present only one view, but for many stations nationwide — now more easily owned by the same conglomerate, such as the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group — to present the same view. Rush Limbaugh started his talk radio in 1988, Fox began in 1996   Now what?   School Sponsored Speech - The test to establish first amendment protection in the context of school-sponsored speech is laid out in Vanderhurst v. Colorado Mountain College District (2000).  “Whether an action restricting a plaintiff’s school-sponsored speech is reasonably related to the school’s legitimate pedagogical (educational) interests is the test for determining whether” his speech is protected by the First Amendment.    Lee:  Recent issue on campus, an education major--someone who is going to teach children--is posting horrible stuff on social media validating slavery and denying trans identity. Very much racist and transphobic erasure. When the student was suspended from student teaching for violating New York State law as an education major (can’t promote a bias free classroom) he lied on social media saying he was suspended from the school and then the far-Right anti-democratic dark money donor funded legal complex swooped in and miraculously, a few days later, he’s reinstated into his student teaching. Shortly thereafter, he painted over Black Lives Matter symbols on campus with USA and red and blue paint.    TFP Student Action TFP Student Action, a project of “The Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property,” is the front for this operation.   Describes itself as a group that was created to counter “liberal, socialist and communist trends of the times and proudly affirm the positive values of tradition, family and private property.” The petition, which has accumulated nearly 20,000 signatures, describes itself as a peaceful protest and argues that the student’s original suspension “sound[ed] like something right out of a communist gulag, not USA” and further elaborated that “What happened … is not merely an attack on truth, or on free speech, it is an attack against reality itself. It’s all part of the dark money, Koch and Mercer-funded attack on progressive values using “free speech” as their shield.   Speech First Inc. claims to be and is regularly called a grassroots civil rights watchdog is actually a highly professional astro-turfing campaign, with a board of former Bush administration lawyers and longtime affiliates of the Koch family.  Born in 2018, the group seems to have been enacted for the purpose of inserting itself or to put it more accurately to instigate campus culture wars:  Here’s how grassroots this group is – it President Nicole Neily said no students were involved in founding the group. The $5 lifetime membership dues—a requirement for the group to take up a student’s case in court—is a “negligible part” of its funding, which mainly comes from undisclosed backers AKA Dark Money AKA Kochs and their ilk. Speech First’s board of directors includes a former head of a Koch-backed trust and two conservative attorneys from Koch-funded programs.    “being branded as neutral, but having the people who know, know that you’re actually conservative, puts us in a unique position.” The board’s center of gravity is George Mason University, school recently revealed to have given the Kochs some sway over academic appointments in departments they funded – so much for academic freedom Speech First plans to “flood” the courts with similar lawsuits, starting with at least three more at other colleges this year.   Speech First Inc. v. Schlissel (6th Circuit) 2019 In this case, Speech First, Inc., an organization working to protect university students’ civil rights, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on behalf of three unnamed University of Michigan (UM) students. These three students claimed that their free speech rights were chilled by UM’s disciplinary rules and procedures which prohibited “harassment,” “bullying,” and “bias-related conduct.” Speech First also claimed that the “Bias Response Team” at UM investigated and punished students for engaging in “bias” conduct. “Harassing or bullying another person—physically, verbally, or through 83 some other means” is listed (Speech First v. Schlissel 2018). The Statement, including the violations section, governs all actions on UM property, at UM events, and occurring in the city of Ann Arbor, MI. The BRT was solely an educational resource and a support mechanism for students; it had no disciplinary authority. The term “bias incident” was written to be broad, because the BRT wanted to support any students who needed the resource, not to punish the alleged perpetrators   Speech First Inc v. Killeen (7th Circuit) 2020 - Speech First sued 29 administrators at the University on behalf of four anonymous students. These students claim that they wish to express what they describe as "political, social, and policy views that are unpopular on campus." Speech First's complaint lists examples of such viewpoints in general terms: opposition to abortion, support for President Trump, belief in traditional marriage, support for strong immigration policies, support for the "deradicalization of Islam," support for First Amendment protection of "hate speech," opposition to gun control, and support for LGBT rights. Speech First alleges that three University policies—the responsive action of the Bias Assessment and Response Team and the Bias Incident Protocol to reports of "bias-motivated incidents" on campus, the imposition of No Contact Directives, and the prior approval rule—chill their student members' speech, force these students to engage in self-censorship, and deter them from speaking openly about issues of public concern. Speech First challenges the actions of the University's Bias Assessment and Response Team ("BART"). BART "collects and responds to reports of bias-motivated incidents that occur within the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign community." In turn, BART defines "bias-motivated incidents" as "actions or expressions that are motivated, at least in part, by prejudice against or hostility toward a person (or group) because of the person's (or group's) actual or perceived age, disability/ability status, ethnicity, gender, gender identity/expression, national origin, race, religion/spirituality, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, etc." In addition, BART "[p]rovides opportunities for educational conversation and dialogue" and "[s]upports those impacted by bias."   determine whether to reach out to the involved students, if they are identified, to invite them to participate in a voluntary conversation. BART also devises a response plan, which could include "[e]ducational conversations," "[m]ediation, facilitated dialogue," "[e]ducational referrals," "[r]esolution agreements," or "[r]eferrals to other offices and/or programs."   Speech First Inc. v. Fenves (5th Circuit) 2020   Conclusion - What the left needs to appreciate is excluding hate speech from the 1st Amendment means it can be suppressed and that is a dangerous proposition especially when we are facing a huge increase in Trump appointed right wing Judges. It is the same tactic Republicans are using by passing bills to suppress the right to vote. Instead of trying to win over voters, to adopt policies that the majority of people support they are just working to suppress the power of those who disagree with them. That is lazy and authoritarian. The left wants to be the opposite of that approach. We need to do the hard work of making the arguments against offensive hateful speech and to engage in the debate as much and as passionately as the right. We don't have the Koch money to create and fund faux grassroots movements.    Lee: and the more popular argument AND if there’s one thing that not being bound by old traditions and outdated categories gets you, it’s the ability to think critically and creatively about new identity positions. If anyone can strategize counter-speech, it’s us.   Mary: We also have the numbers. And by using our voices collectively and consistently we can defend inclusivity without trying to exclude offensive speech. 

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell It’s difficult to find many things that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump agree on, especially when it comes to policy. But they both agree that Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 has to go. Why? Not for the same reasons, that’s for sure. Here’s why. The post Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/4/21: Section 230 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell It’s difficult to find many things that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump agree on, especially when it comes to policy. But they both agree that Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 has to go. Why? Not for the same reasons, that’s for sure. Here’s why.

On February 8, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996, the most significant revision of the Communications Act since its enactment in 1934. In the 1996 Act’s preamble, Congress declared the statute’s purpose “to promote competition and reduce regulation.” And the conference report accompanying the law stated it was intended “to provide for a pro-competitive, deregulatory national policy framework.” At the signing ceremony, President Clinton’s rhetoric was soaring: “With the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future.”Now, a quarter century after the Telecom Act’s passage, we can celebrate the 25th anniversary and acknowledge the achievement, while – with the benefit of hindsight – also taking a critical look at what the 1996 Act actually accomplished and whether it needs updating. This program will address these fundamental questions: (1) what did the 1996 Act get right; (2) what did it get wrong; and (3) should it now be updated or substantially rewritten, and if so, in what way?The Federalist Society's Telecommunications & Electronic Media Practice Group is pleased to host a distinguished panel to address these questions.Free State Foundation President Randolph May, a former FCC Associate General Counsel with over four decades of experience in the communications law and policy field, will moderate a discussion among experts: Harold Furthgott-Roth, a former FCC commissioner who served as a principal House Commerce Committee staff member working on the 1996 Act; Michelle Connolly, Professor of the Practice in the Economics Department at Duke University who twice served as Chief Economist at the FCC; and Chris Lewis, President and CEO of Public Knowledge who has served as Deputy Director of the FCC’s Office of Legislative Affairs.Featuring:-- Michelle Connolly, Professor of the Practice, Duke University; former Chief Economist, Federal Communications Commission-- Chris Lewis, President & CEO, Public Knowledge; former Deputy Director, FCC Office of Legislative Affairs-- Hon. Harold Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for the Economics of the Internet, Hudson Institute; former FCC Commissioner-- Moderator: Randolph May, President, Free State Foundation; Executive Committee Member, Federalist Society's Telecommunications & Electronic Media Practice Group

This week, we talk about some of the continued fallout of the January 6 riot at the Capitol, including reaction from some senators, impeachment, and banning on social media. We also look at some common misconceptions of the 1st Amendment, 25th Amendment, and Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-moderate-podcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-moderate-podcast/support

I.On Wednesday Facebook and Twitter sniffed out what appeared to be a disinformation operation, and acted quickly to stop its spread. In the day since... Facebook and Twitter sniffed out what appeared to be a disinformation operationnoted at the New York Timesa story that got 1.2 million engagements on FacebookAlex Jonescreator harassmenthate speechYouTube banned Holocaust denial more than a year before Facebook and Twittera crackdown on QAnon,that role was significantbut as we discussed when Facebook made its move last weekQAnon represented a domestic terrorism threatsadly correctgenerally positive“fiasco”“goofed it.”opined Jack DorseyElated to finally see their worst fears realizedthere would be a hearing about the Post linkundertake an effort to “clarify” Section 230 of the Communications Acthas concisely explained the hypocrisy in this FCC announcing it would clarify this particular ruleThe Verge’s Adi Robertson has some hereIt’s extremely likely!Twitter added frictionan analytics company found 4.5 million mentions of ithe also reflected on how the dynamic pertained to social networksUpgrade my subscriptionPresident Trump and his backers are building a powerful online apparatus to amplify false claims that the election is “rigged,” and are actively priming the Republican base not to accept election resultsexaggerated and reframedby the White HouseApple is taking extraordinary action to get Telegram to remove individual posts from channels connected to pro-democracy protesters in Belarussaid it beforeadministration of the lawA Wall Street Journal stress test of Facebook’s content moderation systems found that the company initially made the wrong call in a significant majority of casesFacebook removed the page of a fringe political party in New Zealand ahead of its electionA trio of Ukrainians on Facebook with more than 200,000 friends and followers has been spreading debunked conspiracy theories about the Biden family for more than a yearDemocrats tweet more than Republicans, and Trump is Twitter’s top subjectTwitter went down for 90 minutes on Wednesday afternoonSnap belatedly added popular music tracks to SnapchatSnap and Pinterest benefited from this summer’s advertiser boycott of FacebookGoogle added “hum to search.”The latest multiplayer video game to captivate young people is Among UsSomething is happening involving Google Chat, Google Hangouts, and Google Workspacecasey@platformer.news

Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa, joins us to discuss Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, after blocking a bill to raise direct payments to Americans from $600 to $2000, introduced a different bill to do just that - as well as to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act, to create a bipartisan commission to investigate election fraud and to make some new rules about disclosing foreign nationals who handle election materials.Dan Kovalik, lawyer, professor and author of "No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests and Keith Mackey, President of Mackey International, an aviation consulting firm specializing in aviation safety, risk management, accident investigation, air carrier certification, and safety/compliance audits, joins us to discuss what it means for Boeing 737s to return to the skies and how much weight we should put in these coming reforms at the Federal Aviation Administration.George Naylor with the National Family Farm Coalition, joins us to discuss what the covid 19 pandemic has shown us about our food systems, and a look at some ways people are trying to grow from those lessons.Dr. Linwood Tauheed, President of the National Economic Association, joins us to discuss why Mitch McConnnell could care less about you and your stimulus checks, and whether or not Joe Biden will be able to prevent more Black Lives Matter protests in 2021.Lawrence Sidbury, Jr., former American football defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, joins our weekly sports segment “Foul Play” where we take a look at the best and mostly the worst of sports around the globe.

Matthew Feeney from the CATO Institute is here to help explain the FCC’s review on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and what that means for social media. Source: CATO Institute article by Michael Feeney ‘Accusations of Social Media “Election Interference” Put Online Speech at Risk’ FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Statement FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s Statement Law Street article by Christina Tabacco ‘FCC Chairman Expresses Desire to Reform Section 230’ Legal Talk Today Episode ‘Trump vs. Twitter (again)’ New York Times article by Kevin Roose ‘Facebook and Twitter Dodgea 2016 Repeat, and Ignite a 2020 Firestorm’ Reply Comments of Co-Authors of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 by U.S. Representative Chris Cox and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy Twitter’s Private Information Policy

Matthew Feeney from the CATO Institute is here to help explain the FCC’s review on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and what that means for social media. Source: CATO Institute article by Michael Feeney ‘Accusations of Social Media “Election Interference” Put Online Speech at Risk’ FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Statement FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s Statement Law Street article by Christina Tabacco ‘FCC Chairman Expresses Desire to Reform Section 230’ Legal Talk Today Episode ‘Trump vs. Twitter (again)’ New York Times article by Kevin Roose ‘Facebook and Twitter Dodgea 2016 Repeat, and Ignite a 2020 Firestorm’ Reply Comments of Co-Authors of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 by U.S. Representative Chris Cox and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy Twitter’s Private Information Policy

Digital Ad Market Update: 10/16 - 10/22 2020Matt, Joe, and Rebecca give you a breakdown of the latest marketing, culture, and tech news. Tune in to hear everything Of Record. All in 44 minutes or less.Top Stories:The Richards Group is losing clients left and right after news broke out that the agency's founder Stan Richards made some problematic statements causing them to lose their first major client, Motel 6. For our opinion on how the Richards Group could navigate through this PR nightmare, tune in. The FCC is making moves on Section 230 of the Communications Act, and it involves social media platforms and their broad legal immunity in regards to content posted by the platform's users. For the whole scoop, stick around.Coca-Cola Freestyle machines are despised deeply by hosts Matt and Joe, and they are not afraid to voice why. Coca Cola Freestyle machine's new covid safety measures throw a wrench into the equation. Listen in for the whole rant. Articles Mentioned:WPP PLC Hungry For Acquisitions: https://bit.ly/31u0wNtRichards Group Freefall Continues: https://bit.ly/37syXHVFCC Moves on Section 230: https://bit.ly/3kjYDKpKraft Sends Noods: https://bit.ly/2ThMeuQ Contactless Soda: https://bit.ly/37t7wOn

"As the Trump administration ignores the pleas of its own health experts and embraces a 'herd immunity' strategy that scientists have condemned as fringe and dangerous, researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine are predicting an 80% spike in US coronavirus deaths by February as cases continue to rise across the nation," Common Dreams reported Friday. What happens next?"On September 1, US health officials announced they would suspend evictions across the country to help stem further spread of the novel coronavirus," Reuters reported Monday. But renters are still in trouble. "The local, state, and federal eviction bans that gave them temporary protection in the spring began to lapse in early summer. September's reprieve by the CDC [US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], which protected many, but not all, renters will expire in January," the outlet noted. What's going on now, and what does this portend for the future?According to a Friday article in MintPressNews: "Citing 'censorship outcry' from the three branches of government, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced yesterday via tweet the agency's intention to move forward with regulation of social media by looking to modify Section 230 of the Communications Act, which protects the likes of Facebook and Twitter from the parts of the US code that open publishers to legal challenges over the content posted to their platforms, which inevitably puts content creators, themselves, in the crosshairs of the legal system without the benefit of their First Amendment rights." Is this a real problem?"A year after former Bolivian President Evo Morales was ousted in a military coup that installed a brutal far-right regime, Morales ally Luis Arce declared victory in the South American nation's high-stakes presidential election early Monday after exit polls showed the socialist candidate with a large advantage over his two main competitors," Common Dreams reported Monday. What does this mean going forward?After months of US opposition, the Iran arms embargo at the UN has expired, and despite American objections, UN officials uniformly agree on the matter. Don't tell that to the Trump administration, though, as it insists the embargo is still in place. What happens next?US President Donald Trump "says he'll support a bigger coronavirus relief aid package than $1.8 trillion – and blames [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi for stonewalling for political gain," Al Jazeera reported on October 15. Is political brinkmanship being played here? Is Pelosi's unwillingness to allow any Trump victory so close to the November election coming at the expense of the American people?Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have their differences, but they share a distrust of China. "This year's presidential race has been dominated by two crises that have upended American lives, the coronavirus, and the economic recession," columnist Doyle McManus wrote for the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. How will this state of distrust play out in the long run?"The Kremlin said on Monday that Moscow hoped talks with the United States would continue despite Washington rejecting a Russian proposal to unconditionally extend the last treaty limiting the two countries' strategic nuclear weapons," Reuters reported Monday. "Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the demise of the New START accord, which was signed in 2010 and is due to expire in February, would have 'harmful' consequences." How much of this is tied to Trump being a very transactional person and not understanding that this is not as simple as renewing a building lease?Guests:Dr. Yolandra Hancock - Board-certified pediatrician and obesity medicine specialistJack Rasmus - Professor in the Economics and Politics departments at St. Mary's College of CaliforniaMarshall Auerback - Market analyst and research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Wyatt Reed - Sputnik news analyst and producer for By Any Means NecessaryScott Ritter - Former UN weapons inspector in Iraq Richard Lachmann - Professor at the State University of New York at Albany and author of "First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline Great Powers" Caleb Maupin - Journalist and political analystMark Sleboda - Moscow-based international relations and security analyst

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has announced his intention to pursue a reform of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which among other things limits the liability of internet platforms for content they host. Commissioner Rosenworcel described the timing — immediately after Conservative outrage at Twitter and Facebook limiting the reach of an article relating to […]

* Press the “play” button at the top left or on the picture to start the show. * Wait 10 seconds for it to load. * As the show starts, a pink timeline will appear at the top where you can click to anywhere in the show. Call in number is:  215 383-3832. Action Radio shows:  BlogTalkRadio.com/citizenaction Bill site is:  www.WriteYourLaws.com Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ActionRadio ***** Action Radio Show Notes:   10/15/20 00:00 - The Fetke Report, with Bill Fetke.  Bill went over all the California Constitutional Amendments on the ballot this November.  The biggest is probably the $15 minimum wage, which is truly insane.  Bill thinks there should be no minimum wage at all, but I think companies would pay you $1 a day and say we are paying you in "experience."  Of course you don't have to take the job, but this only works where there is ZERO unemployment, so companies and employees have equal power. 30:00 - The Legal Report, with Jonathon Moseley.  Jonathon actually joined us at the top of the hour. 1:00:00 - This is where we took on the whole issue of the New York Post being censored for their story of Hunter Biden corruption and bribery by Ukraine and Chinese business interests to meet then Vice President Joe Biden.  Also we talked about the Communications Act in detail.  This was a very detailed and far ranging discussion.  I hope you can enjoy and share this very important show today. ***** Action Radio is the synergy of radio broadcast technology, the internet, the radio audience, articles, podcasts, news videos, state and federal legislators, the governors, and even the President, in an entirely new way to make our laws.  

Dr. Jill Goldenziel talks about how she teaches law and leadership to Marines, how the U.S. needs to think differently about online free speech, and how China and America use law as an operational tool This episode references: The New Fighting Words?: How U.S. Law Hampers the Fight Against Information Warfare https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jcl/vol22/iss1/3/ Packingham v. North Carolina 582 US _ (2017) https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-1194 S. 4534: A bill to amend section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 to modify the scope of protection from civil liability for “good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s4534 Law as a Battlefield: The U.S., China, and Global Escalation of Lawfare https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3525442 The South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of Philippines v. The People's Republic of China) https://pca-cpa.org/en/cases/7/ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/180713_agreed_outcome_global_compact_for_migration.pdf What's on Your CV of Purpose? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-your-cv-purpose-jill-goldenziel Dr. Jill Goldenziel is a Professor at Marine Corps University-Command and Staff College https://jillgoldenziel.com/

104 – Welcome Republic Keeper Podcast 866-988-8311 info@republickeeper.com Trump suggests Election Delay. Tech Giants testify Google Brietbart Suppressed https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/28/election-interference-google-purges-breitbart-from-search-results/ Sundar Pinchai – Drs. Restricted This is why I’m asking you for money. Geolocation data means that your location is always known. Always. https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/how-government-entities-use-geolocation-data-to-identify-everyone_07302020 Socials – Publishers “Today more than ever, the interest of the Islamic Nation lies in unity, the type of unity that creates power against enemies and shouts out loudly at the embodied Satan, the encroaching US, and its chained dog, the Zionist regime, and stands up against aggression,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted on his English-language feed. https://www.cnsnews.com/article/international/patrick-goodenough/us-satan-israel-its-chained-dog-twitter-gives-ayatollahs Facebook Holocaust Deniers https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-nazi-hunter-taking-on-mark-zuckerberg-and-facebook For the past six decades, Serge Klarsfeld has dedicated his life to hunting down Nazis and bringing them to justice. There was Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon,” whom Klarsfeld and his wife, Beate, tracked down in Peru; René Bousquet, who ordered thousands of Jews to their deaths in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup; and Paul Touvier, who was apprehended at a priory in Nice and became the first Vichy official to be convicted of crimes against humanity for Holocaust collaboration. Now, he’s setting his sights on Mark Zuckerberg. Klarsfeld, 84, is one of a number of Holocaust activists and survivors who are speaking out as part of #NoDenyingIt, a campaign against Facebook and its founder for allowing Holocaust denialism on the platform. In addition to Klarsfeld, who lost his father at Auschwitz, the participants include Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent, Anne Frank’s stepsister Eva Schloss, and many more. “Let’s take this whole [issue] closer to home. I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” said Zuckerberg. “I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.” (He later issued a half-hearted apology, while remaining steadfast on in his position: “I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that.”) Later in the chat, Zuckerberg expanded on his company’s rather nebulous policy. “The principles that we have on what we remove from the service are: If it’s going to result in real harm, real physical harm, or if you’re attacking individuals, then that content shouldn’t be on the platform,” he said Trump Nukes them with EO https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-implementation-president-trumps-executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/ On Monday, the Department of Commerce, as directed by President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, filed a petition to clarify the scope of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. The petition requests that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) clarify that Section 230 does not permit social media companies that alter or editorialize users’ speech to escape civil liability. The petition also requests that the FCC clarify when an online platform curates content in “good faith,” and requests transparency requirements on their moderation practices, similar to requirements imposed on broadband service providers under Title I of the Communications Act. President Trump will continue to fight back against unfair, un-American, and politically biased censorship of Americans online. Arrogance of Success usually leads to death. Sports Was the first successfully integrated industry. Uniformly patriotic Was a respite from political and economic strife. Universities and Education Zoom has stripped away the need for $65K a year in on campus experience. The whole country has seen what we’ve bought with all that student loan money and the cry of BA for all. It was a load of BS and the whole nation has buyers remorse. Northwestern University received $340 Million from Qatar since 2012. https://freebeacon.com/campus/top-journalism-school-teams-up-with-qatar/ The movie business Way before COVID it was in trouble. The PC environment has made it impossible to make any movies that are not woke and preachy. If the US or our history or values are too honestly displayed, no Chinese market. If critical of China, no Chinese market. CORONAVIRUS On Tuesday, Risch went further, charging in an interview with Just the News that Fauci is perpetrating a "misinformation campaign" in his opposition to the drug. Fauci "has been maintaining a studious position that only randomized controlled trial evidence has any value," Risch said, "and everything else he calls anecdotal." Randomized controlled trials have been referred to as "the gold standard" of clinical research experiments; Fauci last month lamented the "paucity" of such trials regarding COVID-19 cures. But Risch said numerous other types of studies have significant practical value in determining effective courses of medical treatment. Risch shared a 2017 New England Journal of Medicine article by former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden, one in which the author argued that randomized controlled trials have "substantial limitations" and that "many other data sources can provide valid evidence for clinical and public health action." Risch said opponents of HCQ have been arguing that the drug "doesn't work on patients near death in ventilators and therefore we can't use it on healthier patients in outpatient settings."   "Why would you even entertain invoking a study on severely sick patients to bear on the efficacy of outpatients?" he asked. Trader Joe’s won’t cave Trader Jose, Giotto and Ming Ireland – Barclays bank has closed the bank account of Core Issues Trust (CIT) because the practice “conversion” therapy. The ministry offers “talking therapy” to people who want to explore moving away from unwanted same-sex attraction and gender confusion. The organisation, however, rejects the label “conversion therapy.” Over 100 Police agencies have bowed out of DNC convention in Milwaukee over the crowd control rules. https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/more-100-police-agencies-back-out-dnc-convention-citing-citys-new-rules Russian – Obamagate – Senate expands probe Clinton acolyte and former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who has admitted he received and provided copies of the Steele dossier former Clinton associates Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal. Shearer, a relative of Talbott, wrote a dossier similar to Steele's that was provided to the former MI-6 agent. former State officials Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Kathleen Kavalec, all of whom had contact with Steele as he was developing his dossier. The senators also made their most sweeping demands for records from CIA, including any information the spy agency provided the FBI concerning the credibility of Steele as a human source. The lawmakers also pressed CIA for any records of requests for assistance from foreign allies in the Russia collusion probe. Specifically, they requested "all records related to assistance requests about the persons or conduct at issue in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, whether before or after the opening of the investigation, to the following foreign governments: a. Australia; b. Israel; and c. the United Kingdom," their letter to Haspel stated. CIA also was pressed for records concerning the conduct of former Obama-era director John Brennan, including his contact about the Russia probe with fired FBI Director James Comey and then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid as well as any travel he took to Ukraine, Russia's neighbor. Ukraine (Part 4) 4/14/2016 Call – Send a signal Save Our Ass Jan 16-17, 2017 - At the time, White House officials said the trip was to reinforce U.S. backing for Ukraine while the world prepared for the inauguration of President Trump, who was expected to bring a pro-Russia stance to office days later. “The vice president's trip to Ukraine will underscore US support — and highlight his personal involvement in providing support — for Ukrainian independence, democratic development, prosperity and security,” the White House said. The vice-president’s keen interest in Ukraine, his frequent trips and phone calls to Poroshenko, attracted questions ahead of that trip. “And so when he is tasked by the president to focus on an area, he goes out of way to make sure that he has a close personal relationship with the leaders involved,” said the official. Support request Pray Subscribe & Share Donate

Peace and blessings everyone. I know everyone wants to give Beyonce credit for the Internet, but I'm here to learn ya' somethin'. Here, I break down what the Internet is, who runs it, who created it, and most importantly...I break down wifi and cellular data. Also, if you don't know who Bo Jackson is, please do a quick youtube search (if you're into sports of course). The thing I told you to Google: the 1991 High Performance Computing and Communications Act (this is what got everything litty) Email: GoodBrotherExperience@yahoo.com Instagram: Instagram.com/TheOgBlackMan Twitter: Twitter.com/TheOgBlackMan FaceBook: Bob Taylor

In Mozilla v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order in which the current Commission rejected the Obama Administration’s 'net neutrality' efforts to impose legacy common carrier regulation on the Internet and returned broadband Internet access service to a “light touch” regulatory regime under Title I of the Communications Act. Mozilla was not a complete victory for the Commission, however. Not only did the D.C. Circuit reverse the FCC’s broad efforts to preempt categorically state efforts to regulate the Internet, but the court remanded several issues to the Commission for further explanation, including how reclassification affects access to pole attachments, how reclassification affects the ability to include broadband in the FCC’s Lifeline program, and how reclassification affects public safety. Last March, the Commission issued a public notice to refresh the record in this case, and the comment period is on-going. Please join our panel of experts to discuss the legal issues at bar and how the FCC should respond to the court.Featuring: -- Matthew Brill, Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP-- Kristine (Fargotstein) Hackman, Vice President, Policy & Advocacy at USTelecom – The Broadband Association-- Russell Hanser, Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP-- Moderator: Lawrence J. Spiwak, President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies

In Mozilla v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order in which the current Commission rejected the Obama Administration’s 'net neutrality' efforts to impose legacy common carrier regulation on the Internet and returned broadband Internet access service to a “light touch” regulatory regime under Title I of the Communications Act. Mozilla was not a complete victory for the Commission, however. Not only did the D.C. Circuit reverse the FCC’s broad efforts to preempt categorically state efforts to regulate the Internet, but the court remanded several issues to the Commission for further explanation, including how reclassification affects access to pole attachments, how reclassification affects the ability to include broadband in the FCC’s Lifeline program, and how reclassification affects public safety. Last March, the Commission issued a public notice to refresh the record in this case, and the comment period is on-going. Please join our panel of experts to discuss the legal issues at bar and how the FCC should respond to the court.Featuring: -- Matthew Brill, Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP-- Kristine (Fargotstein) Hackman, Vice President, Policy & Advocacy at USTelecom – The Broadband Association-- Russell Hanser, Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP-- Moderator: Lawrence J. Spiwak, President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies

Broadcasters—not the FCC—are responsible for selecting the material that they air. This is why the Commission recently denied a petition filed by Free Press, a public interest group focused on media issues, requesting that the Commission investigate broadcasters that have aired the President’s statements and press conferences regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and related commentary by other on-air personalities. The petition asked the Commission, under its public interest authority and its rules regulating the broadcast of dangerous hoaxes, to investigate these broadcasts and adopt emergency enforcement guidance “recommending that broadcasters prominently disclose when information they air is false or scientifically suspect.”The Commission denied this petition, citing both the First Amendment and Section 326 of the Communications Act:The Commission does not—and cannot and will not—act as a self-appointed, free-roving arbiter of truth in journalism. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Free Press’s assertions regarding any lack of veracity were true, false speech enjoys some First Amendment protection, and section 326 of the Communications Act, reflecting First Amendment values, prohibits the Commission from interfering with freedom of the press or censoring broadcast communications.Thomas Johnson, General Counsel of the FCC and the co-author of the Commission’s letter denying this petition, as well as Randolph May, Founder and President of the Free State Foundation, will discuss the Commission’s response to this petition, as well as broader First Amendment and policy issues raised by the Commission’s role in regulating broadcast journalism. Does the Commission have a duty, as Free Press asserts, “to rein in broadcasters that seed confusion with lies and disinformation”? What is the Commission’s role in regulating broadcast journalism, and how does it square this role with the First Amendment? To what extent does the First Amendment protect false or misleading speech? Featuring: -- Thomas Johnson, General Counsel, FCC-- Randolph May, Founder and President, Free State Foundation

Broadcasters—not the FCC—are responsible for selecting the material that they air. This is why the Commission recently denied a petition filed by Free Press, a public interest group focused on media issues, requesting that the Commission investigate broadcasters that have aired the President’s statements and press conferences regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and related commentary by other on-air personalities. The petition asked the Commission, under its public interest authority and its rules regulating the broadcast of dangerous hoaxes, to investigate these broadcasts and adopt emergency enforcement guidance “recommending that broadcasters prominently disclose when information they air is false or scientifically suspect.”The Commission denied this petition, citing both the First Amendment and Section 326 of the Communications Act:"The Commission does not—and cannot and will not—act as a self-appointed, free-roving arbiter of truth in journalism. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Free Press’s assertions regarding any lack of veracity were true, false speech enjoys some First Amendment protection, and section 326 of the Communications Act, reflecting First Amendment values, prohibits the Commission from interfering with freedom of the press or censoring broadcast communications."Thomas Johnson, General Counsel of the FCC and the co-author of the Commission’s letter denying this petition, as well as Randolph May, Founder and President of the Free State Foundation, will discuss the Commission’s response to this petition, as well as broader First Amendment and policy issues raised by the Commission’s role in regulating broadcast journalism. Does the Commission have a duty, as Free Press asserts, “to rein in broadcasters that seed confusion with lies and disinformation”? What is the Commission’s role in regulating broadcast journalism, and how does it square this role with the First Amendment? To what extent does the First Amendment protect false or misleading speech? Featuring: -- Thomas Johnson, General Counsel, FCC-- Randolph May, Founder and President, Free State Foundation

Hello, COMM122 podcast listeners. As we wrap up the topic of media mandate from previous weeks, we will now start a new series on media regulations.You are no stranger to media regulations. If you follow the news about e-cigarettes, you might have heard of a call to ban the advertising of e-cigarettes on television. This call came after numerous reports of vaping-related deaths. Another recent case is the talk of breaking up big tech because big tech companies become overly influential. There are also conversations on regulating fake news and foreign interference on social media platforms.Well, First of all, Regulations are various rules, standards, and norms set by governments, legislative bodies, and non-government entities. You might think that regulations are all enforced by governments. Well, many regulations are indeed enacted by governments following laws passed by Congress. We call this formal regulation. An example is the ban on the advertising of tobacco products. There is also informal regulation, also called, self-regulation. An example is movie ratings. Movie ratings are not enforced by the US government, but by the Motion Picture Association of America, which is an non-government organization. Regulations could target content produced by media outlets, or something not directly related to content, such as media ownership, licensing, who has access to the media, and etc.If you feel the information is overwhelming, don’t worry, we will go over each of the common types of regulation, with examples. Before we do that, let’s review four milestones of media-related legislation in the US history. First, the Radio Act of 1912. This is a federal law that went into effect in 1912, not long after the sinking of the Titanic. We mentioned it briefly in the last episdoe. The Radio Act of 1912 is the first legislation targeting radio technology. It requires that anyone transmitting signals through radio-waves needs a license. Before this legislation, public airwaves were the wild west. Everyone, including amateurs, commercial operators and US Navy officers can send signals. This created inference issues as someone may inadvertently or intentionally send fake distress calls. At the time of the Radio Act of 1912, radio was used mostly as one-to-one wireless communication. So the radio act in 1912 is not applicable to broadcasting radio stations. The legislation targeting radio broadcasting came later in the Radio Act of 1927. The 1927 act was proposed again to address the interference issue. But this time, the inference issue was caused by broadcasting radio stations. In our community, you can listen to the local NPR station broadcasts on FM88.5. Can you imagine what will happen if a nearby station tries to broadcast using the same frequency? Yes, it will jam the signal from the NPR station. This is basically what typically happened before the Radio Act of 1927. So the Radio Act of 1927 created the Federal Radio Commission, a government body. It gives FRC the authority to allocate frequencies to stations and individuals, following the Guiding Standard: Public Interest, convenience, or necessity. However, Congress failed to define precisely what it meant by “public interest, convenience, and necessity” in either the statutory text or legislative history. The Radio Act of 1927 ushered in the golden age of radio with inferences died down. As radio stations began to broadcast nationally. A common popular culture emerged based on the common consumption of radio shows. Following the radio act of 1927, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934. It expanded the regulation to telephone communication, an new invention at that time. It creates FCC, Federal Communication Commission, which is still functioning today. Communications Act of 1934 also set the commercial media mandate as the de facto media mandate for the country. If you want to learn more about

Source material: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. Radio communication unregulated until The Radio Act of 1912 formally known as "An Act to Regulate Radio Communication" (37 Stat. 302), is a United States federal law which was the first legislation to require licenses for radio stations The Radio Act of 1927 (United States Public Law 632, 69th Congress) replaced the Radio Act of 1912 increased the federal government's regulatory powers over radio communication oversight vested in a newly created body, the Federal Radio Commission (FCC) first legislation to mandate stations show they were "in the public interest, convenience, or necessity" in order to receive a license Communications Act of 1934 “The act established a legal basis for regulating wired and wireless communications on a nationwide and worldwide basis. The Federal Communication Commission was founded because of the act; it replaced the Federal Radio Commission. Because of the act, the U.S. government could regulate new media technologies such as television and mobile phones. Moreover, the act permitted the regulation of commercial communication corporations such as private radio and television companies.” 6 companies control all US media https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 List of administrations in control of transportation by creation date https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Transportation The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates all aspects of civil aviation Its powers include the construction and operation of airports, air traffic management, the certification of personnel and aircraft, and the protection of U.S. assets during the launch or re-entry of commercial space vehicles. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.  Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.  Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.  Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States By state law, education is compulsory over an age range starting between five and eight and ending somewhere between ages sixteen and eighteen, depending on the state. This requirement can be satisfied in public schools, state-certified private schools, or an approved home school program. Description: In the current zeitgeist we are told that “capitalism” is failing us as well as being responsible for the increasing wealth gap between the “haves and the have nots.”  In this episode we focus on the US primarily. We will use the 10 planks of Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto (1848) to try and ascertain if the US truly is a capitalist nation or if it is far more Marxist in character than people are often lead to believe. Topics include: Communication Transportation Education Bitcoin

H.Res. 517 – Supporting the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and its Sixth Replenishment, as amended (Rep. Engel – Foreign Affairs)  fight AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria is an effective partnership of governments, the private sector, civil society, and affected communities to transform the response to these epidemics. Agreed to by voice vote H.R. 3460 – End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act (Rep. Smith (NJ) – Foreign Affairs) To facilitate effective research on and treatment of neglected tropical diseases through coordinated international efforts Agreed to by voice vote S. 178 – UIGHUR Act of 2019, as amended (Sen. Rubio – Foreign Affairs) to direct United States resources to address human rights violations and abuses, including gross violations of human rights, by the People’s Republic of China’s mass surveillance and internment of over 1,000,000 Uighurs and other predominantly Turkic Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region  Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required): Roll no. 644). H.Res. 546 – Disapproving the Russian Federation’s inclusion in future Group of Seven summits until it respects the territorial integrity of its neighbors and adheres to the standards of democratic societies (Rep. Sires – Foreign Affairs)  Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required): 339 – 71 (Roll no. 643). H.Res. 585 – Reaffirming support for the Good Friday Agreement and other agreements to ensure lasting peace in Northern Ireland (Rep. Suozzi – Foreign Affairs)  urges the United Kingdom and the European Union to ensure that any exit from the European Union by the United Kingdom supports continued peace on the island of Ireland and the principles, objectives, and commitments of the Good Friday Agreement  Agreed to by voice vote. H.R. 4803 – Citizenship for Children of Military Members and Civil Servants Act, as amended (Rep. Nadler – Judiciary)  To facilitate the automatic acquisition of citizenship for lawful permanent resident children of military and Federal Government personnel residing abroad,  Agreed to by voice vote H.R. 565 – AMIGOS Act, as amended (Rep. Cicilline – Judiciary)  This bill makes Portuguese nationals eligible for E-1 and E-2 non-immigrant visas if the government of Portugal provides similar non-immigrant status to U.S. nationals. An E-1 visa is for individuals entering the U.S. to engage in international trade, while an E-2 visa is for individuals investing a substantial amount of capital in the U.S. Both are limited to nationals from countries that have a treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States.  Agreed to by voice vote H.R. 4018 – To provide that the amount of time an elderly offender must serve before being eligible for placement in home detention is to be reduced by the amount of good time credits earned by the prisoner, and for other purposes, as amended (Rep. Deutch – Judiciary) to provide that the amount of time that an elderly offender must serve before being eligible for placement in home detention is to be reduced by the amount of good time credits earned by the prisoner  Agreed to by voice vote H.R. 2534 – Insider Trading Prohibition Act (Rep. Himes – Financial Services) (Subject to a Rule)  To amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to prohibit certain securities trading and related communications by those who possess material, nonpublic information.  Scheduled H.Res. 326 – Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding United States efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a negotiated two-state solution (Rep. Lowenthal – Foreign Affairs) (Subject to a Rule)  only the outcome of a two-state solution that enhances stability and security for Israel, Palestinians, and their neighbors can both ensure the state of Israel’s survival as a Jewish and democratic state and fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own  Scheduled S.151– Pallone-Thune TRACED Act, as amended (Sen. Thune – Energy and Commerce)To deter criminal robocall violations and improve enforcement of section 227(b) of the Communications Act of 1934  Passed Senate with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 97 – 1…..On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required): 417 – 3 (Roll no. 647). H.R. 1138 (To reauthorize the West Valley demonstration project, and for other purposes. Passed by unanimous consent).  To reauthorize the West Valley demonstration project.  House agreed by voice vote. Senate agreed by unanimous consent Support the show.

The objective of this Bill is to amend the Kenya Information and Communications Act to provide for regulation of use of social media platforms

The objective of this Bill is to amend the Kenya Information and Communications Act to provide for regulation of use of social media platforms

Hello, COMM122 podcast listeners. As we wrap up the topic of media mandate from previous weeks, we will now start a new series on media regulations.You are no stranger to media regulations. If you follow the news about e-cigarettes, you might have heard of a call to ban the advertising of e-cigarettes on television. This call came after numerous reports of vaping-related deaths. Another recent case is the talk of breaking up big tech because big tech companies become overly influential. There are also conversations on regulating fake news and foreign interference on social media platforms.Regulations are various rules, standards, and norms set by governments, legislative bodies, and non-government entities. You might think that regulations are all enforced by governments. Well, many regulations are indeed enacted by governments following laws passed by Congress. We call this, formal regulation. An example is the ban on the advertising of tobacco products. There is also informal regulation, such as movie ratings. Movie ratings are not by the US government, but by the Motion Picture Association of America, which is an non-government organization. Regulations could target content produced by media outlets, or something not directly related to content, such as media ownership, licensing, who has access to the media, and etc.If you feel the information is overwhelming, don’t worry, we will go over each of the common types of regulation, with examples. Before we do that, let’s review four milestone media-related legislations in the US history. First, the Radio Act of 1912. This is a federal law that went into effect in 1912, not long after the sinking of the Titanic. The Radio Act of 1912 is the first legislation targeting the radio technology. It requires that anyone transmitting signals through radio-waves needs a license. Before this legislation, public airwaves was a wild west. Everyone, including amateurs, commercial operators and US Navy officers can send signals. This created inference issues as someone may inadvertently or intentionally send fake distress calls. At the time of the Radio Act of 1912, radio was used mostly as one-to-one wireless communication. So the radio act in 1912 is not applicable to broadcasting radio stations. The legislation targeting radio broadcasting came later in the Radio Act of 1927. The 1927 act was proposed again to address the interference issue. But this time, the inference issue was caused by broadcasting radio stations. In our community, you can listen to the local NPR station broadcasts on FM88.5. Can you imagine what will happen if a nearby station tries to broadcast using the same frequency? Yes, it will jam the signal from the NPR station. This is basically what typically happened before the Radio Act of 1927. So the Radio Act of 1927 creates Federal Radio Commission, a government body. It gives FRC the authority to allocate frequencies to stations and individuals, following the Guiding Standard: Public Interest, convenience, or necessity. However, Congress failed to define precisely what it meant by “public interest, convenience, and necessity” in either the statutory text or legislative history. The Radio Act of 1927 ushered in the golden age of radio with inferences died down. As radio stations began to broadcast nationally. A common popular culture emerged based on the common consumption of radio shows. Following the radio act of 1927, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934. It expands the regulation to telephone communication, an invention at that time. It creates FCC, Federal Communication Commission, which is still functioning today. Communications Act of 1934 also set the commercial media mandate as the de facto media mandate for the country. If you want to learn more about this part of the history, read the Commercial radio debate section on the Wikipedia page about this legislation.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1991 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush as Public Law 102-243. It amended the Communications Act of 1934. The TCPA is codified as 47 U.S.C. § 227. The TCPA restricts telephone solicitations (i.e., telemarketing) and the use of automated telephone equipment. The TCPA limits the use of automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages, and fax machines. It also specifies several technical requirements for fax machines, autodialers, and voice messaging systems—principally with provisions requiring identification and contact information of the entity using the device to be contained in the message. Consumer consent is an essential defense under the TCPA and should be a primary focus of any business that communicates with consumers and customers directly via telephony. You should consult with your legal counsel to ensure that your opt-out process is compliant with applicable law and consistent with industry standards. Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the video blog: In the video blogs, we've covered all sorts of intellectual property topics. One topic we haven't really covered: Advertising law. It's a lot of alphabet soup: States, federal regulations. Let's talk a little bit about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The TCPA – see, alphabet soup  - of 1991 has been amended many times since Congress passed it. It's all about telemarketing. The TCPA does not qualify if somebody by hand dials your phone. For all of you out there that are doing telemarketing, the TCPA applies if a computer is dialing, which of course 99.9% of telemarketing is done by computers today. The TCPA also sets hours and it's the time zone of, of course, the person receiving the phone call, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM are absolutely legal marketing time, not before and not after that. Also, if you're calling the cell phone, guess what, you can't call a cell phone for marketing. I know we all get, telemarketing calls on our cell phones. That's also not allowed under the TCPA. I recently had a client who was doing telemarketing called some people on the West coast outside of the hours and now is being sued for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. It's, a frustrating and long process to deal with litigation when only a couple phone calls are outside of those legal ranges. But from a compliance standpoint, it's really not a difficult compliance to follow. Make sure that your telemarketing company is dialing within the hours. Make sure that none of those calls are cell phones and make sure that, that, that your telemarketing company is following all of these procedures and make sure that if there's a problem, they're the ones with the problem under the contract with your telemarketing company. The TCPA has violations for $500 per phone call that is outside of any of these ranges. Again, the Do Not Call List is a part of that as well. So set that up properly. Don't be a defendant in a TCPA violation lawsuit. Don't wind up in regulatory issues. Follow these completely.

The Federal Communications Commission today issued a $39,278 fine against Mr. Ocean Hinson of Surry County, North Carolina, for the intentional missus on a local public safety radio communications network in violation of section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. Mr. Hinson impersonated first responders in unauthorized radio communications on Surry County’s licensed public safety frequency.

The Federal Communications Commission today issued a $39,278 fine against Mr. Ocean Hinson of Surry County, North Carolina, for the intentional missus on a local public safety radio communications network in violation of section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. Mr. Hinson impersonated first responders inunauthorized radio communications on Surry County’s licensed public safety frequency.

5 Things to Know About Regulating Internet SpeechThe Powder Keg – YouTube recently “demonetized” hundreds of controversial channels, after an on-going spat between conservative comedian Steven Crowder and liberal Vox writer Carlos Maza. The host of Louder with Crowder repeatedly mocked Maza's flambuoyant personae (aka the “gay wonk”) and ethnicity, and Maza roused a Twitter mob to get YouTube to remove him altogether. YouTube's kept the videos up, but took Crowder's ad dollars — pleasing virtually nobody, as Reason's Robby Soave pointed out. The Legal Issue - Some kinds of speech, such as incitements to violence, are clearly not protected by the 1st amendment, while “hate speech,” or offensive speech, is not clearly defined. Under Section 230 of the Decency in Communications Act (1996), online platforms like YouTube can set their own guidelines for acceptable speech but are continuing to come under scrutiny for alleged bias against conservatives.The Proposed Remedy – Trump is talking about antitrust to break up Big Tech monopolies, but most scholars think this is impractical. Republican Senator Josh Hawley just introduced a law to essentially revive the “Fairness Doctrine,” and stop biased censorship of conservatives. This Sunday, I'll speak to Frank Buckley about his middle-ground idea for a governmental check on “woke” social media censorship.The Unintended Consequences – Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out that Hawley's bill would likely make censorship against conservatives worse. The bill would require companies to reapply with the Federal Trade Commission every two years to prove that they are operating in a politically neutral manner. Ultimately, this would mean censoring vastly more political content, Brown notes.A Quote to Ponder :“There's always someone we're laughing at, and that person is going to take offense. If it's a conservative laughing at a liberal, even a liberal who seems to be asking for it, even someone who dishes it out but can't take it, like the butt of Crowder's laughter, that's when the progressive social media censors step in.” - Frank Buckley, How to stop the 'woke' social media censors, NY Post, June 10, 2019

Read the Medium article here. 5 Things to Know About Regulating Internet SpeechThe Powder Keg – YouTube recently “demonetized” hundreds of controversial channels, after an on-going spat between conservative comedian Steven Crowder and liberal Vox writer Carlos Maza. The host of Louder with Crowder repeatedly mocked Maza’s flambuoyant personae (aka the “gay wonk”) and ethnicity, and Maza roused a Twitter mob to get YouTube to remove him altogether. YouTube’s kept the videos up, but took Crowder’s ad dollars — pleasing virtually nobody, as Reason’s Robby Soave pointed out. The Legal Issue - Some kinds of speech, such as incitements to violence, are clearly not protected by the 1st amendment, while “hate speech,” or offensive speech, is not clearly defined. Under Section 230 of the Decency in Communications Act (1996), online platforms like YouTube can set their own guidelines for acceptable speech but are continuing to come under scrutiny for alleged bias against conservatives.The Proposed Remedy – Trump is talking about antitrust to break up Big Tech monopolies, but most scholars think this is impractical. Republican Senator Josh Hawley just introduced a law to essentially revive the “Fairness Doctrine,” and stop biased censorship of conservatives. This Sunday, I’ll speak to Frank Buckley about his middle-ground idea for a governmental check on “woke” social media censorship.The Unintended Consequences – Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out that Hawley’s bill would likely make censorship against conservatives worse. The bill would require companies to reapply with the Federal Trade Commission every two years to prove that they are operating in a politically neutral manner. Ultimately, this would mean censoring vastly more political content, Brown notes.A Quote to Ponder :“There’s always someone we’re laughing at, and that person is going to take offense. If it’s a conservative laughing at a liberal, even a liberal who seems to be asking for it, even someone who dishes it out but can’t take it, like the butt of Crowder’s laughter, that’s when the progressive social media censors step in.” - Frank Buckley, How to stop the 'woke' social media censors, NY Post, June 10, 2019 Listen live Tune in Sunday, 8-9am PACIFIC and call in with your questions: (424) BOB-SHOW SUBSCRIBE As for me, you can will always be able to find my videos at Minds.com. I say let YouTube censor.Learn more, and listen to Frank try to “Change my Mind”.Other Shows with Frank Buckley:The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018, with Frank BuckleyF.H. Buckley on *The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America* — July 03, 2016Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? — October 26, 2014F.H. Buckley on *The Republic of Virtue*Other Shows on Social Media CensorshipSocial Media Censorship with Bill Ottman, April 25, 2019Free Your Minds From Social Media Censorship Bill Ottmann, Oct 21, 2018Making Peace with the Speech Police — Dispatch from Mizzou, Ian Paris, December 11, 2015Whose Free Speech? Our Free Speech! , Marieke Tuthill-Beck Coon, April 16, 2017Freedom *From* Speech? The New Face of Censorship, Oct. 2014, with Greg LukianoffFree Speech — There is No America Without It, Greg Lukianoff, December 9, 2012LinksThe Absolutely Epic Guide For Learning To Use Minds | MindsMinds.com/BobZadekMinds.com/ottman@fbuckleyHow to stop the ‘woke’ social media censors NY POSTTrump’s fight for campus justice is only beginningThe Bubble: How Higher Education Abandoned its Mission and Became America’s Most Over-Rated Product — $3 Kindle edition on Amazon

  Bio   Luis Avila (@phoenikera) is the President and Founder of Iconico Campaigns, a company that works to build advocacy capacity in organizations around the country. Migrating in 2000 from Mexico, Luis stayed in the U.S. to attend college, where he developed projects with people involved in arts, politics and social justice.  In 2004, Luis learned about civic participation in Jackson, Mississippi, as part of the American Freedom Summer program. He collaborated with organizers and leaders to advocate for the DREAM Act, fight against SB1070 and challenge Sheriff Joe Arpaio's discriminatory practices in Arizona. In 2008, Luis joined the Obama campaign where he got insight on cornerstone aspects of electoral organizing. This knowledge, paired with technologies developed to boost volunteer engagement, is applied now in all his advocacy and community engagement work. Luis spearheaded Somos América in 2011, the largest immigrant-rights coalition in Arizona, and currently sits on the Boards of Advisors of the National Council for La Raza and The New Teacher Project, an organization working to end education inequality. A long-time family and community engagement expert, Luis has designed engagement models for domestic and international organizations and school systems. In 2016, he served as Nevada's Democratic Coordinated Campaign Field Director, contributing to major victories in the state legislature, electing the first Latina Senator and delivering the state to Hillary Clinton, and he’s currently launching Instituto, an organization to build political infrastructure in communities of color in Arizona. Resources Instituto   Iconico    News Roundup The FCC signals that it will approve the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, China’s Huawei has a tough week as President Trump limits its U.S.-based business, and Luis Avila is my guest   FCC signals Sprint/TMobile approval The Trump administration appears divided over whether to approve the Sprint/TMobile merger. The companies say if the merger’s approved they’ll have 5G built out to the entire country in 6 years. Sprint says they’ll also sell prepaid wireless company Boost mobile. FCC Chair Ajit Pai says the merger conditions the companies are proposing are adequate and said he’d approve the deal. The two other Republicans on the Commission signaled their support as well giving the deal the majority it needs at the FCC. Policy expert Gigi Sohn says though that over at the DOJ’s antitrust division, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim is saying the conditions aren’t enough.   Tough week for Huawei   Chinese device manufacturer Huawei had a tough week last week as President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that bans American telecom companies from installing foreign-made equipment that could pose a national security threat. American officials have accused the company of violating an American trade embargo against Iran and with assisting China with spying on U.S. companies. Since Trump issued the order, Google parent Alphabet has suspended doing business with Huawei, outside of what’s available via open source, by revoking the Android licensing deal the tech giant had with Huawei.   President Trump creates story database to collect stories of conservatives being censored on social media   Looks like the White House wants to set up its own social network to compete with Twitter and Facebook. The White House has created a creepy new database that lets conservatives report instances in which they’ve been censored on social media platforms. The President is attempting to get users to opt-in to a separate White House newsletter that purports to allow anyone, irrespective of their political views, to receive updates without relying on Facebook and Twitter.   The White House also decided not to sign on to a multinational campaign created by Christchurch, New Zealand to stamp out online hate speech. The White House says the effort would dilute the freedom of speech. 18 other countries, including many of America’s allies, disagreed.   Johns Hopkins releases free online course on gun violence prevention   Johns Hopkins has released a free online course where users can learn how to prevent and protect against gun violence. The course contains six modules taught by experts, including mental health professionals. It’s entitled Reducing Gun Violence in America: Evidence for Change and its intended to equip students to use research to combat gun violence in America.   Carriers claim to stop collecting geolocation data but evidence suggests otherwise   Major wireless carriers including AT&T and Verizon have claimed that they have stopped sharing geolocation data with third party bounty hunters. But the the facts suggest otherwise. Congressman Mike Doyle notes that the number of complaints about police departments and others unauthorized (and unconstitutional, for that matter) surveillance of individuals has been on the rise. AT&T has acknowledged that it took advantage of a loophole in a Communications Act privacy provision that doesn’t cover a type of geolocation data known as A-GPS which AT&T’s Joan Marsh says is less precise than location data covered by the National Emergency Address Database.   Amazon releases HQ2 plan for Arlington Amazon released its plan for 2 LEED-certified 22 story office buildings in Arlington. There will be 50,000 square feet of street level space for retail and restaurants.   San Francisco becomes first city to ban facial recognition technology   San Francisco became the first city to ban the use of facial recognition technology. The ordinance passed by a vote of 8-1 and is headed to Mayor London Breed for her signature.   Events   Tues., 5/21 New America 2019 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index 740 15th Street NW 9:30AM-11AM   House Judiciary Committee Full Committee Hearing: Understanding the Digital Advertising Ecosystem Dirksen 226 10AM   House Homeland Security Committee Growing and Diversifying Our Cyber Talent Pipeline 310 Cannon 2PM City Year Idealist Gala Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania 6PM Reception/7PM Program and Dinner   MIT Enterprise Forum Celebrating Entrepreneurship in Our Nation’s Capital 600 Mass. Ave. 5:30PM   Wed., 5/22 Partnership for Progress on the Digital Divide Conferences Goes through 5/24 Vint Cerf Keynotes Georgetown University Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy 37th/O NW   House Oversight Committee Facial Recognition Technology (Part 1): Its Impact on our Civil Rights and Liberties 2154 Rayburn 10AM   House Energy & Commerce Committee Full Committee Hearing on “LIFT America: Modernizing Our Infrastructure for the Future” 2123 Rayburn House Office Building 10 AM   Tues., 5/28 New York University Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies 2019 Critical Race and Digital Studies Conference NYU Washington D.C., 1307 L St., NW 9:00AM-7:30PM   Sat, 6/1 DC Stem Network DC STEM Fair UDC 7AM-4PM

The black letter law and articles discussed in this episode are: National Emergencies Act of 1976 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-90/pdf/STATUTE-90-Pg1255.pdf Clinton v. City of New York 524 US 417 (1998) https://www.oyez.org/cases/1997/97-1374 INS v. Chadha 462 US 919 (1983) https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/80-1832 Communications Act of 1934 as amended. Section 706 is found on page 323 https://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf List of 58 declared national emergencies https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/NEA%20Declarations.pdf 50 USC 35 International Emergency Economic Powers Act https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/documents/ieepa.pdf Can President Trump Fund the Wall by Declaring a National Emergency? By Prof. Bobby Chesney on Lawfare https://www.lawfareblog.com/can-president-trump-fund-wall-declaring-national-emergency Declaring an Emergency to Build a Border Wall: The Statutory Arguments by Margaret Taylor on Lawfare https://www.lawfareblog.com/declaring-emergency-build-border-wall-statutory-arguments CRS Report for Congress on National Emergency Powers https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/98-505.pdf What Can a President Do During a State of Emergency? In the Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/ NSLT episodes on sanctions and IEEPA Weaponizing the Dollar with Adam Smith https://soundcloud.com/nsltoday/weaponizing-the-dollar-with-adam-smith The Summer of Sanctions with Brian Egan https://soundcloud.com/nsltoday/the-summer-of-sanctions-with-brian-egan Jamil Jaffer is the founder of the National Security Institute at George Mason University https://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/adjunct/jaffer_jamil_n Paul Rosenzweig is a senior advisor at the Chertoff Group, a lecturer at George Washington University Law School and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute https://www.rstreet.org/team/paul-rosenzweig/

Our duty as voters is to judge the job performance of our members of Congress and decide whether or not they deserve to be re-hired or fired from their positions as lawmakers. In this episode, Jen summarizes 20 controversial bills and laws that passed during the 115th Congress which you can use to judge whether your Representative and two Senators have voted in your best interest. Links to all of the votes are listed in this episode's show notes on www.congressionaldish.com Please Support Congressional Dish - Quick Links Click here to contribute a lump sum or set up a monthly contribution via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Use your bank’s online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North Number 4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD174: Bank Lobbyist Act CD163: Net Neutrality CD157: Failure to Repeal CD151: AHCA - The House Version (American Health Care Act) CD129: The Impeachment of John Koskinen CD069: Giving Away Your Land CD048: The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Bills S.2155: Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, introduced Nov 16, 2017, enacted May 24, 2018. Outlined in detail in CD174: Bank Lobbyist Act First significant re-writing of the banking laws since Dodd-Frank in 2010 Most significant change: Kills a Dodd-Frank requirement that banks with more than $50 billion in assets undergo stress tests to ensure their stabilityr. Bank Lobbyist Act changed that so stress tests will only be required for banks with over $250 billion. This exempts 25 of the 38 largest US banks from important regulations. Passed the Senate 67-31 Passed House of Representatives 258-159   H.R.1628: American Health Care Act of 2017, introduced March 20, 2017, passed House May 4. 2017. Outlined in detail in CD151: ACHA The House Version (American Health Care Act) There were quite a few versions of bills that would have ripped up the rules placed on insurance companies by the Affordable Care Act, but every version - including this one - eliminated the requirements that health insurance cover “essential health benefits”, which include: Ambulances Emergencies Hospital stays Maternity and newborn care Mental health Prescription drugs Rehab Lab work Preventative visits Dental and vision for children Would have also allowed - in some circumstance - insurance companies to charge us more for “pre-existing conditions” Passed the House of Representatives 217-213 All Democrats no's 20 Republicans no’s   S.Amdt. 667 (McConnell) to H.R. 1628: Of a perfecting nature., July 28, 2017. The “Skinny Repeal” is a wildly irresponsible 8 page bill, which was only available to read for a few hours before the vote, which also would have allowed the sale of health insurance that doesn’t cover the essential health benefits. This vote was the famous, dramatic moment when John McCain turned his thumb down and killed the bill. Get the full story in CD157: Failure to Repeal Failed Senate 49-51 All Democrats and Independents voted no   S.J.Res. 34: A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services." introduced March 7, 2017, enacted April 3, 2017. Regulation overturned: Killed a regulation that applied the privacy requirements of the Communications Act of 1934 to internet access and telecommunications providers. Required them to: Provide privacy notices that clearly and accurately inform customers Get opt-in or opt-out customer approval to use and share customer information Require opt-in’s when the company is making money from selling our information Secure our information Notify customers of data breaches Not condition service upon the customer’s surrender of privacy rights Passed Senate 50-48 All Republicans yes All Democrats and Independents no Passed House 215-205 - All Democrats no   H.R. 21: Midnight Rules Relief Act of 2017, introduced January 3, 2017, passed House January 4, 2017. Allows Congress to bundle rules that they want to prevent into one bill so there is a single vote on a joint resolution of disapproval. This means that each one will not be carefully considered as is required now. Passed the House of Representatives 238-184 Every Democrat voted no Has not been voted on in the Senate   H.R. 26: Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2017, introduced January 3, 2017, passed House January 5, 2017. Changes the Congressional Review Act to require Congressional review of major agency regulations before they can go into effect. Passed the House 237-187 all Republicans voted yes Has not been voted on in the Senate   H.J.Res. 38: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule, introduced January 30, 2017, enacted February 16, 2017. Regulation overturned: Killed the “Stream Protection Rule”, which required permits to specify when coal mining would reach a damaging level for ground and surface water quality. Stricter water quality monitoring requirements in streams. Required land disturbed by mining be restored to a condition similar to what it was before the mining. Passed Senate 54-45 Passed House 228-194   H.J.Res. 41: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to "Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers." introduced January 30, 2017, enacted February 14, 2017. Regulation overturned: Kills a regulation requiring fossil fuel companies to annually report any payments made by the company or a subsidiary to a foreign government or the Federal Government for the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals. Passed Senate 52-47 All Republicans yes All Democrats and Independents no Passed House 235-187   H.J.Res. 44: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Bureau of Land Management regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pusuant to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, introduced January 30, 2017, enacted March 27, 2017. Regulation overturned: Kills a regulation that enhanced opportunities for public involvement during the preparation of resource management plans by increasing public access to plans in earlier stages of the process, allowing the public to submit data and other information. Passed Senate 51-48 All Republicans yes All Democrats and Indepedents no Passed House 234-186   H.J.Res. 40: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, introduced January 30, 2017, enacted February 28, 2017. Regulation overturned: Kills a regulation that required Federal agencies to give the Attorney General information on more people for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). People who would be added include people collecting disability benefits due to mental instability. Passed Senate 57-43 All Republicans voted yes Passed House 235-180   H.J.Res. 83: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness, introduced February 21, 2017, enacted April 3, 2017. Regulation overturned: Kills a regulation that made clear that the requirement to record work-related injuries and illnesses is an ongoing obligation; the duty does not expire if the employer fails to create records in the first place. The records must be complete for as long as records are required, which is 5 years and citations can be issued for up to 6 months after that. Passed Senate 50-48 All Republicans yes All Democrats and Independents no Passed House 231-191   H.J.Res. 37: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, introduced January 30, 2017, enacted March 27, 2017. Regulation overturned: Kills a regulation that required contractors for the Defense Department, General Services Administration, and NASA to report their compliance with 14 federal labor laws, required contractors to provide documentation on “hours worked, overtime hours, pay, and additions to or deductions from pay” in each pay period, and limited mandatory arbitration of employee claims for contracts and subcontracts worth more than $1 million. Passed Senate 49-48 All Republicans voted yes All Democrats and Independents voted no Passed House 236-187   H.J.Res. 111: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by Bureau of Consumer Finanacial Protection relating to "Arbitration Agreements" introduced July 20, 2017, enacted November 1, 2017. Regulation Overturned: Killed a regulation that prohibited banks and other financial institutions from forcing arbitration in their contracts to prevent customers from filing and participating in class action lawsuits. Passed Senate 51-50 VP Mike Pence broke the tie All Democrats and Independents voted no Passed House 231-190 All Democrats voted no   S.J.Res. 57: A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by Bureau of Consumer financial Protection relating to "Indirect Auto Lending and Cmopliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act" introduced March 22, 2018, enacted May 21, 2018. CFPB regulation overturned: Killed a regulation that included auto dealers in the definition of “creditor” for the purpose of prohibiting them from discriminating in any way in a credit transaction on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or welfare assistance. Passed Senate 51-47 All Republicans yes All Independents no Passed House 234-175   S. 204: Trickett Wendler, Frank Mongiello, Jordan McLinn, and Matthew Bellina Right to Try Act of 2017, introduced January 24, 2017, enacted May 30, 2018. Allows people diagnosed with a life-threatening diseases or conditions who have exhausted approved treatment options and can’t participate in a clinical trial on an experimental drug that has not been FDA approved to get that drug directly from the drug company, with a doctor’s approval. Allows drug companies to sell their unapproved drugs directly to customers as long as the drugs have to have been through a completed Phase 1 of a clinical trial. This law says the Secretary of HHS can’t use the clinical outcomes of the patient’s use of the drug to delay or adversely affect the review or approval of the drug, unless he/she certifies it’s for safety reasons or the drug company requests that data be used. Gives legal immunity to the drug companies, prescribers, dispensers or an “other individual entity” unless there is willful misconduct, gross negligence, to the intentional breaking of a state law. Passed the Senate by unanimous consent (no recorded vote) Passed House 250-169 on May 22 All Republican votes were yes's Along with 22 Democrats   H.R. 772: Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2017, introduced January 31, 2017, passed House February 6, 2018. Changes the calorie disclosure requirements from telling us the number of calories in the standard menu item as usually prepared to allowing them to tell us the calories per serving, with them determining what a serving is. Allows restaurants to choose whether they will display calories by entire combo meals, by individual items in combos, by servings in items in combos. Let’s them use ranges, averages, or “other methods” as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (making it a decision of political appointee) Eliminates the requirement that restaurants provide calories in store if “the majority of orders are placed by customers who are off-premises” Restaurants will not be required to get any signed certifications of compliance. Restaurants can not be held liable in civil courts for violating nutrition disclosure laws. Passed the House 266-157 Has not been voted on in the Senate   H.R. 2936: Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, introduced June 20, 2017, passed House November 1, 2017. Allows more wood to be removed by the logging industry from Federal Forests and exempts them some from environmental regulations Passed House 232-188 Has not been voted on in the Senate   H.R. 4606: Ensuring Small Scale LNG Certainty and Access Act, introduced December 11, 2017, passed House September 6, 2018. Deems the importation or exportation of natural gas to be “consistent with the public interest” and says the applications for importation or exportation “shall be granted without modification or delay” if the volume does not exceed 0.14 billion cubic feet per day and if the application doesn’t require an environmental impact statement. Passed House 260-146 Has not been voted on in the Senate   H.R. 1119: Satisfying Energy Needs and Saving the Environment Act (SENSE Act), introduced Febraury 16, 2017, passed House March 8, 2018. Says the EPA must give coal companies the choice of if their steam generators will comply with emissions standards for hydrogen chloride or sulfur dioxide. The EPA is not allowed to require compliance with both Passed House 215-189 Has not been voted on in the Senate       H.R. 3053: Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018, introduced June 26, 2017, passed House May 10, 2018. Forces the continuance of the process of moving all the nuclear waste in the United States to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Grants the entire US government immunity for damages caused in the course of “any mining, mineral leasing, or geothermal leasing activity” conducted on the land reserved for nuclear waste disposal. Speeds up the approval process by 6 months for interim storage and basically forbids disapproval Would Increase by 57% the amount of spent fuel allowed to be held during construction - no environmental review to make sure the tanks can hold this much The Secretary of Energy does NOT need to consider alternative actions or no-action alternatives to infrastructure projects needed for Yucca mountain as far as environmental analysis are concerned. Passed the House of Representatives 340-72 Has not been voted on in the Senate                       H.R. 7: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2017, introduced January 13, 2017, passed House January 24, 2017. Makes permanent a common funding law amendment that prevents federal money from being used to perform abortions. This bill would also prevent any government payment assistance on the health insurance exchanges for plans that cover abortion - which effectively would stop health insurance companies from offering abortion coverage in their plans since that would make them ineligible for many of us to purchase. Passed the House of Representatives 238-183 All Republicans voted yes Has not been voted on in the Senate       Additional Reading Article: Pompeo eyes Fox News reporter to head Counterpropaganda Office by Robbie Gramer and Elias Groll, Foreign Policy, September 6, 2018. Article: "Right to Try" is a cruel farce by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Jacobin Magazine, August 12, 2018. Article: The 'right to try' could cost dying patients a fortune by Michelle Cortez, Bloomberg, June 20, 2018. Article: Congress works to revive long-delayed plan to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain by Michael Collins, USA Today, June 3, 2018. Report: Johnson to FDA: Agency should comply with right to try law, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, May 31, 2018. Article: Senator behind right-to-try law says its intent is to weaken FDA by Anna Edney, Bloomberg, May 31, 2018. Opinion: Right to Try Act poses big challenge for FDA by Michael D. Becker, NPR, May 24, 2018. Article: Right-to-try bill headed for vote puts bigger burden on FDA to protect patients, Gottlieb says by Ike Swetlitz and Erin Mershon, Stat News, May 17, 2018. Article: Walden, Shimkus, Lance, Walters steer House toward advancing nuclear waste bill by Ripon Advance News Service, May 14, 2018. Article: House passes Yucca bill, but its future is uncertain as Heller pledges to stop it in the Senate by Humberto Sanchez, The Nevada Independent, May 11, 2018. Article: The revenge of the stadium banks by David Dayen, The Intercept, March 2, 2018. Article: Pence says that Congress should get right-to-try legislation 'done' by Erin Mershon, Stat News, January 18, 2018. Statement: Examining patient access to investigational drugs by Scott Gottlieb, FDA.gov, October 3, 2017. Article: What was in the failed Senate 'skinny repair' health care bill? by Tami Luhby, CNN Money, July 28, 2017. Article: Scott Gottlieb: Conflicts surround Trump's FDA pick by Sandee LaMotte, CNN, April 4, 2017. Report: House passes bill to overturn 'midnight' regulations en masse by Lydia Wheeler, The Hill, January 4, 2017. Article: Now you have to keep OSHA injury records for 5 years by Fred Hosier, Safety News Alert, December 21, 2016. Opinion: With Harry Reid's retirement, will the Yucca Mountain plan be revived? by The Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2016. Article: Bankers ease rules on automatic student loan defaults by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post, October 27, 2016. Article: Sallie Mae under fire for death-induce defaults by Shahien Nasiripour, Huffpost, April 25, 2014. Report: Victim: Gang-rape cover-up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR by Brian Ross, Maddy Sauer, And Justin Rood, ABC News, December 10, 2007. Resources Company Information: Volks Constructors Corporation Congressional Publication: Disapproval of Regulations by Congress: Procedure Under Congressional Review Act, Oct 10, 2001. Court Report: Petition for Review of a Final Order of the Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission Disease Information: Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), MDA.org Explanatory Statement: Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018 Fact Sheet: President Trump: Cutting Red Tape for American Businesses FDA: Expanded Acces INDs and Protocols Law Resolutions: Congressional Review Act (CRA) Letter: Scott Gottlieb to Elizabeth J. Fischmann, Associate General Councel for Ethics Letter to the Senate: Dean Heller, Re: 2019 NRC Approps LinkedIn Profile: Scott Gottlieb OpenSecrets.org: Rep. Bruce Westerman - Arkansas District 04 OpenSecrets.org: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers - Washington District 05 OpenSecrets.org: Domino's Pizza OpenSecrets.org: Sen. Ron Johnson - Wisconsin Study Report: Clinical Development Success Rates Study 2006-2015 Sound Clip Sources House Session: Legislative Day of May 22, 2018, HouseLive.gov. 6:13:00 - Rep. Mike Burgess (TX) "The bill we will be voting out soon is about patients. It is about having more time with their loved ones. In the words of Vice President MIKE PENCE, ‘‘It’s about restoring hope and giving patients with life-threatening diseases a fighting chance.’’ With hundreds of thousands of Americans with a terminal illness and their families looking for us to act, I urge Members of this House, the people’s House, to support restoring hope and giving them a fighting chance at life." Hearing: House Hearing; Yucca Mountain, May 10, 2018. 32:00 Representative Greg Walden (OR): You know, the Department of Energy’s Hanford site is just up the mighty Columbia River from where I live and where I grew up. That area and those workers helped us win World War II, and the site’s nuclear program was instrumental in projecting peace through strength throughout the Cold War. While the community has been a constructive partner in support of our vital national security missions, it did not agree to serve as a perpetual storage site for the resulting nuclear waste. Fifty-six million gallons of toxic waste sitting in decades-old metal tanks at Hanford—these are those tanks that were being constructed to hold this waste. They are now buried in the ground. The only entry point is right here. The amount of waste stored at Hanford would fill this entire House Chamber 20 times over. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the oldest of these tanks, some of which date back to the 1940s, have single-layer walls, or shells. They were built to last 20 years. They will be almost 100 years old by the estimated end of their waste treatment. The Department of Energy has reported that 67 of these tanks are assumed or known to have leaked waste into the soil. There is an understandable sense of urgency in the Northwest behind the cleanup efforts that are under way at Hanford. H.R. 3053 will provide the pathway to clean up the contaminated Hanford site. You see, the waste from Hanford will end up in a secure permanent storage site that we believe will be Yucca Mountain. 35:15 Representative Greg Walden (OR): The legislation authorizes the Department of Energy to contract with private companies to store nuclear waste while DOE finishes the rigorous scientific analysis of the repository design and the associated Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process. So, an interim storage facility can bring added flexibility to DOE’s disposal program and may provide a more expeditious near-term pathway to consolidate spent nuclear fuel. 41.31 Representative Fred Upton (MI): In my district, we have two nuclear plants. Both of them have run out of room in their storage, so they have dry casks that are literally a John Shimkus baseball throw away from Lake Michigan. Every one of these 100-some sites across the country is in an environmentally sensitive area, and at some point they’re going to run out of room. In Michigan, we’ve got two other sites that also have dry casks in addition to the two in my district. 45:05 Representative Buddy Carter (GA): This legislation is important not only because of what it means to the future of clean-energy opportunities for this country, but also what this means for our communities. Nuclear energy has become a safe and effective way to generate energy, all while not producing greenhouse gas emissions. 53:29 Representative Leonard Lance (NJ): New Jersey is home to four nuclear reactors at three generating stations: Oyster Creek, Hope Creek, and Salem. Oyster Creek will be closing this October. In the congressional district I serve, these plants account for about half of the power generation and 90 percent of the carbon-free electricity. New Jersey’s nuclear plants avoid 14 million tons of carbon emissions each year. Public Service, FirstEnergy, and Exelon are doing their part in storing their station’s spent nuclear fuel on-site, but we need a permanent site. The expertise and know-how of the federal government has a responsibility to my constituents and to the American people. I want the 3,000 metric tons of nuclear waste out of New Jersey and consolidated in a national protected facility. 58:54 Representative Dina Titus (NV): The first ‘‘Screw Nevada’’ bill was passed in 1982, and since that time, Nevada’s residents, elected officials, business leaders, health and environmental groups have steadfastly opposed the Yucca Mountain repository. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record over 100 letters from those groups in opposition. 59:19 Representative Dina Titus (NV): You’ve heard that the legislation before you now, ‘‘Screw Nevada 2.0,’’ is a work of compromise, a bipartisan effort, not perfect, but a step forward. Well, that, frankly, is an opinion. It’s not the facts. Here are the facts: the legislation overrides environmental laws, allowing the EPA to move the goalposts in terms of radiation limits to ensure that nothing will ever interfere with the agenda of the nuclear industry. It sets up a consent-based process for the establishment of an interim storage facility but imposes a permanent facility at Yucca Mountain. It increases the amount of nuclear waste to be dumped in Nevada by 37 percent, 110 metric tons more that were not considered in any of the environmental or safety studies being used to justify the project. It also removes the prohibition currently in law that prohibits Nevada from being the de facto interim storage facility until a permanent one can be licensed. It was also changed after passing out of committee to address the high scoring costs—is it already three minutes? Chairman: Gentlewoman’s time has expired. Representative Paul Tonko: Mr. Speaker, we grant the gentlelady another minute. Chairman: Gentlelady’s recognized. Rep. Titus: Thank you. —to address the high scoring costs, making it less likely that we get host benefits. Also, contrary to the sponsor’s comments, the area around Yucca Mountain is not some desolate area. It has iconic wildlife, endangered species, and Native American artifacts. Also, the proposed facility sits above the water table and on an active fault and can only be reached by roads that travel through 329 of your congressional districts. 1:03:53 Representative Ruben Kihuen (NV): You know, Mr. Speaker, I find it offensive. I sit here and listen to all my colleagues, and they all want to send nuclear waste to the state of Nevada. They’re all generating this nuclear waste, and they want to send it to my backyard right in the Fourth Congressional District. You know, bottom line is this, Mr. Speaker: if you generate nuclear waste, you should keep it in your own backyard. Don’t be sending it to our backyard. 1:11:27 Representative Joe Courtney (CT): Next to me is a picture of Haddam Neck, Connecticut, which is a pristine part of the state where the Connecticut River and the Salmon River come together. Where the circle is on the photograph, there are 43 casks of spent nuclear power uranium rods that, again, today, pretty much cordon off that whole area. If you drove up in a car, you’d be met by a platoon of heavily armed security guards who, for good reason, have to patrol that area every single day because of the dangerous material that is stored there. That has been the case for over 20 years. It costs Connecticut ratepayers $10 million a year, again, for a site that should be long overdue for renovation and access to folks from all over the world because of its rich archeological and historical area. This bill provides a way out for this area, along with 120 other sites across the country, that host communities have been saddled with storage of spent nuclear fuel because of the fact that this country has been unable to come together with a coherent policy. And this bill provides a way out. 1:15:23 Representative Dana Rohrabacher (CA): This bill authorizes the construction of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage site, which would alleviate the burden of incredible risk that is now borne by communities throughout the country, such as in my district, where homes are not far located from the closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. That, and many other plants throughout the nation, have closed their doors in decades. Yet, Congress has yet to agree of how to safely store that waste, while—and what’s really important is we must store the waste—but while we develop new nuclear energy technologies, that we are capable of doing, that are safe and produce less of their own waste and can consume the waste of older plants—I reminded Secretary of Energy Perry of that yesterday—but, in the meantime, until that technology—by the way, it is sinful that we have not developed that technology, which we are capable of, that could eat this waste—but until we do, having safe storage at Yucca Mountain makes all the sense to me and is safe for my constituents. 1:17:07 Representative Rick Allen (GA): Mr. Speaker, I have the great honor of representing Georgia’s 12th Congressional District, which is home to every nuclear reactor in our state, and we are leading the way in the new nuclear. At Plant Vogtle, in my district, there are thousands of spent fuel rods being held in spent fuel pools and dry cask storage containers, and in the next few years we’re going to double the number of nuclear reactors online at Vogtle. Hearing: House Hearing; Forests Act, November 1, 2017. 3:02:49 Representative Bruce Poliquin (MA): Now, H.R. 2936 brings federal regulations in line with this new technology and new standards of safety by allowing family-owned logging business the ability to train 16- and 17-year-olds under very close supervision of their parents. 3:23:31 Representative Greg Walden (OR): In Oregon, this bill would take away arbitrary prohibition on harvesting trees over 21 inches in diameter. It’s tied the hands of our forest managers. 3:28:00 Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA): I represent the Colville National Forest, which is about a million-acre forest. It’s really the engine of our economy in the Northwest, because what happens on the Colville National Forest determines whether or not we have Vaagen’s lumber or 49 Degrees North ski resort or the biomass facility that Avista runs, converting wood waste into electricity. This is all providing jobs, energy, recreational opportunities. Yet mills have been closed, jobs have been lost. It’s unacceptable. It’s time to pass the Resilient Federal Forests legislation. 5:32:57 Representative Jeff Denham (CA): The Resilient Federal Forests Act gives us the tools to immediately reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires. It allows us to expedite the removal of dead trees and rapidly mitigate disease-infested areas. 5:41:58 Representative Louie Gohmert (TX): If you want to just leave it to nature, nature will destroy massive numbers of acres of land. So we have a responsibility. Even in the Garden of Eden when things were perfect, God said, tend the garden. 6:06:29 Representative Raul Grijalva (AZ): This is not the first time we have seen the bill, this piece of legislation. House Republicans sent a version to the Senate in the 113th and the 114th Congress, where it languished on the shelf because our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol found it too extreme. Rather than view that experience as an opportunity to seek compromise, this time around, today, we are considering a bill that is even more extreme and polarizing. They doubled the environmental review waivers, added language to undermine the Endangered Species Act, and scaled back protections for national monuments and roadless areas. 6:07:39 Representative Raul Grijalva (AZ): But this bill is not about forest health or wildfire mitigation; it’s about increasing the number of trees removed from our forests. 6:18:24 Representative Tom McClintock (CA): You know, there’s an old adage that excess timber comes out of the forest one way or the other—it’s either carried out or it burns out. When we carried it out, we had resilient, healthy forests and a thriving economy, as excess timber was sold and harvested before it could choke our forests to death. In the years since then, we’ve seen an 80 percent decline in timber sales from our federal lands and a concomitant increase in acreage destroyed by forest fire. I would remind my friend from Oregon that timber sales used to generate us money, not cost us money. The direct revenues and spin-off commerce generated by these sales provided a stream of revenues that we could then use to improve our national forests and share with the local communities affected. 6:22:38 Representative Jared Huffman (CA): Title I of this bill allows intensive logging projects of 10,000 to 30,000 acres each. That’s as big as the entire city of San Francisco. Projects of that size can proceed on federal public lands without any environmental review under NEPA, without any compliance with the Endangered Species Act. Title II of the bill eliminates the requirement that the Forest Service consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service; essentially, lets the Forest Service decide for itself if it wants to follow the Endangered Species Act consultation requirements regarding any of its projects on public lands. Title III further chokes judicial review by prohibiting the recovery of attorneys' fees for any challenges to forest management activity under the Equal Access to Justice Act, including meritorious successful challenges. This severely limits public review of logging projects on federal public lands. Hearing: Examining patient access to investigational drugs, Energy & Commerce, October 3, 2017. House Session: Legislative Day of January 4, 2017, Houselive.gov 4:15:30 - Rep. Darrell Issa (CA) "For the freshmen of either party,when you go to make a vote on this, re-member, we are not changing the un-derlying law. Only one regulation under the underlying law has ever been repealed, and it was bipartisan in both the House and the Senate when it was repealed. It has been 16 years, and the few that will likely be considered under this act and the underlying law will be just that, a relatively few regulations that are believed to be unnecessary and for which the House, the Senate, and the President concur.   Video: Josh Lyman Sick of Congress, YouTube, July 23, 2012. Community Suggestions See more Community Suggestions HERE. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)  

La Migra Womp Womp UN Human Rights Council The Spygate Who Loved Me Muh Space Invaders Deep dive sources: The Objective Standard - "Toward a Stupid Internnet" https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-winter/net-neutrality/ FCC Policy Statement from 2005 - "FCC 05-151" https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-151A1.pdf Missing NCTA letter to the FCC: https://sites.tiaonline.org/sites/default/files/pages/Internet_ecosystem_letter_FINAL_12.10.14.pdf Vox article: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/21/7867869/net-neutrality-republican-compromise Communications Act of 1934 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 Telecommunications Act of 1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

In this episode, I go in-depth on the history of net neutrality and the FCC beginning in 2002 and ending with the 2017 decision to repeal net neutrality. We discuss the different ways broadband providers and internet service providers have been classified under the Communications Act of 1934 as well as how courts have ruled on net neutrality in recent years.  … More Ep. 22: An In-Depth History of Net Neutrality

In this episode, I go in-depth on the history of net neutrality and the FCC beginning in 2002 and ending with the 2017 decision to repeal net neutrality. We discuss the different ways broadband providers and internet service providers have been classified under the Communications Act of 1934 as well as how courts have ruled on net neutrality in recent years.  … More Ep. 22: An In-Depth History of Net Neutrality The post Ep. 22: An In-Depth History of Net Neutrality appeared first on The Edge of Ideas.

Episode 04 - "Net Neutrality" The FCC will vote on December 14, 2017 on whether to reverse common carrier status for broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. This action will have profound effects on the internet and the way it functions. Join us in this episode as we explore exactly what this means for censorship and the future of the internet as we know it.A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.CC BY-SA 4.0

Bio Brian Woolfolk (@brianpwoolfolk) is the Founding Executive Director of Full Color Future--a new think tank and advocacy organization committed to changing the narrative about people of color in media, tech and innovation. He has been passionate about inclusive tech, telecom and media policy for more than 20 years, since he got his start on Capitol Hill. Brian served as Democratic Counsel on the US House Judiciary Committee and advised Committee Members on the Telecommunications Act, media ownership diversity, and free speech issues. He also advised members and staff on constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, criminal justice and investigative issues. Prior to his Committee work, Brian served as legislative counsel to Congressman Robert C. (Bobby) Scott of Virginia, currently the Ranking Member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. Since leaving the Hill, Brian Woolfolk has worked in private practice, representing a broad array of clients with matters before Congress, federal agencies, and state and local governments. Brian also counsels clients involved in high profile Congressional Investigations. Mr. Woolfolk has extensive technology and media policy experience. His advocacy on tech policy issues began when he ran a pro bono project that provided government relations services to minority media companies challenging anti-competitive practices in the cable marketplace. Over the years, Brian has worked on surveillance, artificial intelligence, net neutrality, mergers, set top boxes, and a host of other issues related to the fight to ensure diverse tech and media interests are protected. Brian has a B.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from the William & Mary Law School. Brian currently serves as a Member of the William and Mary Board of Visitors (Trustees). Resources Full Color Future Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?: A Memoir by George Clinton (Atria Books, 2014) News Roundup Net neutrality and media ownership caps: next steps Of course you've heard by now that the Republican-led FCC voted to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules which classified ISPs as "common carriers". This classification brought them directly within the scope of the Commission's so-called "Title II" authority, which is the section of the Communications Act that deals with common carriers. The net neutrality rules banned ISPs from blocking, slowing down, or prioritizing speeds for content creators who can afford to pay for higher speeds, while keeping everyone else's in the slow lane. Those rules are gone now. However, the FCC did keep the so-called "transparency rule", which continues to require ISPs to be transparent about their network management practices. Still, the definition of "transparency" is subject to broad interpretation since there is no longer any underlying rules that say what ISPs are supposed to be transparent about. The FCC and FTC have said that they intended to pursue a Memorandum of Understanding which would define how the two agencies would work together to enforce net neutrality principles. But until that's done--there are no net neutrality rules--only unenforceable principles of net neutrality. So what are the next steps? Well, first off, the FCC is likely to get sued. The most obvious basis for any lawsuit would be the way in which the FCC considered public comments in this proceeding, or, should I say--did NOT consider public comments. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said last week that he would be suing the FCC for illegally rolling back the net neutrality rules. He points to the fact that there were millions of fake or fraudulent comments in the record. He also says that the Commission failed to hold public hearings. Schniederman says that repealing the rules "rewards the very perpetrators who scammed the system to advance their own agenda." Other states that are planning to sue include Washington, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Delaware, Vermont, DC and Massachusetts. Advocacy organizations, like Free Press, have also expressed their intention to sue. The other route is legislation. Verge reporter Jacob Kastrenakes reports that Senate Commerce Committee Chair John Thune called on Congress last week to pass a new net neutrality law. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that he would force a vote under he Congressional Review Act to preserve the net neutrality rules. Shannon Liao has excellent coverage of how all of this could play out in The Verge. The FCC also passed a notice of proposed rulemaking, in which it is exploring how the FCC might reduce the broadcast ownership cap. Currently, it is illegal for a single broadcast owner to reach more than 39% of the national market. This standard was set by Congress, and it was legislation that current Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly worked on when he was a Legislative Assistant for former Republican New Hampshire Senator John Sununu. O'Rielly opposes raising the cap because he says the Commission doesn't have the authority to do so. However, he says that it is appropriate for the FCC to consider raising the cap, since it is unlikely that Congress will do so. John Eggerton explains in Broadcasting & Cable. We should also note that David Shepardson of Reuters reports that the FCC has voted behind closed doors to fine Sinclair Broadcasting $13.3 million for failing to disclose that it ran paid programming on some of its stations that was sponsored by a cancer institute. Sinclair's proposed acquisition of Tribune Media is still pending. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal calls for Comcast-NBC merger investigation U.S. Senator Richard Blumental wants the DOJ to revisit the Comcast/NBCU merger that closed back in 2011. The merger conditions Comcast committed to in exchange for the merger being approved are set to expire next fall. So Blumenthal is concerned that the market harms that some have already pointed to will get worse. He wrote a letter last week to U.S. Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim asking him to consider breaking up Comcast/NBCU or, at a minimum, to extend the merger conditions. Ted Johnson reports for Variety. NASA discovers 8th planet orbiting distant star With the help of Google's artificial intelligence neural network, NASA has identified an 8th planet orbiting a distant star called Kepler 90, which is about 2,500 light years away from us. The planet, which is called Kepler 90i, has a 14-day orbit and is rocky and hot, with a surface temperature of 800 degrees Farenheit. It is within the first solar system humans have discovered with as many planets as our own. Maya Wei-Haas has the story in Smithsonian. Twitter cracks down on hate speech Twitter began enforcing a new policy to crack down on white nationalist hate speech on Monday, suspending accounts linked to white nationalists. The new policy prohibits users from advocating violence against civilians. Harper Neidig reports in the Hill. Former Uber lawyer alleges thatUber hacked and surveilled its competitors As you know, Uber, and Google parent company Alphabet's self driving car unit Waymo, have been embroiled in litigation. Waymo charges that a former employee took secrets back to Uber to help Uber develop its competing self-driving car. Well,  a new letter came to light last week, and it says that Uber hacked and surveilled its competitors to gain competitive insights in a way that went far beyond industry norms.  For example, the 37-page letter--dubbed Jacob's letter-- written by a former attorney to Uber's head of global intelligence, says that Uber collected the license, name and contact information of 35,000  drivers and used that information to entice them to work for Uber instead. The letter also states that Uber engaged in other less-than-savory practices as it spied on competitors. The letter was made public just days ahead of the trial that's set to commence in days. Jake Nicas reports in the Wall Street Journal. House releases answer to the Senate's Sex Trafficking bill The House of Representatives released its answer to the Senate's Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act last week. The House version, which is entitled the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA, would make it so that companies can no longer claim immunity from *state* laws for third-party content that promotes sex trafficking. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act only prevents such immunity from federal law. The House bill also prohibits ads that solicit prostitution. Jack Corrigan reports in Next.gov. Democrats push back on Disney/21st Century Fox merger Democratic lawmakers are calling for hearings on Disney's $52 billion bid for 21st Century Fox. Senator Amy Klobuchar is concerned about the merger's potential competitive harms. Representatives David Cicilline and Emanuel Cleaver want hearings as well. Tony Romm reports for Recode. Senator Brian Schatz warns about a lack of diversity in AI Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz--the top ranking internet subcommittee Democrat--scolded the tech sector for its lack of diversity at an artificial intelligence hearing last week. Schatz was particularly concerned about the lack of diversity among artificial intelligence development teams. He said that these teams are predominantly white and male and pointed to the potential for bias in setting up AI algorithms.  Ali Breland reports in The Hill. YouTube takes down Ajit Pai's 'Harlem Shake' video for 7 hours FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's video of himself doing the Harlem Shake to ease minds about repealing net neutrality didn't go over so well with DJ Baauer, who created the track. Bauer filed a copyright claim and YouTube took the video down for  7 hours.      In any case the video's back up but the ratio of dislikes to likes is some 24 to 1. with just 9,000 likes and 217, 000 dislikes. Sarah Jeong reports in the Verge.                 

For about a decade, some legal scholars have urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet to ensure "net neutrality," a content nondiscrimination standard for Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon. This concept has gained popular support, particularly among young adults and those in the tech industry. In 2015, at the behest of President Barack Obama, the FCC created net neutrality regulations and cited Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 as its authority. However, there are other legal scholars who have pushed back. Some FCC commissioners even view the rules and the asserted legal authority as illegitimate and as a threat to free speech online, the development of new technology services, and telecom industry investment. In December 2017 the Republican commissioners, who now form a majority, appear ready to totally repeal the 2015 net neutrality regulations. Brent Skorup will discuss the history of the net neutrality movement, the 2015 rules, the First Amendment issues at stake, and the effect of repealing the rules. Featuring:- Brent Skorup, Research Fellow in the Technology Policy Program, Mercatus Center at George Mason UniversityVisit our website – https://RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

For about a decade, some legal scholars have urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet to ensure "net neutrality," a content nondiscrimination standard for Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon. This concept has gained popular support, particularly among young adults and those in the tech industry. In 2015, at the behest of President Barack Obama, the FCC created net neutrality regulations and cited Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 as its authority. However, there are other legal scholars who have pushed back. Some FCC commissioners even view the rules and the asserted legal authority as illegitimate and as a threat to free speech online, the development of new technology services, and telecom industry investment. In December 2017 the Republican commissioners, who now form a majority, appear ready to totally repeal the 2015 net neutrality regulations. Brent Skorup will discuss the history of the net neutrality movement, the 2015 rules, the First Amendment issues at stake, and the effect of repealing the rules. Featuring:- Brent Skorup, Research Fellow in the Technology Policy Program, Mercatus Center at George Mason UniversityVisit our website – https://RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

Welcome to Maj-j-j-j-jo-o-o-rity Vil-l-l-l-lain-n-n-n The future of the internet under the elimination of Net Neutrality What is Net Neutrality? Today, the internet and access to it remain open. It remains accessible. It remains “free”, because anyone, anywhere at anytime can use it. But that very freedom is scheduled to be rolled back dramatically on December 14th when the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote to remove the internet as a public utility from Title II of the Communications Act. Exactly. That legalese is most likely what your internet service provider, commonly called simply ISPs, has been counting on in order to keep consumers willfully ignorant about the future of the internet. But here’s where the rubber meets the road: it’s not working. Yep, as high as 2/3 of Americans from all walks of the political spectrum are keen to this corporate coup. And for good reason, right? From ridiculously long and non-intelligible user agreement forms to shoddy bundling packages with landlines that most kids in the year 2017 don’t even know exist, to simply trying to terminate your cable plan with customer service representatives who are more beast than man (Video of guy cancelling). This last video went viral after that man repeated those cancellation requests to Comcast customer service for nearly 20 minutes. Hell, I personally was sent to collections by Comcast over their mistake for about $30. Cable companies and internet service providers clearly have one lasting motive: the bottom line. So is Net Neutrality just the latest gimmick? Most experts say it’s much more serious than that. Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu first used the term “Net Neutrality” in 2003 when discussing “common carriers”. Companies that have a purpose of moving goods or services from one point to another. They “carry” your phone call from your mother, they “carry” our oil in pipelines, our Christmas packages on railways, and even “carry” precious YouTube videos all the way to your ears. Obviously, some applications may be more useful than others. The important part is that the goods get to you when you need them, and are done so efficiently and quickly. So what might happen in the aftermath of the death of Net Neutrality? Some are saying: The Death of Online Activism the Expansion of Censorship Right now, I can say whatever I want about Verizon. I can say that President Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, whom he personally appointed, is a dirty former lawyer of Verizon that likes to play with his poopy for foreplay in front of his corporate overlords at weird Verizon headquarter sex parties where the board of directors dress up like futuristic S&M dolls and virgins are led to the slaughter at the hands of anatomically correct killer robots all for the purpose of revitalizing their decrepit old skin in bizarre witchcraft rituals. And while this is clearly a true statement, under proposed FCC guidelines, they could simply block this very website altogether if they chose to. This past December 7th saw some of the largest organized efforts to stop the FCC’s proposed changes as nationwide protests in front of Verizon stores took place. Those organizers like verizonprotests.com and battleforthenet.com could be in a state of perpetual loading if their ISP doesn’t like the content. Imagine if verizonprotests.com were located in an area where their only ISP was Verizon. There is literally nothing stopping Verizon from simply shutting down that operation. It sure doesn’t sound like a booming success for consumers, does it? It doesn’t resonate with options or protections for Jon and Jane Doe. The question presents itself then as a debate over whether or not access to the internet is a right. Should it be designated a common carrier and should consumers have proper access to it, as regulated by the government? The words “more government” automatically give a lot of people the heeby jeebies. Fair enough, let’s look at why eliminating Net Neutrality is a good thing. Probably the most common argument for ending Net Neutrality is economic. That argument goes like this: Why would ISPs continue to invest in internet infrastructure if the incentive for building it is financially undermined by everyone having the same access to it. Instead, internet service providers argue that being able to provide faster internet to those willing to pay for it will help create the financial incentive to build a faster internet for everyone, fast lanes for all, faster lanes for some. Sounds simple enough. Companies like Comcast, Charter and Cox have said for sometime that slowing down internet speeds for most consumers wouldn’t be the goal of these new internet rules. Instead, they make the claim that consumers already have robust options in the internet market, and therefore this wouldn’t be a giveaway to the major ISP players. In other words, your internet service will be largely unaffected as the invisible hand of the market plays out and competes for your dollar. If company A is too slow, then company B will be a tough competitor in that market, or company c or d and so forth. Absolutely a solid argument with a strong foundation. But do people really have multitudes of ISP options? Furthermore, could it be that the real reason money is not being invested in infrastructure is become the cable lobby is well aware that competition is weak. The main economic argument by ISPs assume that resources have been tight, and consumers can walk to another provider anytime they want. Business Insider’s Jeff Dunn doesn’t seem to think so in an April article saying, “Could Pai's net-neutrality plan lead ISPs to invest in more robust internet, and even offer it at cheaper prices? Possibly. But most of these companies have been sitting on piles of money for a long time, and they haven’t been very eager to spend the hundreds of millions needed to build out their private infrastructure into more places.” However, according to a popular piece by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight (video clip) and on another episode from the show in 2014 he stated as high as “96% of the population has access to two or fewer broadband companies.” That would seem to contradict the cable and internet lobby’s claims. According to a piece by Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica this past July cable companies consistently make the claim that there is no shortage of competition in the market, even stating “Competition is alive and well in the TV and Internet marketplaces and consumers are benefiting every day.” Brodkin argues that this claim is only true, because the cable lobby uses a 3Mbps threshold in their definition of high speed internet. That’s the kind of internet connection that makes you want to drown your computer in the bathtub. So what was all that fast and faster talk about? 
Brodkin again: “Out of 118 million US households, more than 10.6 million have no access to wired Internet service with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, and an additional 46.1 million households live in areas with just one provider offering those speeds. Even including fixed wireless connections, there were still nearly 50 million households with one 25Mbps provider or none at all, based on the analysis of FCC data.” Basically, there are millions of Americans systematically disadvantaged in job searching, connecting with friends and family or having access to key information in a timely manner. Brodkin finishes the July piece stating, “That report was issued before current Chairman Ajit Pai (former Verizon lawyer) took over for Tom Wheeler (former cable lobbyist). Pai voted against the 2015 decision to raise the broadband speed definition, criticized Wheeler for excluding satellite and mobile services from the new broadband benchmark, and has said the broadband market is too competitive for strict privacy rules. Under Pai's leadership, the FCC's future conclusions about broadband deployment and competition might be more in line with the cable lobby’s.” Letters from an Outsider, by Vili Branyik “They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!” -Howard Beale, The Network One of the things I’d get in trouble for when I was a kid was playing Devil’s Advocate. My parents hated it to the point that they made me a shirt that had a quote from Dante’s Divine comedy - “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” I’m reluctant to take a stand for either side of an argument because both sides usually have their own merits. And, to paraphrase Penn Jillette, you should defend the people you don’t agree with at some point in your life. That act is a step to finding out what your priorities truly are. Now, with times being what they are, it’s difficult to support the repeal of Net Neutrality. For me, that means it’s time to stand for something. Part of the reason I’m explaining that is because there aren’t a lot of ways I can approach Net Neutrality without calling someone a fucking asshole - either the corporations supporting the repeal of Net Neutrality or the Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai. None of the people supporting the repeal of Net Neutrality come off to me as genuine in their efforts to pursue innovation or take further steps to make the open internet a basic right. I could make the argument that repealing Net Neutrality could be a step to the betterment of the open internet - the FCC has said that because of Net Neutrality, investing in corporations with a hand in telecommunication services, such as Verizon, has declined, and that loss makes it harder for those companies to better develop their services. I could defend that but I’m not going to. Realistically, the whole thing ended up with me asking a question about Net Neutrality that everyone should ask themselves - Would the repeal of Net Neutrality be as big a deal if we weren’t living in an age of kleptocrats and a lack of corporate transparency? I can’t in good conscience support the repeal of Net Neutrality. First off, the answer to my own question is no. This sort of thing wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place it people weren’t so obsessed with the weight of their wallets. When looking up at Net Neutrality rules, I found out that the internet is classified as a Title II communication service, which essentially means that the providers had to play fair with the services that they provided and couldn’t gouge people on prices. Further research refers to regulations on communications services in the early 1900’s, a time where railways were charging lower and higher rates depending on the traffic in and out of cities. In 1934, FDR asked for legislation for the creation of a government body that could study and regulate communication services. Thus, the FCC was created. A president 80 years back created an agency to prevent consumers from being thrown to the wolves that are hungry corporate interest, and the delicious irony is that the agency responsible for originally protecting the consumers is now the one threatening to repeal the rules keeping corporations fair. Second, the implications of a corporate stranglehold on a communications service can’t be ignored. We have a president who is currently delegitimizing the media, and the only channel he watches is fucking FOX News, a nest of vile sycophants who haven’t ceased to line up and blow the con artist in chief on live television. If the repeal of Net Neutrality means that your ability to communicate depends on how deep your pockets are, there are going to be a lot of people whose perspective on many things is narrowed significantly, and that is a dangerous prospect no matter who happens to be in office. It should go without saying that technology is vastly different than it was in the 1930’s. It seems like these days that things have advanced so quickly that people haven’t had the opportunity to catch up with the Information Age. The advent of the Information Age has made it impossible to be completely ignorant on something, but that’s a good thing. The ability to exchange information, among other things, wirelessly and quickly has birthed a new way that we communicate ideas. One of the effects of that, however, is that there’s a lot of things that people part of older generations want to keep buried, which is a polite way of saying that old fucks have a lot of dirty laundry. There’s always going to be a conflict in a period of transition, and in the United States we are in a state of heavy societal upheaval. The last thing that we should have to worry about is how we communicate with each other and who might threaten our abilities to do so. Now, if you haven’t made your voice heard to the FCC already, do so. Host of Last Week Tonight John Oliver shared a web address that directly links to the FCC’s website and the page you need to be on to file a complaint about the repeal of Net Neutrality. (www.gofccyourself.com) Everyone has a voice. As much as I like the idea of arguing for both sides, sometimes you need to stand for something. One more thing - I kind of shit on Ajit Pai earlier, or at least implied I did, but I can’t do that to the fullest extent. On a personal level, the Chairman of the FCC seems like a good guy. Because of his movement to repeal Net Neutrality, however, his family has been harassed and his home has been vandalized. ("Ajit Pai Says His Children Are Being Harassed")  I can’t condone that sort of thing, nobody should. That being said, this is a display of what happens when you mess with something people think should be a basic right to everyone. If Ajit Pai wasn’t formerly a lawyer for Verizon (and put in his current position specifically for what he’s doing now), the public’s perception of him would be different. But his goofy smile and comically large coffee mug won’t change the fact that Pai has pissed off a good portion of the internet community for lying and exaggerating about Net Neutrality to rally people behind his cause and blatantly ignoring the public who fucking hate his idea. It’s not an unheard of tactic for someone in political power, and it’s something that would land him squarely in the Trump White House, which makes him fit well with the other bullshit artists he has in his stable. Cheers. From, the Outsider That last piece was produced by Vili Branyik and performed by Eric Ellzey. What implications are there for eliminating NN? The Death of Small Business If the internet is reclassified and Net Neutrality is ended, then big businesses like Google or Amazon will be able to purchase “fast lanes” where you as a consumer can use their websites with almost no interruption - exactly the way you use it everyday. Internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast will most definitely like this, because they won't have to provide those same fast lanes to damn freeloaders like the Majority Villain podcast. In fact, they can do something called “throttling” (video of person explaining this) and intentionally make websites slower than they would be otherwise. ISPs will make obscene amounts of money in the process by charging mid-size to large-size companies huge premiums at whatever price they deem profitable, regardless of market demands all for the bandwidth those same companies already get today. Sadly though, ending Net Neutrality protections will be a death sentence to many small businesses, because their meager advertising budgets won’t be able to afford the service. Those businesses who cannot compete with this new flavor of corporate elitism will go back to advertising mediums that belong in a museum. Sayonara Ma and Pa. December 14th the FCC is set to vote and end what we know as Net Neutrality. Even if you’re listening to this afterward, you can make your voice heard. Go to fccyourself.com and leave your feedback for the FCC on this disastrous decision. Change.org, battleforthenet.com, savetheinternet.com and verizonprotests.com all have actions you can take and there are links to every one of them in the show notes which you can find on the device you are using right now. Don’t just get angry, do something about it. The power is ours to create the future we want. You’ve been listening to the Majority Villain podcast. I’m your host, Gregory Haddock. To redeem your Villain points for this episode be sure to visit the website at majorityvillain.com and on Facebook and Twitter @majorityvillain. If you liked the show or even hated the show be sure to tell a friend or enemy about it and subscribe so you don’t miss a chance to love or hate it again! And be sure to check the show notes on the device you’re using for links to actions you can take against the internet and cable lobby’s efforts to steal the internet, YOUR internet. A big thanks to Letters from an Outsider’s, Vili Branyik, mad reading skills by Eric Ellzey, and Kris Shapar for help on social media. Majority Villain will be taking a Christmas break and will return January 13th. Remember, remember, remember…. to not take a stand is to acquiesce your power. To acquiesce your power is to remain neutral. To remain neutral is the status quo. And status quos are for suckers. Peace, love and villainy. Music provided by the Free Music Archive under Creative Commons licensing. Today’s music by Blue Dot Sessions, Evil Bear Boris, Scott Holmes and Daizy. Show image by Russell Davies under Creative Commons licensing via Flickr. #StoptheFCC #GoFCCyourself #NetNeutrality #VerizonProtests https://www.battleforthenet.com/ www.verizonprotests.com https://www.change.org/p/save-net-neutrality-netneutrality https://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-isps-competition-net-neutrality-ajit-pai-fcc-2017-4 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/cable-lobby-claims-us-is-totally-overflowing-in-broadband-competition/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/08/the-impact-of-net-neutrality-laws-on-your-business/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-fcc-says-net-neutrality-cripples-investment-thats-not-true/

The Internet plays an essential role in our modern society and yet the way the Internet will be governed is still unclear. In anticipation of an impending Federal Communications Commission vote to reverse the so called “net neutrality” regulation implemented during the Obama administration, we look at the law which the FCC is trying to enforce. We also examine our current lawmaker’s plans for Internet governance by listening to highlights of three hearings featuring testimony from lawyers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Please Support Congressional Dish Click here to contribute using credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Bills H.R. 3989: Amend Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 S. 652 (104th): Telecommunications Acto of 1996 Additional Reading Article: House foreign surveillance turf war heats up as law sunset nears by Daniel R. Stoller, Bloomberg, December 1, 2017. Article: Colorado warns families to be prepared in case congress doesn't come through on CHIP funding by Kimberly Leonard, Washington Examiner, November 27, 2017 Article: Congress confronts jam-packed December with shutdown deadline looming by Mike Debonis and Ed O'Keefe, The Washington Post, November 26, 2017 Article: States prepare to shut down children's health programs if congress doesn't act by Colby Itkowitz and Sandhya Somashekhar, The Washington Post, November 23, 2017. Article: Here's how the end of net neutrality will change the internet by Klint Finley, Wired, November 22, 2017. Article: What is net neutrality? by Aaron Byrd and Natalia V. Osipova, NY Times, November 21, 2017. Article: Will the Telecommunications Act get a much-needed update as it turns 21? by Richard Adler, Recode, February 8, 2017. Article: Cable tv price increases have beaten inflation every single year for 20 years by Nathan McAlone, Business Insider, October 31, 2016 Article: 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, rekindling Congress's political will by Stuart N. Brotman, The Hill, February 8, 2016. Article: The city that was saved by the internet by Jason Koebler, Motherboard, October 27, 2016. Article: This was 1995: A pop culture snapshot by Patricia Garcia, Vogue, September 1, 2015. Article: Why your internet prices are bound to go up by Brian Fung, Washington Post, July 23, 2015. Report: In a nutshell: Net neutrality, CBS News, March 1, 2015. Report: AT&T buys DirectTV for $48.5 billion by Roger Yu, USA Today, May 18,2014. Article: Federal appeals court strikes down net neutrality rules by Brian Fung, Washington Post, January 14, 2014. Article: Legal gymnastics ensue in oral arguments for Verizon vs. FCC by Jennifer Yeh, Freepress, September 10, 2013. Report: Comcast completes NBC Universal merger, Reuters, January 29, 2011. References Bill Resources: H.R.1555 Communications Act of 1995 Bill Roll Call: H.R. 3989 Vote Roll Call FCC Resources: Telecommunications Act of 1996 Mission Statement: AIPAC - America's Pro-Israel Lobby Network Map: Community Networks Publication: Public Law 104 Telecommunications Act of 1996 Publication: The USA Liberty Act Report: Akamai's State of the Internet 2017 Report: FCC Fact Sheet Support Page: AT&T HBO Channels Visual References Cable Prices vs. Inflation, 1995-2015 Sound Clip Sources Senate Select Intelligence Committee: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Election Interference; November 1, 2017 (Senate Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 1:49:24 Sen. Roy Blunt (MO): Mr. Stretch, how much money did the Russians spend on ads that we now look back as either disruptive or politically intended? It was at $100,000. Is that— Colin Stretch: It was approximately $100,000. Blunt: I meant from your company. Stretch: Yes, approximately $100,000. Blunt: How much of that did they pay before the election? Stretch: The— Blunt: I’ve seen the— Stretch: Yeah. Blunt: —number 44,000. Blunt: Is that right? Stretch: So— Blunt: 56 after, 44 before. Stretch: The ad impressions ran 46% before the election, the remainder after the election. Blunt: 46%. Well, if I had a consultant that was trying to impact an election and spent only 46% of the money before Election Day, I’d be pretty upset about that, I think. So, they spent $46,000. How much did the Clinton and Trump campaigns spend on Facebook? I assume before the election. Stretch: Yeah. Before the elec— Blunt: They were better organized than the other group. Stretch: Approximate—combined approximately $81 million. Blunt: 81 million, and before the election. Stretch: Yes. Blunt: So, 81 million. I’m not a great mathematician, but 46,000, 81 million, would that be, like, five one-thousandths of one percent? It’s something like that. Stretch: It’s a small number by comparison, sir. 2:19:55 Sen. Tom Cotton (AR): Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian Intelligence Services? Sean Edgett: We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government. Cotton: So you will apply the same policy to our Intelligence Community that you apply to an adversary’s intelligence services. Edgett: As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently. Cotton: This reminds me of the old line from the Cold War, of one who did not see a distinction between the CIA and the KGB on the other hand, because the KGB officer pushed an old lady in front of an oncoming bus, and the CIA officer pushed the old lady out from the path of the oncoming bus, because they both go around pushing old ladies. I hope that Twitter will reconsider its policies when it’s dealing with friendly intelligence services in countries like the United States and the U.K. as opposed to adversarial countries like Russia and China. House Select Intelligence Committee: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Election Interference; November 1, 2017 (House Social Media) Witnesses: Kent Walker - Google Senior Vice President & General Counsel Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President & General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel 39:05 Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ): Social-media platforms have the responsibility of striking a balance between removing false information and preserving freedom of speech. Can you give us some brief detail of how each of your companies plan to target perceived false news while protecting the robust political discourse? Kent Walker: Let me take that because that was the sort of next stage to my answer to Mr. Shift’s question. We are taking a number of different steps beyond advertising to focus on fake news. We are working to improve our algorithms, to provide additional guidance and training to the Raiders who provide quality feedback for us, and to look at a wider variety of signals to improve the ranking of authentic and genuine news on our sites and to demote sites that we feel are deceptive or misleading. We are also making broader use of fact-check labels, working with third parties, for both Google Search and Google News. And when it comes to advertising, we’ve taken steps to disallow advertising on sites that misrepresent their nature or purpose, and to add to our policies around or against hate speech, incitement of violence, and the like. Colin Stretch: I would group our efforts with respect to false news into three buckets. First, we find that most false news is financially motivated, and we’re making efforts to disrupt the financial incentives. That, we think, will make a big dent in it. Second, we’re looking to stop the spread of it. So when we have information that’s been disputed by independent fact-checkers, we limit the distribution and we alert users who are attempting to share it that it has been disputed. And third, we’re engaged in a number of user-education efforts to help, particularly around the world, users approach some of the content they see with a more discerning eye. Sean Edgett: We’re tackling this challenge in a few ways, and I think the way this was characterized is correct: it’s a balance between free speech and what’s real and what’s false. And we often see there’s a lot of activity on the platform to correct false narratives, and one of those things, for example, is the text-to-vote tweets that we turned over to you, which we took off our platform as illegal voter suppression. The number of tweets that were counteracting that as false and telling people not to believe that was, like, between eight and 10 times what we saw on the actual tweets. But we’re working on the behavior. That’s where we’re focused right now. We’ve had great strides in focusing on that for things like terrorism and child sexual exploitation. We’re trying to figure out how we can use those learnings to stop the amplification of false news or misinformation, and think we’re making great strides there, but it’s a definite balance. We also have work we’ve done, just like my peers, around ads transparency that, I think, is going to help educate the consumer about who’s paying for an ad, what else they’re running, what they’re targeting, what they’re after—especially around electioneering ads, who’s paying for it, how much they’re spending. We are also working with third parties. We have a Trust and Safety council of experts, academics, around the world who are helping us think through the things that we’re trying to employ to tackle these issues and how they will impact the debate and free speech on our platform. So we’re working hard on this, but it’s a challenge. 59:39 Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL): I submit to you that your efforts have to be more than just about finding malicious and deceptive activity, that you have a responsibility—all of you have a responsibility—to make sure that we are not adding to the problem by not being as rigorous and as aggressive as we can in terms of vetting the content and in terms of making sure that we are being really dynamic in doing that. And I also want to just say that I think it’s ridiculous that a foreign entity can buy a political ad with rubles but can’t give a political contribution to me—a Russian person can’t give me a political contribution. There seems to be some legislation that needs to be had here, is all I’m saying. 1:16:05 Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL): Let’s look at unpaid content for a second. Sometimes these fake accounts are pulled down, but the fake story takes the false claims of widespread voter fraud, for example, generated by these accounts have spread thousands of thousands of times, often picked up by legitimate news accounts. What do you do to flag that? What do you sense is your responsibility? And before any of you answer, let me just notice this, that if we’re asking is, are we still in this situation? As of just a short time ago—and I’m talking about when this meeting started—on Twitter, if you clicked on the hashtag “NYCTerroristAttack,” which is “trending,” marked with a red button saying “live,” the top tweet links to an Infowars story with the headline, “Imam: I Warned De Blasio About New York City Terror; He was Too Busy Bashing Trump.” This is a real-time example of when we talk about this information being weaponized. How quickly can you act, and what’s your responsibility to set the record straight so that the people who saw this know that it’s fake news and at least at some point in time it can’t keep spreading like some sort of virus through legitimate world? Sean Edgett: That’s something we’re thinking about all the time because it’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that. In your example, in for instance, the system self-corrected. That’s not—that shouldn’t be the first tweet you see anymore. It should be a USA article, the last time I checked. Quigley: But you saw this. Edgett: USA Today. At lunch I did, yeah, and I also saw the system correct it. Quigley: Can you give me a really good guess on how long it was top? Edgett: We can follow up with you and your staff on that, and I don’t have the stat in front of me. Quigley: Yeah. Edgett: So I don’t know. But we are, like we said earlier, trying to balance free speech with making the information you see on the system—especially around trends that we direct you to, so if you’re clicking on a hashtag, we want to make sure you’re seeing verified accounts and accurate information and reporting. Sometimes it doesn’t work as we intended. We learn from those mistakes and tweak and modulate going forward. Quigley: Beyond the correction, do you have a responsibility to flag something as “this was fake news”? Edgett: We see our users do that a lot. We’re an open, public platform with respect to journalists and other organizations who point these things out. You may have seen that on this instance, for example. Quigley: Yeah, if someone’s breaking the law, you’ve got to feel like you have a responsibility to do something about that. It’s not—as you said, this is a—with this extraordinary gift, this platform of free expression, comes the responsibility you all talked about. So, if you know something’s illegal, you know you have the responsibility to do something. At what point does this become something where you can’t just correct it; you’ve got to say to the public, this isn’t true. Edgett: Right. And we take swift action on illegal content, illegal activity, on the platform. A good example of this is the text to vote, voter suppression tweets that we’ve turned over to this committee. We saw swift action of the Twitter community on disputing those claims; and Twitter actively tweeted, once it discovered these things were on the platform, to notify our users that this was fake information, that you could not, in fact, vote by tweet, and pointing people to a tool that would allow them to find their nearest polling place. That tweet— Quigley: Is this [unclear] because that was illegal activity, or is this—if something’s just fake, do you think you have an equal responsibility? Edgett: We took that down because it was illegal voter suppression. We are actively working on, how do we balance what is real and fake, and what do we do in the aftermath of something being tweeted and re-tweeted, like you said, and had people even seen it and how do we make sure that they’re seeing other view points and other facts and other news stories. Quigley: Do you have a policy right now where if you know something’s out there that’s not true, of saying so? Edgett: We do not. We have a policy that fosters the debate on the platform. We have a policy that takes down a lot of that content because it comes from automated malicious accounts or spammers. That stuff we’re removing and acting on as quickly as we can. Quigley: And I understand how you’re trying to distinguish that, but the fact is if something’s fake, it doesn’t matter if it’s from a fake account or some bot or something. If it’s just not true and it’s wildly obvious, before it goes viral and gets picked up legitimate, you must feel like you have some responsibility. Edgett: We are—we are deeply concerned about that and figuring out ways we can do it with the right balance. 1:57:39 Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA): RT, Russia Today, on your platform, has 2.2 million subscribers. Fox News, on your platform, has 740,000 subscribers. CNN has 2.3 million subscribers. The Intelligence Community assessment that was made public in January spoke about RT, and it said, “RT conducts strategic messaging for Russian government. It seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the United States.” So my question to you is, why have you not shut down RT on YouTube? Kent Walker: Thank you, Congresswoman. We’ve heard the concerns, and we spoke briefly about this previously. We recognize that there’re many concerned about RT’s slanted perspective. At the same time, this is an issue that goes beyond the Internet to cable, satellite television and beyond. We have carefully reviewed RT’s compliance with our policies. We’ve not found violations of our policies against hate speech and incitement to violence and the like. Speier: It’s a propaganda machine, Mr. Walker. The Intelligence Community—all 17 agencies—says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries. Walker: And we agree that— Speier: I would like for you to take that back to your executives and rethink continuing to have it on your platform. Walker: Yes. We agree that transparency’s important for all of these different sources of information. We are working on additional ways to provide that for all government-funded sources of information, including Al Jazeera and a range of government organizations. 2:05:27 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Is it constitutionally protected to utter an intentionally false statement? Colin Stretch: So, it depends on the context, but there is recent Supreme Court precedent on that. On Facebook— Gowdy: On which side: that it is or is not? Stretch: That it is, in most cases, protected. However, on Facebook, our job is not to decide whether content is true or false. We do recognize that false news is a real challenge. The way in which we’re addressing it is by trying to disrupt the financial incentives of those who are profiting from it, which is where most of it comes from. Most of this, most of the fake-news problem is coming from low-quality websites that are trying to drive traffic on every side of every issue, and by disrupting the financial incentives, we’re able to limit the distribution. We’re also trying to make sure that users do know when a story has been disputed by a neutral third party and alerting users to that fact— I’ll stop. I’ll stop there. Gowdy: Well, I’m smiling only because on the last break a couple of my colleagues and I were wondering who those neutral fact-checkers are, and I really do appreciate your desire to want to have a neutral fact-checker. If you could let me know who those folks are, I’d be really grateful, because people in my line of work might take exception with the neutrality of some of the fact-checkers. So, if I understand you correctly, the authenticity of the speaker is very important; the accuracy of the content, less so. Stretch: That’s how we approach it. That’s exactly right. Gowdy: All right. For the life of me, I do not understand how a republic is served by demonstrably, provably, intentionally false information. And I get it, that you don’t want to be the arbiter of opinion—I don’t want you to be, either—but today’s not Thursday, so if I say it is, I swear I don’t understand how my fellow citizens benefit from me telling them something that is demonstrably false, and I am saying it with the intent to deceive. I just—for the life of me, I don’t get it, but I’m out of time. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism: Facebook, Google and Twitter Executives on Russian Disinformation; October 31, 2017 (Social Media) Witnesses: Colin Stretch - Facebook Vice President and General Counsel Sean Edgett - Twitter Acting General Counsel Richard Salgado - Google Law Enforcement & Information Security Director Clint Watts - Foreign Policy Research Institute, National Security Program Senior Fellow Michael Smith -New America, International Security Fellow 38:25 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): And I gather that all of your companies have moved beyond any notion that your job is only to provide a platform and whatever goes across it is not your affair. Colin Stretch: Senator, our commitment to addressing this problem is unwavering. We take this very seriously and are committed to investing as necessary to prevent this from happening again. Absolutely. Whitehouse: Mr. Edgett? Sean Edgett: Absolutely agree with Mr. Stretch, and this type of activity just creates not only a bad user experience but distrust for the platform, so we are committed to working every single day to get better at solving this problem. Whitehouse: Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: That’s the same for Google. We take this very seriously. We’ve made changes, and we will continue to get better. Whitehouse: And ultimately, you are American companies, and threats to American election security and threats to American peace and order are things that concern you greatly, correct? Stretch: That is certainly correct. Edgett: Agree. Salgado: That’s right. 52:15 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA): Mr. Salgado, why did Google get preferred status to Russia Today, a Russian propaganda arm, on YouTube? Richard Salgado: There was a period of time where Russia Today qualified really because of algorithms to participate in an advertising program that opened up some inventory for them, subjective standards around popularity and some other criteria to be able to participate in that program. Platforms or publishers like RT drop in and out of the program as things change, and that is the case with RT. They dropped out of the program. Feinstein: Well, why didn’t you revert RT’s preferred status after the ICA came out in January 2017? It took you to September of 2017 to do it. Salgado: The removal of RT from the program was actually a result of, as I understand it, is a result of some of the drop in viewership, not as a result of any action otherwise. So, there was nothing about RT or its content that meant that it stayed in or stayed out. 2:03:15 Sen. Mazie Hirono (HI): So, Mr. Stretch, you said that there are 150 people at Facebook just focused on the content of what’s on your platform. How many people do you have, Mr. Edgett, at Twitter to concentrate on the content and ferretting out the kind of content that would be deemed unacceptable, divisive? I realize there are a lot of First Amendment— Sean Edgett: Right. Hirono: —complicated issues, but how many people do you have? Edgett: Well, we harness the power of both technology, algorithms, machine learning to help us, and also a large team of people, that we call our Trust and Safety team and our User Services team, it’s hundreds of people. We’re at a different scale than Facebook and Google, obviously, but we’re dedicating a lot of resource to make sure that we’re looking at user reports about activity on the platform that they think is violent or activity on the platform they think is illegal, and prioritizing that accordingly. Hirono: So, you have fewer people than Facebook. Facebook has 150; you said you have hundreds. Edgett: Yeah, we have hundreds— Hirono: Hundreds. Edgett: —across User Services and Trust and Safety, looking at the issues of content on the platform. Hirono: What about you, Mr. Salgado? Richard Salgado: Google has thousands of people. There’s many different products, and different teams work on them, but internally we’ll have thousands of people working on them. We also get a good deal of leads on content that we need to review for whether it’s appropriate or not that come from outside the company as well. Hirono: You have thousands of people just focused on the content— Salgado: On various types of content. Hirono: —as Mr. Stretch indicated to us that he has at Facebook? You have thousands of people dedicated? Salgado: We have thousands of people dedicated to make sure the content across our—and remember, Google has many different properties within it—but, yes, the answer is we have thousands that look at content that has been reported to us as inappropriate. Hirono: So, in view of that, Mr. Stretch, do you think 150 people is enough people? Stretch: Senator, to be clear, the 150 people I mentioned earlier is people whose full-time job is focused on addressing terrorism content on Facebook. In terms of addressing content on the site generally, we have thousands. And indeed, we have a Community Operations team that we announced earlier this year that we were going to be adding additional thousands to the several thousands that are already working on this problem every day. Hirono: I think it’s pretty clear that this is a whole new sort of use, or misuse, of your platform, and you may have various ways to address terrorist content, but this is a whole other thing. 2:32:10 Clint Watts: Account anonymity in public provides some benefits to society, but social-media companies must work to immediately confirm real humans operate accounts. The negative effects of social bots far outweigh any benefits that come from the anonymous replication of accounts that broadcast high volumes of misinformation. Reasonable limits on the number of posts any account can make during an hour, day, or week should be developed and human-verification systems should be employed by all social-media companies to reduce automated broadcasting. 2:33:07 Clint Watts: Lastly, I admire those social-media companies that have begun working to fact-check news articles in the wake of last year’s elections. These efforts should continue but will be completely inadequate. Stopping false information—the artillery barrage landing on social-media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced. Silence the guns, and the barrage will end. I propose the equivalent of nutrition labels for information outlets, a rating icon for news-producing outlets displayed next to their news links and social-media feeds and search engines. The icon provides users an assessment of the news outlet’s ratio of fact versus fiction and opinion versus reporting. The rating system would be opt-in. It would not infringe on freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Should not be part of the U.S. government, should sit separate from the social-media companies but be utilized by them. Users wanting to consume information from outlets with a poor rating wouldn’t be prohibited. If they are misled about the truth, they have only themselves to blame. 2:44:20 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): Mr. Watts, you’ve been a U.S. Army infantry officer, you’ve been an FBI special agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, you’ve been executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and you’ve been a consultant to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and National Security Branch, so you clearly take American national security very seriously. It is, and has been, your life’s work. So, when you say, ”The Kremlin disinformation playbook,” which we’re talking about here, “will also be adopted by authoritarians, dark political campaigns, and unregulated global corporations who will use this type of social-media manipulation to influence weaker countries; harm less-educated, vulnerable populations; and mire business challengers,” you’re not just talking about the Russian election-manipulation operation getting worse and having to be contained. You’re talking about it as if it’s a technology that other bad actors can adopt and have it metastasized entirely into new fields of dissimulation, propaganda, and so forth. Clint Watts: Yes. Whitehouse: Correct? Watts: Everybody will duplicate this if they don’t believe in the rule of law, if they want to destroy democracies from the inside out. Anyone with enough resources and time and effort, if they put it against us, they can duplicate this. I could duplicate it if I chose to. Whitehouse: So, if we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get exponentially worse. Watts: Yes. And I think the one thing that we should recognize is even in the U.S. political context, if we don’t put some sort of regulation around it, if bodies like this don’t decide how we want American politics to work, everybody will be incentivized to use this same system against their political opponents, and if you don’t, you will lose. 2:51:35 Sen. John Kennedy (LA): The First Amendment implications of all of this concern me as well. I mean, what’s fake news? What do you think fake news is? Clint Watts: Fake news, over the years since I’ve been involved and talking about this, is any news the other side doesn’t like, doesn’t matter what side it is. Kennedy: That’s right. Michael Smith: Senator, if I may. I’m teaching undergrads a course at Georgia State University this semester titled Media, Culture, and Society; and we’re about to start classes focused on fake news later this week. I would submit that fake news might best be defined as deliberate mis- or disinformation, which is tailored or engineered to achieve a particular outcome in the way of behaviors, to persuade perceptions in a manner that lead to behaviors such as perhaps a vote for or against somebody. Kennedy: Well, that’s a good definition, but I’ll end on this: in whose opinion? Watts: But I think there are parameters that we could come around. I mean, reporting versus opinion is a key point of it. I think also in terms of fact versus fiction, I’ve actually set up rating systems on foreign media outlets before the U.S. Government’s paid me to do that, you know, in the Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns. House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee: FCC Oversight; October 25, 2017 Witnesses: Ajit Pai: FCC Chairman 14:00 Rep. Greg Walden: Ultimately, Congress is the appropriate forum to settle the net neutrality debate. I think you hear a little of that passion here on both sides. And I’ve been continuing my efforts to negotiate a compromise. Although my staff continues to engage in the various affected parties in productive discussions toward that end, my colleagues in the minority have, unfortunately, seemed largely uninterested at this point. Love to see that change, by the way. Door remains open. We’re willing and able to codify net neutrality protections and establish a federal framework in statute for providing certainty to all participants in the Internet ecosystem. I don’t think we need Title II to do that. 1:31:45 Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH): Voice-activated virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming an increasingly popular consumer gateway to the Internet. Some day soon they might even become consumer-preferred interface with the Internet, leaving the age of the desktop Google Search behind. You get Yelp results in Siri, OpenTable in Google, TuneIn radio from Alexa. These interactions are occurring through private partnerships among these companies to have their apps interact. However, it creates a situation where, by definition, the consumers’ access to other Internet content is limited or completely blocked. It’s the question of, who answers Siri’s question when you ask Siri something? Chairman Pai, can the FCC do anything about this? Ajit Pai: Congressman, under our current Internet regulations, we cannot. Those do not apply to edge providers. 1:36:12 Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA): Will you commit to us that you’ll apply or consider applying broadcast-transparency requirements to state-sponsored media outlets like RT? And if not, why not? Ajit Pai: Congresswoman, thank you for the question. As I under— Eshoo: Uh-huh, you’re welcome. Pai: As I understand the law— Eshoo: Uh-huh, mm-hmm. Pai: —there is no jurisdictional hook at this point, no transfer of a license, for example, that allows the FCC to a certain jurisdiction. Eshoo: But what about those that have a license and carry them? Do you have—doesn’t the FCC have any say so in that, or is this, as the Intelligence Community said, that they are a principle international propaganda outlet? So are they just going to operate in the United States no matter what? Pai: Congresswoman, again, under the Communications Act and the Constitution, the First Amendment, we do not have currently a jurisdictional hook for taking and doing an investigation of that kind. If you’re privy to, obviously, classified or unclassified information that suggests that there might be another agency that has, obviously, a direct interest in the issue—and we’re, obviously, happy to work with them—but at the current time, as I’ve been advised, neither under the First Amendment nor under the Communications Act do we have the ability to— Eshoo: Well, First Amendment applies to free speech in our country. It doesn’t mean that the Kremlin can distribute propaganda in our country through our airwaves. I just—I don’t know if you’re looking hard enough. 1:40:05 Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY): In 2013, and I was one of the households affected by this, there was a carriage dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable. And CBS blocked Time Warner Cable Internet customers from viewing its shows online through a CBS.com website. So I couldn’t get any of CBS or SHOWTIME or any of that on TV. If you went to the website, because Time Warner Cable was our cable provider and Internet service provider, you couldn’t go to CBS.com—it was blocked. Or SHOWTIME to watch any of the shows that was coming out. And that was when some new ones were coming out that August, so we were trying to find that. But some members of Congress said, bring this up, and I think Chairwoman Clyburn was acting chairwoman at the time and said that she didn’t believe the agency had the jurisdiction to intervene in this situation. And Chairman Pai, do you think if it happened now, do you think the FCC would have the opportunity to intervene in a similar case? Ajit Pai: Congressman, I think the legal authorities have not changed to the extent that the FCC gets a complaint that a party is acting in bad faith in the context of retransmission dispute, then we would be able to adjudicate it. But absence to such a complaint or additional authority from Congress, we couldn’t take further action. Guthrie: But currently the Title II, open Internet, is still in effect. Is that—how would that affect it? Pai: Oh, currently, yes. Just to be clear, I should have added was well then, our Internet regulations would not apply to that kind of content to the extent you’re talking about, the blocking of online distribution of [unclear]. Guthrie: Because it only applies to the service provider, not to the content provider? Pai: That is correct, sir. Federal Communications Commission: Open Internet Rules; February 26, 2015 (Open Internet Rules) Witnesses: Agit Pai: FCC Commissioner 38:05 Ajit Pai: For 20 years, there has been a bipartisan consensus in favor of a free and open Internet. A Democratic president and Republican Congress enshrined in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the principle that the Internet should be a vibrant and competitive free market “unfettered by federal and state regulation.” And dating back to the Clinton administration, every FCC chairman—Republican and Democrat—has let the Internet grow free from utility-style regulation. The results speak for themselves. But today the FCC abandons those policies. It reclassifies broadband Internet access service as a Title II telecommunications service. It seizes unilateral authority to regulate Internet conduct to direct where Internet service providers, or ISPs, make their investments and to determine what service plans will be available to the American public. This is not only a radical departure from the bipartisan market-oriented policies that have serviced so well over the past two decades, it is also an about-face from the proposals the FCC itself made just last May. So why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? Is it because we now have evidence that the Internet is broken? No. We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason only: President Obama told us to do so. Barack Obama: I’m asking the FCC to reclassify Internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act. Pai: On November 10, President Obama asked the FCC to implement his plan for regulating the Internet, one that favors government regulation over marketplace competition. As has been widely reported in the press, the FCC has been scrambling ever since to figure out a way to do just that. The courts will ultimately decide this order’s fate. Litigants are already lawyering up to seek a judicial review of these new rules. And given this order’s many glaring legal flaws, they’ll have plenty of fodder. 40:46 Ajit Pai: This order imposes intrusive government regulations that won’t work, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, using legal authority the FCC doesn’t have. Accordingly, I dissent. 1:03:15 Ajit Pai: And I’m optimistic that we will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan consensus that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future commission, but I do believe its days are numbered. Telecommunications Bill Signing: February 8, 1996 (Bill Signing) 4:59 Vice President Al Gore: I firmly believe that the proper role of government in the development of the information superhighway is to promote and achieve at every stage of growth, at every level of operation, at every scale, the public interest values of democracy, education, and economic and social well-being for all of our citizens. If we do not see to it that every project, every network, every system addresses the public interest at the beginning, then when will it be addressed? How can we expect the final organism to express these values if they are not included in its DNA, so to speak, at the beginning? For that reason, in 1993, on behalf of the president, I presented five principles that the Clinton administration would seek in any telecommunication reform legislation: private investment, competition, universal service, open access, and flexible regulations. Telecommunications Act Conference: December 12, 1995 (Conference) 22:15 Rep. Rick Boucher: In the very near future, most homes are going to have two broadband wires that will offer the combination of telephone service and cable TV service. One of those will have started as a telephone wire; the other will have started as a cable television wire. The programming that is affiliated with the owners of those wires obviously is going to be available to consumers in the homes, but other programmers may very well be denied access. And if access to other programming is denied, consumers will be deprived of video offerings to which they should be entitled. Telecommunications Act Conference: December 6, 1995 (Conference) 27:14 Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL): No one has a right to give pornography to children. While we have not previously criminalized this area on the federal level, it’s necessary to do so now. This is because of the advent of the Internet, which enables someone in one location to instantly send or make available pornography to children in every city in America. Children don’t have the right to buy pornography in any store in America, yet some would argue there’s a right to give it to them free, delivered to their home by computer. Telecommunications Act Conference: Telecommunications Reform Act of 1995; October 25, 1995 8:58 Sen. John McCain: I believe the Senate bill in its present form is far too regulatory. Any bill that gives 80 new tasks to the Federal Communications Commission, in my view, does not meet the standard that we have set for ourselves of trying to allow everyone to compete in a deregulated—in an environment that is changing so quickly that none of us predicted five years ago that it would look like it is today. And today we have no idea what the industry will look like in five years. 32:00 Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN): One thing that does please me is when I think about one of the last renaissance of electricity, electricity goes to the big cities and leaves out the rural areas, and then we have to come up with the REMCs. When we move America to the World Wide Web, though, we’re not allowing cherry-picking and to move to the great resources in the big cities, but the rural areas will be included in the World Wide Web. And so I congratulate both of you to making sure that that happens, that some of the strength of this country lies in the heart of America, and I think that’s pretty exciting. House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance: Telecommunications Act Part 1; May 11, 1995 1:25:36 Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO): Unlike the case for telephone service, every American household has access to at least one, and soon many more, competitive video providers today. The case simply has not yet been made that the federal government has a duty to do anything other than provide for access to alternative in the case of a purely entertainment service like the upper tier of cable. We have provided that access. We will expand that access in this bill. It is time we focus on the real issues addressed by 1555, the building of advanced broadband networks and the benefits that it will bring to all Americans. House Energy & Commerce Committee: Cable Television Deregulation; February 2, 1994 Witnesses: Bill Reddersen - Bell South Corporation Senior Vice President Jeffery Chester - Center for Media Education Executive Director Edward Reilly - President of McGraw-HIll Broadcasting 7:27 Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): As telephone companies are able to offer cable TV service inside their telephone-service areas, they’ll have the financial incentive to deploy the broadband technology that will facilitate the simultaneous transport of voice and cable TV service and data messages, building out the infrastructure, creating the last mile of the information highway, that distance from the telephone company’s central office into the premises of the user homes and businesses throughout the nation. 24:36 Bill Reddersen: It is our goal to have you pass legislation this year that enables us to deploy a second broadband network that will compete effectively with cable and bring consumers new and innovative educational healthcare information and entertainment services. 25:12 Bill Reddersen: However, unless you eliminate the competitive advantages this bill confers upon cable companies, our industry will not be able to compete effectively against companies that already have a dominant, if not monopoly, position in programming markets, nor will the bill encourage telephone companies to make or continue the substantial investments required for widespread development of broadband networks. Cable companies are formidable competitors and do not need protection. Cable is a 21-billion-dollar-a-year-gross business, passing over 90% of U.S. homes. According to a recent survey, only 53 out of over 10,000 cable systems compete against a second cable operator. Cable has vertically integrated and diversified into multi-billion-dollar programming and communications businesses. Cable companies and the emerging cable telco alliances clearly do not need protection from telephone companies that currently have no video programming market share, virtually no broadband facilities to the home, and little or no operational experience in the video marketplace. 37:55 Jeffrey Chester: While we share the goal of this committee that every community be served by at least two wires, there are no guarantees that this will be achieved in the near future, even with the proposed legislation. We are also troubled by the unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions taking place in the media industries. Serious concerns are raised by the emergence of new media giants controlling regional Bell operating companies, cable systems, TV and film studios, newspapers, broadcasting properties, and information service providers. Without federal intervention, control of the nation’s media system will be in the hands of fewer and less-accountable companies, possessing even more concentrated power. 40:45 Bill Reddersen: Just as we have established private librar—public libraries—and public highways, we need to create public arenas in the electronic commons in the media landscape. A vibrant telecommunication civic sector will be an essential counterbalance to the commercial forces that will dominate the information superhighway. 2:24:38 Bill Reddersen: The common carrier requirements of this legislation are essentially, if executed the way they have in the telephone industry, the second model that you articulated, and that is that if additional capacity was required and someone shows up, we build. Okay? That is the fundamental premise underlying common carrier regulation. 2:30:04 Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH): Does it really matter if BellSouth builds the wire, the limitless wire, or the cable industry builds the limitless wire if indeed it is essentially a limitless technology that is open to everyone who wants to sell his or her product, including Mr. Reilly, on that particular technology? If you have the common carrier status and you have the ability to deliver your programming, is it really relevant whether BellSouth owns the wire or Mr. Angstrom owns the wire, and if it is indeed relevant, why is it relevant, Mr. Reilly? Edward Reilly: Well, it’s relevant in any instance where the company that owns the wire is also engaged in the programming business at all. If someone is prepared to build a wire and agree that they would never want to be in the programming business, and that we were given very strong safeguards— Oxley: Why is that a problem? Reilly: Well, because we end up inevitably competing with our programming— Oxley: Of course you do. Reilly: —against someone who owns both the wire and the programming content that goes on that wire. Reilly: Why is it relevant, though, if BellSouth owns the wire and you’ve got limitless access and limitless capacity, why does it make any difference that the people who supposedly own the wire are competing against you? They’re competing head to head. You are simply paying the same shelf space for your product as the owner of the product that’s providing that kind of service. Oxley: Well, we have—we believe that there is ample opportunity in that type of environment for a number of anti-competitive activities that would certainly damage our ability to try and be an equal player. Where we get positioned on the wire, what comes up when the menu first comes up, how the billing is organized—there’s a whole host of issues that go along with owning the wire and setting up the infrastructure that can create a significant competitive advantage to someone who chooses to use that for their own program service. 2:38:47 Rep. Billy Tauzin (D-LA): I think the key for us here is to guarantee that there are comparable providers of services and how they get it to us, as long as it’s comparable and we have choice and all people have access to it. If we guarantee that kind of policy for America, we don’t much have to worry about the risk. Consumers take over from there as long as we guarantee, if we do have common carriage on a line, that the owner of the line can’t discriminate; can’t play games with the competitors who own that line; that you can’t play bottleneck games, as publishers are complaining about in the other bill we’re going to debate pretty soon on MMJ; that, in fact, there’s fairness on the playing field. Here’s a question for you in regard to that fairness: If the telephone companies or the utility companies can in fact do what you can’t do—produce their own programs and send them over those lines, even if we restrict them in the number of channels they can use, which I really have a problem with, as Mr. Boucher does—are we going to make sure that the same provisions of program access apply to those producers of programs that we’ve applied to the cable producers? You raised the issue in your testimony. You talked about the problems we had in cable where they own both the software and the hardware—in essence, the content and the conduit—and the problems consumers had as a result of that. Are we going to require the cable companies make 75% of their channels available to competitors? Are we going to require that the utility companies, when they build lines, fiber optic lines, are going to be similarly required to make access available to their competitors? If we’re talking about a real competitive world here, are we going to build a world where some have obligations others don’t have? Some must carry and some don’t? Some must give access to their programs to competitors, as cable is now required to do because of the bill we successfully passed over the president’s veto last year, and over cable’s objection? Are we going to make that same requirement now available—enforced upon other competitors who build wires, or who build some other systems, who decide to deliver it under some particle-beam technology we haven’t dreamed of yet, or the satellite delivery systems that are coming into play? Are we going to create some real equality in this competition, that’s going to give consumers comparable choices? That’s the key word to me—comparable choices. Are we going to do that? Or are we going to dictate the technology, confine you to so many channels, not require you to carry what others have to carry, put requirements on one competitor—the cable company can get on the telephone company’s lines, but the telephone company can’t get on the cable system’s line? Come on. It seems to me if we’re going to build policy that gets consumers real, comparable choices out there, we have to answer all those questions. Video: What the world looks like without net neutrality Video: Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tongight with John Oliver Special Thanks! To Adam Hettler for performing The Most Dangerous time of the Year! See more of Adam here! Background music for The Most Dangerous Time of the Year. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)