Dear Chairman Majoras and Commissioners:

On behalf of the Center of the Digital Democracy, I respectfully urge you to impose
conditions designed to protect competition in the matter of Google and DoubleClick.
Since the planned acquisition was announced last spring, we have provided competition
bureau staff with information concerning both the overall competitive conditions of the
interactive advertising marketplace and specific materials related to the two companies
themselves. We have brought in a distinguished professor and one of the country's
leading experts on digital marketing—Professor Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School
at the University of Pennsylvania—to meet with competition staff. We also offered to
provide additional analysis and information, but the staff has not requested such data.
I am alarmed by reports that the commission is about to approve the merger without
imposing any of the conditions required to maintain a semblance of competition in the
interactive advertising market. Given the scale needed to compete with a combined
Google/DoubleClick, there will be insurmountable barriers to entry in the interactive ad
market.

[to read the entire document, download the PDF below]

By: Jeff Chester

(This is a reprint of the original article published in AlterNet January 2007)

On Friday, several thousand U.S. media activists will converge in Memphis to attend the Free Press group's "National Conference for Media Reform." Much of the conference is focused on current and upcoming public policy battles designed to help make this country's media system more democratic. Right now there is greater interest in media policy than we have seen since the 1960s.

Among the key concerns is fighting against the Federal Communications Commission's current plan to permit greater consolidation of our nation's newspapers and broadcast stations; battling Congress over the broadband Internet (network neutrality); and highlighting the lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color. These are important topics, but the real action it requires must take place outside of the D.C. beltway.

With network neutrality legislation now being introduced in the new Democratic-controlled Congress [VIDEO], it is likely that many attending the Free Press conference will leave Memphis feeling that fighting for its passage should be the progressive media movement's top priority. After all, hundreds of thousands of activists, bloggers and media makers just successfully fought to a standstill plans by the former Republican-controlled Congress to pass legislation giving phone and cable companies greater control over the future of the Net in the United States.

By: Jeff Chester

(This is a reprint of the original article published in The Nation June 2006)

Ten years after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, digital technologies are rapidly reshaping the country's communications system. It will be the most powerful media environment ever created--always "on" with connections via PCs, digital TVs and an array of mobile devices, delivering a torrent of personalized, interactive and virtual content, much of it coming from the nation's most powerful traditional and new media companies (e.g., AT&T, Comcast, Google, Microsoft). The next several years are critical to insure that the promise of what we now experience online--and its vast potential to help build a just civil society--is fulfilled. With Congress poised to pass legislation that rewrites key parts of the Telecom Act, the following ten action items should be on any media reform agenda.

1. Media Ownership

The GOP-controlled FCC wants to eliminate key media ownership restrictions affecting TV and radio stations, cable systems and newspapers. Expect fewer owners of our most powerful outlets and a further decrease in journalism budgets.

Action: Join the new "Stopbigmedia" coalition (www.stopbigmedia.com) to promote diversity of media ownership and content. Also, work against the renomination of FCC chair Kevin Martin.

2. Mergers

10 Steps to More Democratic Media

By: Jeff Chester and Gary O. Larson
yes! Magazine
Spring 2005

Whether you care about the state of journalism, access to information, diversity of media ownership, privacy, innovation, or the health of noncommercial media -- all these and more will be up for grabs as Congress begins re-writing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 this year. Likewise, the Federal Communications Commission and even your local town or city council will be facing choices that will determine who gets to communicate what, to whom, over what medium during this “digital century.”

How, for example, will policy makers choose to define “public interest, convenience, and necessity,” a concept enshrined in U.S. communications law since 1934? Or will we see a rejection of a concept that has obliged the electronic media to serve the country?

Will we have a communications environment that reflects the highest aspirations of a democratic culture, including equality, diversity, and civic expression? Or one that serves primarily as an inter­active vending machine for the latest products of Big Media and Madison Avenue?

The stakes have never been higher. The major media and telecommunications companies are lobbying for even greater corporate control. But we the people can change America’s “digital destiny” by promoting positive change in these ten areas:

The Death of the Internet: How the Industry Intends to Kill the 'Net as We Know it

By: Jeff Chester
TomPaine.com
October 2002

 

The Internet's promise as a new medium -- where text, audio, video and data can be freely exchanged -- is under attack by the corporations that control the public's access to the 'Net, as they see opportunities to monitor and charge for the content people seek and send. The industry's vision is the online equivalent of seizing the taxpayer-owned airways, as radio and television conglomerates did over the course of the 20th century.

To achieve this, the cable industry, which sells Internet access to most Americans, is pursuing multiple strategies to closely monitor and tightly control subscribers and their use of the net. One element can be seen in industry lobbying for new use-based pricing schemes, which has been widely reported in trade press. Related to this is the industry's new public relations campaign, which seeks to introduce a new "menace" into the pricing debate and boost their case, the so-called "bandwidth hog."

But beyond political and press circles are another equally important development: new technologies being developed and embraced that can, in practice, transform today's open Internet into a new industry-regulated system that will prevent or discourage people from using the net for file-sharing, internet radio and video, and peer-to-peer communications. These are not merely the most popular cutting-edge applications used by young people; they also are the tools for fundamental new ways of conducting business and politics.