Tales of the Sausage Factory:
My letter to the Today Show about Coulter

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Well, I don’t get telvision in my home, and I haven’t seen the Today Show in 25 years, so I don’t suppose I could threaten to stop watching. Anyway, here’s the letter I sent to the Today Show on the occasion of the latest outrage by Republican shill Ann Coulter. I haven’t gotten a response yet.

NBC and the Today Show’s producers know well by now that Ann Coulter is an inflamatory hate-monger. That is her schtick; that is what she does: she spews hate and mocks those who are in pain, especially those who are in pain as a result of service to the United States of America.

So now she has slandered the so-called “Jersey Girls”, the group of September 11 widows, who, thrust into a role that none of them sought, and at a great cost that Ms. Coulter is unable to comprehend, being herself neither wife nor mother, have dedicated themselves to the noble task of trying to save us the kind of pain that they have had to endure.

Will NBC apologize for inviting that wretched Coulter onto their show? Will they apologize for condoning and enabling slander?

Most importantly, will the Jersey Girls be given the chance to respond to this hateful, vile, obscene, America-hating, cruel lying harpie, Coulter?

NBC’s producers, and managment, and staff — including you, whoever you are reading this note– bear some measure of responsibility for Coulter’s remarks. Especially the hosts and the producers. Were this the first time that Coulter had done this kind of hateful stunt, you might be excused on the grounds that you didn’t know what a horribly deranged person she is. But you have no excuse now, in June, 2006. Everybody knows that shit-stirring is Coulter’s stock-in-trade. She is a shit-stirrer; that is what she does. If you invite a clown to perform on the the Today Show, you expect a clown’s performance. And if you invite Coulter, you expect coprophilia. Well, congratulations, you’ve made the Today Show into a bucket of shit. You can either accept this situation — who knows, you may love the aroma, may even love painting your face with faeces– or you can attempt to clean and disinfect and air out your studios and your reputation.

For NBC to begin to redeem itself, the Today Show must perforce allow the slandered persons a chance to respond. Under whatever studio conditions they stipulate.

That’s only step one. Other steps towards rehabilitation are evident to any persons possessed of common decency.

Frankly, I have a hard time imagining that the Today Show will ever again be, in my eyes, anything but a moneygrubber’s cesspool. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.

Sincerely,

John Sundman
Vineyard Haven, MA

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
UPDATE: COPE PASSES HOUSE late Thursday Night

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To further stack the odds, they went ahead and held the debate and vote tonight after Tom DeLay’s farewell address. Fitting tribute, I suppose, sacrifice the finest engine of civic discourse and free speech on the altar of special interest as a going away present.

And yes, we got spanked as expected. The Markey Amendment failed 152-269, with 11 Rs and 1 independent joining 140 Ds. On the nay side were 211 Rs and 58 Ds. COPE itself passed 321-101.

On to the Senate!

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Bracing for the House COPE Vote

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The House will likely vote tomorrow (Fri. June 9) on the Communications Opportunity Enhancement Act (COPE). In fact, the vote may come as early as tonight.

According to the report from the Rules Committee, the House has set debate for one hour and approved a number of amendments. The critical amendments for network neutrality are the Markey amendment (D-MA) and an anti-trust savings amendment introduced by Lamar Smith (R-TX) that clarifies that COPE will not preempt anti-trust law (NB: This is not the much stronger Sensenbrenner-Conyer Bill which passed out of Judiciary.

As discussed below, the Rules Committee (which responds to the House Republican leadership) has done its best to stack the odds against NN. Unsurprising, since Speaker Hastert (along with Commerce Chair Barton and Telecommuniations Subcommittee Chair Upton) support COPE and oppose NN. Expect the Smith Amendment to pass, the Markey Amendment to lose, and COPE to pass. Public pressure may still swing some members, but the odds of swinging enough members are vanishingly small.

As I wrote after the loss at the Commerce Committee, we citizens will make the difference. We have gained much ground in the last two months. We now carry the battle to the Senate, where the rules help curb the power of one or two majority leaders to force through legislation.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Independent Artists Losing an Independent Internet

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Parul Desai, my colleague at Media Access Project, has written an article about the impact of network neutrality for Voxunion.com. The article talks about how independent artists will suffer if we lose the fight on network neutrality and therefore lose the Internet as an open, neutral platform for independent artists to distribute their work.

Parul knows whereof she speaks. Not only is she one of the kick-ass attorneys at MAP (“Kicking ass for the public interest for almost 35 years”), but she is one of the founders and co-owners Propa Gandaz Music Group, an independent record label.

UPDATE 6/13/06 — Jenny Toomey and Michael Bracy of the Future of Music Coalition have now written this excellent opinion piece on the same theme.

Stay tuned . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Latest on COPE and Latest Video

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From what I have heard and seen on the House Whip Schedule, the vote on COPE will likely take place this Friday (6/9). On Wednesday June 7, the House Rules Committee will determine what, if any, amendments members may offer. For example, they may or may not allow Markey to offer his Network Neutrality Act of 2006, or allow Sensenbrenner to offer the version of the Internet Freedom and Non-Discrimination Act that passed the Judiciary Committee as an amendment. After that, the package goes to the floor for debate and a vote.

The smart money expects passage of COPE because the House Republican leadership backs it and enough Dems will defect to provide a comfortable margin. OTOH, public pressure keeps pushing members to change their position to support NN. Not that smart money or conventional wisdom believes in democracy anymore, but I am hopeful we can hand them another surprise.

Meanwhile, Moby has prepared this video that tells you how you can call your representative and tell him or her to support net neutrality.

Remember, don’t make Moby cry! Support Net Neutrality and help spank the telcos!

Stay tuned . . .

My Thoughts Exactly:
Congressman Delahunt on Net Neutrality

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I called Bill Delahunt’s office and sent him emails in support of net neutrality.

I received this response by email a few days ago. I’m entering it here for the record, without comment. I may comment on it later, and would be interested in what you think of it (espescially in the case where “you” == Harold Feld).

Dear Friend:

Thank you for your email message in support of net neutrality legislation.
I appreciate the benefit of your views, and wanted to take a moment to
explain my vote of “present” during last week’s consideration of the
Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill in the House Judiciary Committee.

First, I support keeping cyberspace free and open to all. As a member of
the House International Relations Committee, I’ve seen how the Internet has
made it possible to bridge cultural and political differences that exist.
As a father, email made it possible for me to keep in touch with my daughter
while she was working overseas in Spain – and helped me to make sure that
she was safe after the Madrid terrorist bombings.

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Some site news

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Wetmachine has been up and down somewhat lately due to hardware problems at our hosting ISP. We believe that the problems have all been fixed & we expect things to be stable.

We’ve also found out that the site is not rendering correctly in all browsers. In particular, IE doesn’t always seem to work for viewing extended sections. Apologies about that. We’ll look into it more at the weekend. In the meantime, firefox and safari seem to perform reliably.

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Yet Another Amazing Esme Conference

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Regular readers will know that I have tremendous respect and regard for Esme Vos and her Muniwireless.com website. So I’m pleased and delighted to attend her upcomming conference June 19-21 in Santa Clara, CA: “Building the Muniwireless Ecosystem.”

What makes Esme’s conferences rock (other than her continuing to have me back) is:

(a) Each conference has a new program about 6 months ahead of the “conventional wisdom.” Esme doesn’t just take one conference on the road. Each conference has new program items, new speakers and new insights that folks who don’t attend will have to wait 6 months to read about in the trade journals.

(b) Esme doesn’t just invite industry reps or big names. She reaches out to community organizers, innovators, and others to provide a real diversity of views.

(c) Vendor parties with open bars.

You can still register at the “early bird” discount rate until June 5. Click here to see a schedule of programming items that should convince you why you need to go. Then click here to register. The two conferences I’ve attended have both oversold, so register quickly if you don’t want to miss the fun.

Stay tuned . . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
This Time, We Spank the Telcos

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If anything can warm my sad, cynical heart here in the Sausage Factory, it’s seeing people rise up and reclaiming their power and responsibilities as citizens.
So when I saw the House Judiciary Committee voted 20-13-1 (one voting “present”) to send the the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act to the floor of the House for a vote, a stunning turn around from last month’s Commerce Committee approval of COPE, I get quite giddy about the prospects for legislation that reflects more than just refereeing industry food fights.

Needless to say, the opponents of network neutrality find themselves stammering in amazement and groping for alternative explanations. Surely it must be a turf fight, or an effort to extort more campaign contributions from telcos and cable cos! Surely it must be Google money financing things! Could Moveon.org really make common cause with the Christian Coalition, the Catholic Church and, well, Common Cause? Could the dry bones of democracy again be given flesh? Could the couch potato masses remember their strength and rise again as citizens reborn? Hallelujah!

Well, maybe not quite so dramaticly Biblical (must be working too much with all those religious groups), and we’re not out of the woods yet by a long-shot. But the last few weeks have definitely thrown up roadblocks in the telco victory march through Congress. My analysis, including a Colbert-esque “Tip of the Hat” to Free Press’ Ben Scott for his amazing Senate Commerce Committe testimony and a “Wag of the Finger” to Libertarian Reporter Declan McCullagh for this rather shameful bit of editorializing in the guise of reporting below.

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Neutrino:
War on the consumer: The DVD War

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Businessweek has
this article about the new DVD standards, which will come locked down with new, onerous Digital Rights Management restrictions. It’s a good overview of how new consumer electronica are being designed to basically protect big corporations from the consumers who buy them.

One point that the article really misses, though, is how DRM isn’t really aimed at pirates, despite all of the entertainment industry’s protests to the contrary. Instead, the only real purpose of this technology is to force you to pay multiple times for same content. Want to watch a movie on your TV? Great! Buy the DVD. Want to watch it on your iPod? Well, here you go, buy it at iTunes. Want that music you downloaded from iTunes as your phone’s ringtone? Cough up more dough. What’s that you say? Fair use? Well, according to the past head of the MPAA, it doesn’t exist.

On a brighter note, Ars Technica has a profile of some of the good guys in the music industry: Emusic. Emusic is a digital music subscription service with no strings attached. No DRM, no limited playlists, no nothing. Just high-quality MP3’s that are compatible with just about all of the digital music players out there. It is interesting to note that they chose to be DRM free not because of any idealism, but because of a sound business decision. They wanted the maximum possible customer base for their product, so they selected the format that is most universal. And they seem to be making money at it, too. I signed up a few months ago, and I have to say I’m a happy customer.