I'm not a big fan of the term "cyberterrorism" -- it's been defined so broadly as to be basically meaningless. But today, we do now have confirmation that multiple journalist sites that have been covering the RNC police actions and documenting massive police oppression are today being attacked by a distributed denial of service attack. Thus far, I've heard that Daily Kos, Fire Dog Lake, [and] Eschaton, and Free Press [Free Press was just super-slow due to the huge number of people accessing their info on police malfeasance -- folks there reported 100,000 site visits since this morning, about ten times normal] have all been attacked.

In related news, Amy Goodman has indeed been arrested -- at least 283 other people have been as well. Many of those arrested were simply witnessing events or covering events for various news outlets.

[UPDATE01]Here is video of Amy Goodman's arrest:

Democracy Now released a statement condemning the arrests of Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar -- it is available here.

[UPDATE02]I heard from a few folks who stated that journalists were not being specifically targeted by the police. Below is a video of the I-Witness journalists house raid documenting undeniably that they are:

The past 24 hours in the Twin Cities have been remarkably chaotic, yet the mainstream media isn't covering the real story. Scores of people have been arrested, hundred (if not thousands) shot at by police wielding tear gas, pepper spray, etc. Medics and journalists have been attacked by the police (yes, the same journalists who are not covering the event). There have been numerous confirmed reports of individuals being snatched off the streets. Mass transit has been suspended and protests that have permits disrupted.

Amazingly, this has all being going on with unprecedented documentation. Legal observers (i.e., the lawyers who have gone to Twin Cities to ensure that people's first and fourth amendment rights are respected) have themselves been both harassed and arrested by the police. And photographic, audio, and video of many of the most egregious events has been been uploaded online within hours (and sometimes minutes and/or live) of their happening.

There have now been close to 10 different raids at locations around the city (targeting everything from independent media to Food Not Bombs). You can find out more at:

• http://tc.indymedia.org -- updates and in-depth reporting from independent media
• http://twitter.com/coldsnaplegal -- live legal updates from legal observers reporting in from protests throughout Twin Cities
• http://theuptake.org -- live video uploads from journalists located throughout the Twin Cities

[UPDATE01]It's now being reported that police arrested journalist Amy Goodman while she was covering the RNC for her show, "Democracy Now." The National Guard is also being mobilized and moving into the Twin Cities.

[UPDATE02]From Cold Snap Legal:

As of 10:30pm today, the arrest tally from Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was: 284 total; 130 felonies; 51 gross misdemeanors; 103 misdemeanors. The jail is seemingly severely backed up and not everyone has been booked or processed, so these numbers clearly don’t represent the total arrestee count for the day. These numbers also do not necessarily include the numbers of arrestees whose identifications have not been verified.

In regards to the arrestees from this weekend’s raids, five of them are still being held at Ramsey County Jail on probable cause, which means that they might not be able to see a judge until Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the arrestees was released yesterday evening.

Though some people have been cited and released, the majority are still being held in jail. We’ve gotten many reports that people are not getting proper medical attention, are being refused their medication, and/or have been separated from the rest of the group.

Also, there are also many felony charges, which allow the state to hold the protesters for a longer period of time. Felony charges have historically been used as scare tactics against activists, and there is much less precedent for them to hold up in court. More often, these bogus charges are simply used to keep protesters off the streets and as a way to oppress and silence people.

The Twin Cities Independent Media Center was just raided by the police and shut down. Having worked extensively with TC Indymedia folks for years, I know first-hand that they are avid journalists who have a multi-year history of covering important local stories. Ongoing coverage is available at: http://twincities.indymedia.org

Details are still coming in, but the official line appears to be that they're shutting the place down for building code violations. The fact that they raided the space, handcuffed people, photographed people and took down information from their IDs, and confiscated hard drives and laptops seems to contradict this official reasoning. It looks like the police have also raided (as of two hours ago) the Food Not Bombs house (a group of vegans that hands out food and opposes war) and a second house (just an few minutes ago).

This is going on right now. This is clearly a very wide-reaching and well-orchestrated police action to shut down independent media coverage and disrupt local organizing efforts ahead of the RNC. First Amendment be damned.

Please help spread the word.

[UPDATE01]A third private residence was just raided by the police.

[UPDATE023]Another location raided by police bringing the total to 45:

• 2301 23rd Ave South (home to Minneapolis chapter of Food Not Bombs)
• 3240 17th Ave South
• 3500 Harriet Ave South
• 627 Smith Avenue (RNC Convergence Space)
• 951 Iglehart

[UPDATE04]Just when you thought it couldn't get more big brotherly, legal observers have now confirmed that "snatch squads" in unmarked cars have been grabbing people off the streets in the Twin Cities. Lawyers on the scene at 3240 17th Ave are also reporting that the city says the house "will stay boarded up unless code violation is fixed by 6pm" -- the code violations being that the doors were kicked in by police during their raid today. One of the people detained by police during their 951 Iglehart raid is a reporter for "Democracy Now!" -- ironically, I had e-mailed Amy Goodman earlier today with a heads-up about what was happening in the Twin Cities.

--Sascha

I recently wrote a piece for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) discussing the importance of White Space Devices and remaining a critical consumer of the so-called "information" being fed to them by Shure and the NAB. Due to space constraints, I did have to cut one of my favorite (though a bit wonky) parts from the article. I've included the original text below the article -- it illustrates how hypocritical and duplicitous Shure and the NAB have been in their dealings with cultural organizations.

From www.namac.org/node/5051:

White Space Devices and the Battle over Innovation: Public Access vs. Industry Control of the Airwaves

by Sascha D. Meinrath

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of a “White Space Device.” And yet, white space devices have the potential to be one of the most revolutionary new technologies to come along in the past twenty years. White space devices (WSDs) take advantage of wireless innovations and advances in computer processing power and automatically detect unoccupied TV frequencies—allowing the public to reuse spectrum that would otherwise go to waste, for everything from home networking to broadband connectivity. For consumers, they’re very similar to (and would be integrated within) the wireless devices we use today—such as wireless-equipped laptop computers, cell phones, PDAs, next-generation video game systems, and community media broadcast networks. White space devices will have a greater positive impact than wi-fi and spur far more innovation than mobile phones. They will revolutionize communications by spurring competition over new products, services, and applications.

And yet, the trade press and inside-the-Beltway media have been inundated by a massive, multi-million dollar PR campaign (including TV ads, websites, and full-page print ads), and Congressional offices have been swarmed by hundreds of lobbyists, all claiming that white space devices will destroy television broadcasting and make wireless microphones inoperable.

Why then has a large and growing coalition of public interest and consumer groups (including the Consumer Federation of America; Consumers’ Union, who publish Consumer Reports; EDUCAUSE, which represents institutions of higher learning; Common Cause; the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which advocates for “media and telecommunications policies that benefit the Latino community”; New America Foundation; Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ; Prometheus Radio Project; and US PIRG) teamed up with a growing number of high-tech companies (including Google, Dell, HP, Motorola, and Microsoft) to support white space devices? If consumers and businesses that are innovating new technologies are fighting for these devices, who’s funding the lobbying and PR against them? And what does this all have to do with the arts and cultural community?

I first joined NAMAC over half a decade ago and have been actively organizing community media and the arts for quite some time. I co-founded the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) in 2000, created the UCIMC’s all-ages arts and performance venue in 2002, took part in the “Community Engagement Through Media” salon that NAMAC held in 2004, and have coordinated countless community media and arts projects over the years. I mention this because when I talk about the enormous benefits that white space devices hold for cultural venues, I do so as someone who wants to see them available both for use by the general media-and-arts community and by the organizations and projects that I help lead.

Recently, I have read talking points created specifically to mislead arts and cultural organizations and so-called “facts sheets” that no one wants to put their name behind because they’re so completely ridiculous and full of misinformation. As a practitioner, I felt it was important to provide information and resources to counter the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that is being manufactured by the opponents of white space devices. Public interest groups like the New America Foundation may not have the PR funding and lobbying power of the National Association of Broadcasters or microphone manufacturers Shure Incorporated, but we do have venues like this one to get the truth out about what white space devices are and the benefits they provide to arts and cultural organizations.

So what are “white spaces”? And why do some companies want to stop white space devices?

White spaces are vacant frequencies between occupied (licensed) broadcast channels or broadcast auxiliary services like wireless microphones. If you’ve ever used an old TV, the unoccupied channels that just show “snow” are the white spaces. After the completion of the DTV transition in February 2009, the amount of white space in most of the nation’s 210 local TV markets will greatly exceed the amount of occupied spectrum, even in most major cities. In essence, white spaces are an enormous, underutilized resource that the media and arts community (along with the rest of the general public) could be using for next-generation digital media and low-cost communications. The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition wants to open up access to these unoccupied bands for everyone by allowing wireless devices certified by the FCC to operate on vacant frequencies—in much the same way that tens of millions of wi-fi devices are in use today in laptop computers.

Opponents of WSDs have launched a misinformation campaign in an attempt to prevent more widespread access to the TV bands. While the broadcast industry lobby has attempted to convince newcomers to the discussion that WSDs cannot work, these WSD detractors have systematically ignored data showing that even the pre-prototype WSDs being tested by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology work exceptionally well. What is particularly ironic is that unlicensed wireless microphones are already in use throughout the United States—these devices already use unused TV bands, and have done so for years; yet the same companies that manufacture and use wireless microphones are the ones saying that other devices won’t work.

Upon closer examination, opponents of white space devices have a remarkably simple problem—white space devices will make communications far more distributed and hardware far cheaper. For the National Association of Broadcasters, it means that local communities will be able to broadcast video and audio for free—which means competition and diversity on the airwaves. For Shure Incorporated, it means that a whole new generation of wireless microphones—white space device wireless microphones—will be entering the market, dramatically increasing competition and lowering the costs of this hardware.

If you look at the sides in the battle over white space devices, the only opponents of white space devices are the corporations that want to keep their own lock on this market. These companies want to ensure that arts and cultural organizations cannot build their own infrastructures, don’t have access to alternative distribution networks, and are not able to buy equipment from (lower-cost) competitors. Knowing that these battle lines were a losing proposition, opponents of white space devices have hired PR experts to “educate” arts and community organizations and win them over to their side.

Already, we’ve seen several very public marketing campaigns where several arts and cultural groups are made the public face of opponents to white space devices (in ads paid for by NAB and Shure). This is particularly egregious since these organizations are basically fighting against the best interests of the general public and that of their sister organizations. Recently, Country Music Television, the County Music Association, the Grand Ole Opry, and Viacom’s MTV Networks demanded that the FCC stop the white space proceedings (see: http://tinyurl.com/3hfouf). As this story was going to press, the Broadway League filed a petition with the FCC where they claimed that WSDs will “effectively cripple…Broadway.” According to sources familiar with the proceedings, the Broadway League comments were written in consultation with a paid lobbyist for Shure. Cultural organizations like the ones that recently petitioned the FCC have to be particularly careful not to become the mouthpieces for corporate lobbyists—particularly when those interests actually run counter to the best interests of the larger arts community.

What are the public benefits of white space devices?

TV frequencies are a valuable data networking tool for the same reasons they are desirable for television broadcasts—they easily penetrate obstacles such as buildings and trees and can reach longer distances than the higher frequencies used by wi-fi devices. Every region in America has a large quantity of unoccupied TV white space. Although the particular empty channels vary in each local market, in most parts of the nation a majority of local TV frequencies are not being used, but could be, to create everything from affordable broadband access to local media distribution. Currently, the vast majority of community and municipal wireless networks—commercial, municipal and community nonprofits, public-private partnerships, etc.—use unlicensed spectrum to transmit data. While existing use of unlicensed spectrum has driven a remarkable amount of innovation, opening more low-frequency spectrum for WSDs is the “rocket fuel” needed to facilitate and scale-up home, business, and regional networks. Below are just some of the benefits of white space devices:

Enhanced Local Coverage and Communications
Local communities could use WSDs to enable mobile video and audio services and citizen journalism. These services would provide information of special interest to the local residents (for example, a town hall or PTA meeting), coverage of local sporting events (for example, the high school football game), and new methods for local advertisers to reach customers in a more targeted and valued manner. As WSD technologies are integrated into next-generation wireless microphones and other media equipment, these systems will be substantially less prone to interference than today’s “dumb” equipment (which are often incapable of sensing whether other devices are transmitting on the channel they intend to use). In the same way that digital media equipment has spurred a new wave of consumer-generated media, the ad-hoc and distributed information dissemination networks that WSDs make possible will encourage the sharing of local content and user-generated content.

Enterprise Networking
From a base of essentially zero in 2000, an estimated 60% of U.S. corporations now provide some type of wireless networking using unlicensed spectrum last year. On May 25, 2006, in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, Roger Cochetti, federal policy director of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), stated that reallocating the TV white spaces for unlicensed use “will be used by small business to improve their productivity, not least of which will be access to new wireless broadband services.”

Rural Broadband Deployment
The highly favorable propagation characteristics of the TV broadcast spectrum allow for wireless broadband deployment with greater range of operation at lower power levels. Thus, the TV white spaces could be used to provide better broadband service in less densely populated areas or as a first broadband service in many underserved areas, including rural and other remote areas. Today more than 3,000 wireless ISPs and rural telephone cooperatives already rely on the current “junk” bands of unlicensed spectrum to provide broadband to remote customers, mostly in rural areas. Which is why the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association (WISPA) and the National Telecom Cooperative Association (NCTA) have been advocates of opening the TV white spaces for unlicensed access.

Education and Enterprise Video Conferencing
The TV white spaces could be used to give local high schools and middle schools the same multimedia capabilities available to major university campuses: mobile, high-speed Internet access for every student and teacher with a laptop or portable wireless device. WSDs also can be used to increase the reliability and decrease the cost of video conferencing on college and commercial campuses. Such video conferencing could help enable distance learning for students in remote locations for whom traditional classroom-based learning is impractical. This is why EDUCAUSE, which represents the nation’s colleges and universities on technology issues, is a leading advocate for white space devices.

Personal Consumer Applications
WSDs could be used to provide new services and applications to consumers by taking advantage of the improved signal reliability, capacity, and range of the TV broadcast spectrum. Wireless local area networks using low power and battery-operated devices could enable new communications technologies that bring safety, convenience, and comfort to consumers in their homes. This is why major consumer groups like the Consumers Federation of America and the Consumers Union support opening the TV spectrum to white space devices.


The take-home message

The FCC is completing a critical phase of the process needed to bring WSDs to consumers. Extensive feasibility testing has been conducted and extensively documented, and this testing has demonstrated that WSDs can and do work. A new round of feasibility testing is currently underway and will add further support for the viability of WSD technologies. The next step will be for the FCC to issue the necessary technical specifications for WSDs based upon the empirical data collected during feasibility testing and regulatory precedent. The FCC will then be able to certify consumer devices, ensuring that those devices meet required technical standards. Only after all three phases of this process are completed will consumer WSDs be made available to the general public.

Taken together, this multi-step process will ensure that WSDs co-exist with current license holders without causing harmful interference, and that manufacturers and implementers will have the flexibility to develop new features and innovative uses for WSDs. Public interest groups have been vocal in their support of rigorous testing and also have remained committed to the end goal of certifying useful new wireless technologies that operate within TV bands without causing harmful interference to licensed users.

For arts and cultural organizations, this process (and white space devices generally), have the potential to add much needed tools to help us conduct our work. New, less-expensive video and audio communications equipment, wireless broadband services, and a host of social networking and geo-locational applications are just around the corner.

For those who would like to find out more about the issue of white space devices (WSDs):
• Check out the Wireless Innovation Alliance
• Read the policy backgrounder on WSDs.
• Or contact Sascha Meinrath directly at the New America Foundation—especially if your organization would like to join the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition or the Wireless Innovation Alliance.

 

NOTES

(1) The share of the DTV band (channels 2 to 51) that will be vacant after the February 2009 turnoff of analog transmission ranges from 30% in the most congested, coastal markets (e.g., Trenton, NJ) to 80% or more in small-town and rural markets (e.g., Fargo, ND). For more information and a survey mapping available white space in a representative number of TV markets, see Measuring the TV “White Space” Available for Unlicensed Wireless Broadband, New America Foundation and Free Press, January 2006.

(2) Pages 1-2 of comments filed with the FCC in proceeding 04-186, 06/18/08 and signed by The Broadway League, Nederlander Producing Company of America, Jujamcyn Theaters, 321 Management, NAMCO, The Shubert Organization, White Dog Productions, Ostar Theatricals, Aged in Wood, Circle in the Square Theatre, Iron Mountain Productions, Scorpio Entertainment, Manhattan Theater Club, Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, Alan Wasser Associates, Adam Epstein Company, Scorpio Entertainment, Iron Mountain Productions, Richmark Entertainment of Los Angeles, Berlind Productions, Helen Hayes Theatre, Fox Associates, Dodger Theatricals, The Producing Office, Broadway Across America, Vienna Waits Productions, Jeffrey Richards Associates, Tonka Productions, Marc Platt Productions, and Richard Climan.

(3) Telecommunications Industry Association, 2006 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast, p. 188. For a larger estimate, see In-Stat, “In-Depth Analysis: Wireless Data in the Enterprise: The Hockey Stick Arrives,” December 2006. See also ABI Research, “Enterprise IP Telephony,” 2006.

(4) CompTIA’s 20,000 members are predominantly among the nation’s 32,000 value-added resellers, a $43 billion industry that deploys IT networks for small- to medium-sized businesses and professional offices across the country.

(5) Roger J. Cochetti, CompTIA Testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, May 25, 2006.

---

SASCHA MEINRATH is research director of the New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program and a board member and co-founder of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Foundation. He blogs regularly at www.publicponderings.com.

Here's the original text from the end of the section, "So what are 'white spaces'? And why do some companies want to stop white space devices?":

Already, we've seen several very public marketing campaigns where several arts and cultural groups are made the public face of opponents to white space devices (in ads paid for by NAB and Shure). This is particularly egregious since these organizations are basically fighting against the best interests of the general public and that of their sister organizations. Recently, Country Music Television, the County Music Association, the Grand Ole' Opry, and Viacoms' MTV Networks demanded that the FCC stop the white space proceedings (see: http://tinyurl.com/3hfouf); and, as this story was going to press, the Broadway League filed a petition with the FCC where they claimed:
Granting immediate national access [by white space devices] will effectively cripple dozens of long standing industries, including Broadway...Google's plan, essentially, recommends the use of (1) beacons, which would be purchased by current white space users to jam local transmissions in the white space spectrum, (2) a signal “safe harbor,” granting incumbent users exclusive use to channels 36-38, and (3) use of spectrum sensing technology. As has been noted in other recent filings, this proposal is patently flawed and essentially ineffective.

According to sources familiar with the proceedings, the Broadway League comments were written in consultation with a paid lobbyist for Shure Microphone. Unfortunately, they position arts and cultural groups as a lunatic fringe, allowing Shure and the NAB to hide behind the public face of these organizations. In fact, Shure is using arts organizations as a facade to fight for a position that it does not hold itself. As Shure's own filing with the FCC states:

The introduction of new unlicensed devices in the television broadcast bands must be done carefully to avoid causing interference problems on a grand scale. In these comments, we have recommended a three-part solution for mitigating interference to wireless microphones:
• Designate 6 “exempt” TV channels in each television market, in which unlicensed devices would not operate.
• Use of cognitive “spectrum sensing” techniques by unlicensed devices to prevent transmission in TV channels that are occupied by incumbent users, including television broadcasting stations, wireless microphones, and wireless audio systems.
• Use of an RF “smart beacon” transceiver to enhance the interference prevention capabilities of spectrum sensing at greater distances, as described above.

In essence, Shure made the exact same proposal several years ago that engineers from numerous other technology companies have supported more recently. Cultural organizations like the ones that recently petitioned the FCC have to be particularly careful not to become the mouth pieces for corporate lobbyists – particularly when those interests actually run counter to the best interests of the larger arts community. The fact that Shure itself knows that the position that the Broadway League and its allies took was at odds with their own public filing makes this example particularly egregious.

The first quote is from pages 1-2 of comments filed with the FCC in proceeding 04-186, 06/18/08 and signed by The Broadway League, Nederlander Producing Company of America, Jujamcym Theaters, 321 Management, NAMCO, The Shubert Organization, White Dog Productions, Ostar Theatricals, Aged in Wood, Circle in the Square Theatre, Iron Mountain Productions, Scorpio Entertainment, Manhattan Theater Club, Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, Alan Wasser Associates, Adam Epstein Company, Scorpio Entertainment, Iron Mountain Productions, Richmark Entertainment of Los Angeles, Berlind Productions, Helen Hayes Theatre, Fox Associates, Dodger Theatricals, The Producting Office, Broadway Across America, Vienna Waits Productions, Jeffrey Richards Associates, Tonka Productions, Marc Platt Productions, and Richard Climan. The second quote is from pages 50-51 of comments filed by Shure Incorporated, 12/01/04.

The Washington Post just ran an article about Shared Spectrum, a company that's been developing white space devices for many years for DARPA. I've been following Shared Spectrum's work for awhile now -- the most interesting element about it is that they're already doing what the National Association of Broadcasters says isn't possible. Here's more from the Post:

An engineer, Mark A. McHenry litters his speech with dizzying terms like gigahertz and cognitive radio. But on one topic in the national news he is plain-spoken: the claim by the broadcast networks, the NBCs and CBSs of the world, that a new technology to provide Internet service over the air will interfere with TV viewing.

"They're wrong," says McHenry, the chief executive of Shared Spectrum, a Vienna technology company.

The Federal Communications Commission is weighing a proposal that would allow companies to share airwaves. McHenry said his eight-year-old, 30-person firm has already received $30 million from the Defense Department to develop the concept. The broadcasters' position is "not what the DoD thinks," McHenry said. "It works in the harshest environments."

My colleague, Benn Kobb, sent me a fascinating article from 1991 where the National Association of Broadcasters is engaging is a massive misinformation and lobbying campaign against (I kid you not), data communications via cellular telephone networks. That's right, NAB fought to prevent technologies like Blackberries and iPhones from ever being allowed.

Today, the NAB is at it again -- this time targeting white space devices. But the notion is exactly the same -- any new wireless technology, no matter how useful to consumers or innocuous, will be fought against if NAB sees it as somehow against their own self-interests. In fact, as their own record illustrates (and being anti-smart phone is only the tip of the iceberg, NAB has systematically fought against innovations in the field of communications for decades.

But read on, this will certainly resonate with anyone who's ever sent a text message:

From: www.findarticles.com.

Mobile Phone News
Dec. 19, 1991
Copyright 1991 Access Intelligence LLC

NAB protests cellular operators offering information services

On the heels of PacTel's announcement to offer Star Info, a new service that provides up-to-date information ranging from traffic reports to financial news, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has petitioned the FCC to prohibit the cellular phone industry from offering pay-to-use radio services such as news, sports and weather. The NAB said that information services over cellular would duplicate the same news provided free to radio listeners by broadcasters.

"There is already a glut of sources for this information in the broadcast marketplace," said NAB in comments to the FCC. Offering such services over cellular frequencies would jeopardize cellular companies' system capacity and inhibit the operator's ability to handle conventional telephone calls, it added.

There is a growing business for private companies to offer niche programming services to cellular operators. NAB has no objections to cellular operators who want to buy programming and to provide information services, said Doug Wills of the NAB. "We do object, however, to the cellular operators out bidding the broadcasters for sports rights and then becoming barbarian gate keepers to programming," Wills added.

The NAB said that the cellular operators are misusing their spectrum. "Cellular spectrum should be reserved for the two-way communication for which it is designed," said the NAB. "One-way transmission of news, sports, weather and traffic would be a misuse of this spectrum and a needless duplication of broadcast services."

... PacTel's Star Info Is a Breakthrough for Cellular Customers

In November, PacTel Cellular initiated the Star Info which allows subscribers one-number dialing to access information. At no additional charge, subscribers will have access to 280 local businesses and services. Somewhat like a cellular yellow pages service, Star Info includes direct lines to restaurants, stock updates, sports scores, ticket offices for Plays, movies and special events.

The information program is provided by Applied Response Systems (ARS), a private company that specializes in information services. "The Star Info service provides excellent advertising and marketing opportunities for local businesses," said Ron Lee, owner of ARS. "They can effectively reach a very specific target audience to sell their product," he added.

Here in DC we're gearing up for One Web Day and it's looking to be the most extravagant OWD party I've helped organize yet! Want to learn more -- check out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Nathaniel James
DC OWD Ambassador
Campaign Coordinator, Media and Democracy Coalition
njames@media-democracy.net
p: 202 736 5757
c: 206 954 3040

Morgan Weiland
DC OWD Ambassador
morganweiland@gmail.com
c: 202 256 7480

DC ONE WEB DAY: BLOGGER PREVIEW
Teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors

Wednesday, August 20, 3:30pm and 8pm.

Washington, DC—OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet, with a focus in its third year on online political participation. To celebrate and document the recent flourishing of online political participation in what has become a new "town square," the DC OWD Planning Committee is creating an E-Democracy Time Capsule that will go live online on August 22, one month before OWD. We are building a site where anyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, can mark history by contributing text, images, sound, and video to a tricked-out WordPress blog describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, and profiles of E-Democracy Heroes.

We stand at a crossroads in the history of online political participation, and the future is uncertain. Policy decisions concerning digital inclusion, net neutrality, and online privacy and security will be made in the coming months and years. We all have a stake in ensuring that when the virtual Time Capsule is reopened on OWD in 2020, the new town square delivers on its promise to become a thriving marketplace of ideas where anyone can participate unhindered by illegitimate gatekeepers and a lack of access to the tools and skills they need to add their voice the dialog.

Join us August 20 for a teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member, and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors Nathaniel James and Morgan Weiland to learn about how the E-Democracy Time Capsule can promote the work you do and what role you can play in helping to make this year's event a success. We welcome all bloggers interested in the promise of online political participation. To ensure maximum participation, we will host two calls, one at 3:30 PM ET and a second at 8:00 PM ET.

Teleconference details:

Who
----------------

Susan Crawford
One Web Day founder
ICANN Board Member
and cyberlaw scholar at Michigan University

Nathanial James
DC OWD Ambassador and Campaign Coordinator
Media and Democracy Coalition

When
----------------

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Times
----------------

3:30 PM ET / 12:30 PM PT
8:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM PT

Dial-In
----------------

(218) 339 4300, password: 425 755

Please dial in 5-10 minutes before call so we can start on time.

More information about OWD is available at www.onewebday.org.

Here's a good analysis on the state of municipal broadband -- from www.progressive.org/mag/aaron0808.html:

"The Promise of Municipal Broadband"

By Craig Aaron, August 2008

When Mayor John Street announced plans to make Philadelphia the nation’s first major “wireless city” back in the fall of 2004, the press couldn’t get enough. “Forget cheese steaks, cream cheese, and brotherly love,” declared The New York Times. “Philadelphia wants to be known as the city of laptops.”

Philadelphia’s goal to cover 135 square miles with a cloud of Internet connectivity was ambitious. But the need was undeniable. High-speed Internet access was fast becoming an economic, educational, and social necessity. Yet most of Philly’s residents were stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to access or afford a broadband connection.

When Earthlink—a dial-up Internet company looking for a foothold in the broadband world—came forward promising to build a state-of-the-art wireless system without the city paying a dime, Philadelphia signed up. And soon, you couldn’t go a week without another major metropolis—San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Portland, Oregon—jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon.
So what happened?

Three years later, many of the projects seem to be sputtering. The tens of thousands of new subscribers didn’t materialize. Getting the equipment up on streetlights and buildings proved more expensive and technically challenging than expected. Chicago and St. Louis scrapped their plans last summer. In Tempe, Arizona, a company called Gobility shuttered the system there and unplugged its customer-service line. Earthlink abandoned projects in San Francisco and Houston, before announcing it was getting out of the municipal wireless business altogether.

With its flagship Philadelphia project still unfinished, new Earthlink CEO Rolla P. Huff announced last fall that “making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value.”

Then the press pounced, with stories appearing in the Associated Press, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and the Times, declaring municipal projects to be floundering, fading failures. One tech writer dismissed municipal wireless as “the monorail of the decade.”

But all the obituaries are premature. A closer look at what’s happening at projects across the country—public and private, wired and wireless, big and small—suggests that it’s far too early to start the funeral arrangements. Much of the media are confusing the collapse of one company—or one model of broadband deployment—with the failure of the entire idea of municipalities providing high-speed Internet services.

“It’s like someone striking out in a boat in 1490, it sinking, and people saying, ‘You know what? This whole ocean travel thing isn’t going to work out,’ ” says Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis-based research group that tracks municipal projects.

Even in Philadelphia, all is not lost. In June, a group of local investors announced they had arranged to take over Philadelphia’s network and offer free Wi-Fi outdoor—but details are sketchy.

Many projects—especially in small towns and mid-sized cities—are thriving. From Hermiston, Oregon, to Scottsburg, Indiana, to St. Cloud, Florida, city-owned wireless systems are up and running, serving local residents and businesses or local police and emergency workers. Places like Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and Kutztown, Pennsylvania, are building their own fiber-optic networks that offer high-speed Internet and cable TV.

In total, more than 400 cities and towns already have launched, or are developing, municipal broadband systems. Spending on municipal networks increased last year and is expected to keep rising. MuniWireless.com projects that annual spending on equipment and services will exceed $900 million by 2010.

Municipal broadband is caught up in a classic “hype cycle”—a term coined by the Gartner Research Group to chart technology trends. It works like this: First, new technology triggers a wave of excitement that builds to a “peak of inflated expectations.” For municipal broadband this was 2005’s heady days of “free Internet for everyone everywhere.”

After the peak, there’s a rapid slide toward what Gartner calls “the trough of disillusionment”—a.k.a. rock bottom or, in this case, the headline in the March 22 edition of The New York Times: “Hopes for Wireless Cities Are Fading.”

Vermont’s Tim Nulty isn’t mourning the troubles some cities are having with municipal wireless. To him, it was never the right technology for the job at hand. “Think about 747s and helicopters,” he says. “Helicopters are marvelous when they’re used for what they’re good at. But you don’t use them to fly thousands of people between Boston and Chicago. For that you need 747s.”

Wireless systems may offer mobility, but a fiber-optic network connected directly to homes boasts nearly unlimited capacity. Fiber is the jumbo jet of municipal broadband. Though conventional wisdom says fiber is too expensive or complicated for cities to handle, Nulty—who spent more than ten years in the ’70s and ’80s on Capitol Hill as the chief economist for the key Senate and House committees that make telecom policy—was recruited out of retirement to help the city of Burlington get a municipal fiber network off the ground.

That project became Burlington Telecom—a city department that now provides high-speed Internet, phone, and cable TV service to some 3,000 residential customers. While revenue from subscribers goes into the public coffers, at Nulty’s insistence the network itself was financed by private investors without any taxpayer money. Not only is the system up and running, but it already has a positive cash flow.

Nulty recently left Burlington Telecom to spearhead a project to bring fiber to smaller towns across Vermont. Twenty-five towns voted—many of them unanimously—to join a venture called the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. As in Burlington, the networks will be built without taxpayer funds.

“I’m convinced this is the only way we in Vermont are going to get access to this high-speed stuff,” Jerry Drugonis of Pittsfield, Vermont, told the Rutland Herald after the vote. “We’ve been at the tail end of the dog for a long time.”

It doesn’t necessarily take a city department to bring high-speed Internet access to local residents. Some of the most innovative projects are small-scale, community-based efforts.

“We’re finally coming back around to ideas that were around before the corporate franchise was shown to be a failure,” says Sascha Meinrath, research director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, who launched one of the nation’s first community wireless projects while he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “So much money was being spent to push the corporate model that it was all cities heard about. There was no PR or marketing for community wireless groups. But unlike the corporations, their focus has always been maximizing the public good.”

In Asheville, North Carolina, the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) has been operating as a nonprofit Internet service provider since 1996, first with dial-up and now with wireless broadband. It uses “mesh network” technology created by a company called Meraki to serve hundreds of citizens in nine Asheville neighborhoods.

The network—the same type that Meraki is using to offer free wireless in San Francisco—allows many people in the same area to share one Internet connection. This type of neighbor-to-neighbor sharing is discouraged by the big phone and cable companies, but MAIN has its own connection to the Internet backbone.

MAIN is far from a traditional Internet Service Provider: It’s committed to closing the digital divide and recycles computers for use by local residents who otherwise couldn’t afford them; its website is a community media hub; and the group also runs a local low power FM radio station. Wally Bowen, MAIN’s executive director, sees the future of community media.

“I firmly believe that every public access TV operation, every community radio station, every nonprofit community technology center can be doing this,” he says. “It’s not rocket science. All of those technology-based nonprofits are strapped for revenue. We’ve got to figure out a way to capture some of those digital dollars that are falling out of our communities, and this is it.”

Small-town success stories are encouraging but they don’t answer whether municipal broadband can work in the big city. The recent completion of a citywide wireless network in Minneapolis suggests that cities may be learning from Philadelphia’s mistakes.

Minneapolis has already signed up 8,000 users, and its Wi-Fi network was used by emergency responders after the I-35W bridge collapse. Unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis agreed to be the network’s “anchor tenant,” committing $1.25 million per year for the next decade.

“Having the city itself as the anchor tenant gives the provider an incentive to set up a good network,” says Esme Vos of MuniWireless.com. “From the get-go, there’s a set amount of money. Philadelphia never had that deal. San Francisco never had that deal.”

However, some in the Twin Cities are disappointed that Minneapolis opted to support a private network rather than constructing its own public one. “If a private company decides they just aren’t going to do it anymore, the community is stuck because it’s privately owned,” Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance explains. “If it’s publicly owned and the network is not going exactly as planned, they can decide if it’s still worth it for their police officers to have access; if it’s still worth it to have inspectors and social workers be able to enter their data remotely; if it’s still worth it for citizens to be able to connect anywhere. They can ask those questions and decide whether it’s good for the community or not.”

However, unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis did choose a local company, U.S. Internet, to build the network. “That’s key,” Vos says. “U.S. Internet is not investing in a mobile handset project and trying to still provide DSL service and outsourcing their customer service to India. This is their main project.”

Local control—and with it, jobs and revenues staying in the community—appears to be one of the elements of success for municipal broadband projects large and small. The money stays in the community, jobs are being created, and everyone from firefighters to meter readers benefits.

“If you’re not sending money out to shareholders across the country and expecting a huge return on investment,” Mitchell says, “you can already have an advantage in terms of pricing it more reasonably to make sure your businesses and your people can afford to have fast connectivity that’s going to keep the city competitive regionally and globally.”

While municipal broadband projects can’t succeed without buy-in from local stakeholders, ubiquitous high-speed Internet access won’t be achieved via local governments or groups alone. We need a national broadband policy.

Back in March 2004, President Bush called for “universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007.” Yet in 2008, we’re nowhere close. And the United States is falling further behind the rest of the world. Much of Asia and Europe enjoys broadband speeds that are twenty to fifty times faster than what we get here—and they pay less for it.

“We have a failure on the national level that’s too important to ignore,” says James Baller, an attorney who represents local governments and public utilities and closely follows municipal broadband issues. “Not to view broadband as a strategic asset is a significant shortcoming. The other leading countries of the world do view broadband in that light, and they are thinking about how to get more of it at much faster speeds and lower rates because it’s a platform for so many other things that are important.”

Policymakers could create incentives for local communities to build telecom networks, spurring new competition and growing the new market for entrepreneurs and innovators, especially in areas bypassed or underserved by the big phone and cable companies. Better yet, says Asheville’s Bowen, these incentives could mandate that systems be locally controlled and nonprofit, ensuring that the investment stays in the community.

Yet, fourteen states currently have laws on the books—drafted by phone and cable company lobbyists—restricting municipalities from erecting their own broadband systems. The Community Broadband Act, bipartisan legislation that already passed the Senate Commerce Committee, would tear down the roadblocks. “The first thing we have to do,” Mitchell says, “is make sure that communities that want to solve their own problems, that want to build the network they need, can do that.”

Congress and the Federal Communications Commission also could improve municipal wireless by setting aside a greater portion of the airwaves for public use. Wi-Fi systems operate on narrow “junk bands” already cluttered with cordless phones, baby monitors, and the like, requiring more transmitters and higher costs to set up a network.

Meanwhile, vast portions of the broadcast TV spectrum—as much as 70 percent in some markets—are sitting unused because of outdated regulations and a misinformation campaign waged by the broadcasters’ lobby. These “white spaces” would allow signals to go farther and travel through obstacles. “If we open up the unused spaces between the television channels, it suddenly becomes possible to deploy the network that we need at a quarter of the cost,” says Harold Feld of the Media Access Project, a public interest communications law firm in Washington.

There is growing bipartisan support for many of these policies. And the nation’s broadband policy—or lack thereof—is even becoming a presidential campaign issue. To his credit, John McCain is a lead sponsor of the Community Broadband Act, though he hasn’t always backed public interest policies during his years on the influential Senate Commerce Committee and voted against restoring crucial “Net Neutrality” protections.

For his part, Barack Obama hasn’t yet signed on to McCain’s community broadband bill. But he supports Net Neutrality and has pledged to make Internet issues a top priority of his administration. In a June speech in Flint, Michigan, Obama declared: “As President, I will set a simple goal: Every American should have the highest speed broadband access—no matter where you live, or how much money you have. We’ll connect schools, libraries, and hospitals. And we’ll take on special interests to unleash the power of wireless spectrum for our safety and connectivity.”

In the end, the biggest obstacles to universal, affordable Internet access aren’t economic or technical. They’re political. Broadband is too important to the economy, education, and, well, democracy to be at the mercy of Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T. It’s time to rethink the approach to these problems and move the discussion past short-term technical fixes and next quarter’s profits.

“We need to start looking at this as an infrastructure issue rather than as a business,” Feld says. “We don’t ask cities and towns to cost-justify bringing in fresh water and having a sewer system when we could outsource it to private companies. Nobody says, why should my town compete with the private water market? I can get Perrier, why should I have water? We treat water as a utility. We do the same thing with electricity. We have to take the same attitude here toward broadband.”

Craig Aaron is the communications director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform group. A senior editor of In These Times, he blogs regularly about media, journalism, and the future of the Internet at SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com, and The Huffington Post.

I couldn't make this up if I tried. The full McCain quote in its full context is available here.

During his Saddleback Church presentation, McCain was asked how he would balance privacy rights with security issues. Here's part of the transcript:

11 THE POINT IS WE
12 HAVE NOW HAD TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES OVER THE LAST 20 OR 30
13 YEARS IN COMMUNICATIONS THAT ARE REMARKABLE. IT'S A
14 REMARKABLE ABILITY THAT OUR ENEMIES HAVE TO COMMUNICATE SO
15 WE HAVE TO KEEP UP WITH THAT CAPABILITY. I MEAN, THERE IS
16 TOO MANY WAYS AND -- THROUGH CYBERSPACE AND THROUGH OTHER
17 WAYS -- THAT PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH ONE
18 ANOTHER. SO WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STEP UP OUR
19 CAPABILITIES TO MONITOR THOSE.

Some will certainly say that McCain's statements are just about our enemies having too many ways to communicate. Ponder that spin for a moment -- how do you limit the abilities of your enemies to communicate without detrimentally impacting your non-enemies? Put into a different context, McCain's quote is exactly what repressive regimes around the globe have stated throughout history. It's a statement with woeful historical and contemporary precedent.

An interesting thing has been happening -- people are actually reading McCain's technology plan. The reviews are coming in (and they're not pretty).

Here's a synopsis (click on the author's names to read the full analysis):

"[McCain's Tech Plan] reads like some crotchety technophobe knocked over the bumper sticker wrack at an Ayn Rand Reading Revival and tried to rearrange them so it made a policy." -- Harold Feld

"Seriously, this is approaching Chuck Norris-level aggrandizement. How delusional does this guy have to be to imagine himself the hero of every situation he's in, to the point that he has to frame himself as a white knight on regulating packet shaping over the internet? I'm actually kind of impressed. Here are the rest of the sub-headings. They are of course not about technology, they are about John McCain." -- Matt Stoller

"The McCain worldview scares the hell out of me. Technology is complicated -- and the solutions we need are fairly complex -- they require an in depth understanding of the problem if you're going to formulate a solution. And McCain clearly doesn't understand some of the core problems... I'm still waiting for McCain to release a real technology plan -- one that helps consumers and addresses the problems we're facing instead of protecting corporations and ignoring technology market failings." -- Sascha Meinrath

"McCain has delivered his tech policy. And it’s clear: This election will determine whether America willfully becomes a third-world participant in the online economy and culture." -- David Weinberger

"In summary, the McCain plan says, "What's good for AT&T and Comcast and Cisco and the RIAA is good for America." It's about their Internet, nor ours." -- David Isenberg

"We have already had 16 months of no policy in the technology realm and an admitted lack of knowledge by the candidate himself. Now the campaign can’t even get the basics straight on something they absolutely should know — the candidate’s own record." -- Peter Swire

"McCain declines to put net neutrality into law. Indeed, he declines to guarantee all Americans the right to obtain the information they want, communicate to everyone they want, send non-obscene and lawful information to anyone they want, over the Internet. Why? What's the hold-up? Why not assure this paradigm?" -- Reed Hundt

"We see that millions of Americans are using the Internet to help each other out, and to improve the way government works. The Obama technology plan encourages civic engagement and openness. Unfortunately, the McCain plan adopts the Bush/Cheney approach, which promotes privileges for big companies at the expense of democracy." -- Craig Newmark

"Where Obama has specifics and new ideas, McCain has old ideas and positions that would be taken for granted in any Administration other than the one now ending. The reason is that McCain has a problem: he’s out of step with the real world." -- Kevin Werbach

"McCain fails to understand that net neutrality only regulates the internet in the same way the First Amendment to the US Constitution regulates speech!! There are many different kinds of regulation, and this is one that protects the rights of individuals and an entire public good from being victimized by giant corporations." -- Jon Bartholomew

"The policy statement starts by addressing McCain's economic policies, which emphasize perpetuation of Bush's low tax on capital gains and reduction of the corporate tax rate...The fact that tax cuts landed at the top of the list reflects the prominent role that the Republican take on fiscal conservatism will play in McCain's policy decisions." -- Ryan Paul/Ars Technica

"The computing-challenged McCain, who said that he needs his wife to cut on the computer and check email for him ("I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance that I can get."), has released his technology "policy". It sounds like another handout to corporations and a screw you to the rest of us." -- Pam Spaulding

"McCain’s tech policy is one big giveaway to big corporations, an incoherent, muddled mess that does nothing to address the challenges America faces in vaulting our technological development into the 21st Century. Not only is he against net neutrality, he barely addresses things like wireless spectrum, broadband development, copyright law reform–and when he does, it’s invariably in favor of the big business interests to which his campaign is utterly beholden." -- Martin Bosworth

"It’s been widely reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a self-admitted 'illiterate' when it comes to computers. But some have suggested that he could still put forward sound technology policy because he surrounds himself with tech-savvy advisers, such as former Hewlett-Packard chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina and former eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman. But it’s unclear how much he is listening to them. Yesterday, McCain finally released his technology platform. (Until this time, 'technology' was not even listed in the Issues section of his campaign website.) His plan supposedly focuses on innovation, but in reality, it often repeats McCain’s previous non-innovative positions, such as his opposition to net neutrality. -- Amanda/Think Progress

"In outlining his policy, McCain reiterated his opposition to net neutrality, a hot-button issue for many bloggers and technology advocates...

John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.

He also believes that if you put the internet in neutral, it'll stall." -- Mary Phillips-Sandy/Comedy Central