News of the movement for September 26, 2011

Understanding the New Internet Freedom Rules Nine months after they were passed by the FCC in a party-line vote, the new rules promoting Internet freedom are now officially on the books and will go into effect on Nov. 20. Given that the conservative media have spent those nine months poisoning the Internet-freedom debate with false, hysterical and conspiratorial claims, it's worthwhile to take a look at the rules and explain exactly what they mean.

Simon Maloy, Media Matters for America

Net Neutrality Rules Are Coming -- Here's Why They Matter Net Neutrality is finally real, or at least will be in a few months. The new rules for Internet companies will be put into place on Nov. 20 -- unless they get derailed by lawsuits. The guidelines, written by the FCC, say essentially this: Internet providers can't deliberately block or slow speeds for "heavy" Internet users, such as people who stream movies or play online games, nor throttle traffic from a certain source, such as from competitors or peer-to-peer downloads.

Jeff Ward-Bailey, Christian Science Monitor

Net Neutrality Rules Published, Lawsuits Soon to Follow The FCC has finally officially published long-delayed rules prohibiting cable, DSL and wireless internet companies from blocking websites and requiring them to disclose how they slow down or throttle their networks.

Ryan Singel, Wired

Senate GOP Pushing to Kill Net Neutrality Rules Now that the FCC's controversial Net Neutrality rules have been published, Senate Republicans are stepping up their efforts to kill the rules, which prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or slowing down legal content from their competitors, with a resolution of disapproval.

Katy Bachman, AdWeek

Government Power in Cyberspace Is Big and Growing Months after the revolutions started to sweep through countries in the Middle East and North Africa, debate continues over the role social media played in toppling governments. A new study by the University of Washington has concluded Twitter did, in fact, play a major role in the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

Josh Smith, National Journal

Phone, Web Clampdowns in Crises Are Intolerable As far as anyone knows, no government agency in the U.S. had cut off general-purpose communications before BART took this step. The question before the FCC is whether BART's action violated the Telecom Act of 1996, which prohibits discontinuing or impairing service without due process. It is essential that the FCC quickly find BART's conduct wrong. Otherwise, Americans will be in the same situation as Egyptians were when former President Hosni Mubarak ordered the squelching of cell-phone service in Tahrir Square.

Susan Crawford, Bloomberg News

AT&T/T-Mobile Antitrust Suit Spurs FCC to Restart Special Access Inquiry After seven years of inaction, the FCC is again looking at the Special Access competition landscape to determine whether businesses are paying fair rates for data access.

Wayne Rash, eWeek.com

What Do We Need the Internet for? A new survey about Internet use is full of revelations about competition between newspapers, TV and social networks for local news audiences. Seventy-nine percent of the United States population that's online now relies on the Internet for most key local subjects. But perhaps the most interesting section of the report is a list of the five local topics for which the online landscape is "the most relied-upon source."

Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica

Owning Our Airwaves: Tonight in Pittsburgh Tonight in Pittsburgh people from around the city will come together at a public town hall to discuss the future of media and journalism. The event will be an opportunity for the people of Pittsburgh to speak directly to Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps about the state of local news.

Josh Stearns, SavetheNews.org

Forum to Focus on Keeping Free Airwaves Free Press will host "Owning Our Airwaves: A Community Dialogue with Media Policymakers." The community discussion will explore how to guarantee Pittsburgh residents in-depth investigative reporting and news coverage that promotes government and corporate accountability.

Adrian McCoy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

How People Learn About Their Local Community Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project. Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information.

Pew Research Center

Pew Media Study Shows Reliance on Many Outlets It has been conventional wisdom for decades that Americans rely more heavily on television than any other medium for local news and information. A new study found that to be narrowly true -- but also found ample reason not to count out local newspapers, websites and radio stations.

Brian Stelter, New York Times

Journalist Is Detained in China for Article on Sex Slaves For a nation not yet inured to lurid and senseless crime, a report that a former civil servant in central China kept six women enslaved in an underground bunker -- and that he killed two of them -- was shocking enough. But perhaps almost as disturbing, at least to some readers, was that the journalist who exposed the crime more than two weeks after the suspect's arrest was detained by security agents who accused him of revealing state secrets.

Andrew Jacobs, New York Times

British Lawyer Wants U.S. Hearing on Phone Hacking A lawyer representing some of Britain's phone-hacking victims said that he was planning legal action in the United States against News Corp., the parent company of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire.

John F. Burns, New York Times

U.K. Prime Minister Says News Corp. Ties Were 'Too Cozy' British Prime Minister David Cameron said relations between the government and News Corp. had grown "too cozy" and have been scaled back in the wake of a phone-hacking scandal at the media giant's now-closed News of the World tabloid.

Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal

Mexican Journalist Decapitated for Posts on Social Networking Site A female Mexican journalist was found decapitated alongside a sign saying she was killed for her postings on a social networking site.

Global Post