TimeWarner's pay per freedom of the press

I was asked if I wanted to help The Nation identify the blogosphere's influentials that could help them in one of their current campaigs, the first thought that popped into my head was, "here we go again, another one of those blogger phone calls". Yet, when I heard the name "TimeWarner" as one of the main antagonists, I knew I had to take on this project.

Earlier this year, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) rejected a postal rate increase plan offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Instead of implementing a plan that would spread equitably the rate hikes across all bulk mail clients, they opted to implement a modified version submitted by and partial to media giant Time-Warner Inc.

The new postal increase drafted by TimeWarner-AOL and approved by the PRC favors large bulk mail users like the magazine publishing divisions of TimeWarner-AOL by increasing the rate of small independent publishers by as much as 20%. Just to put things into perspective, for a publication like The Nation, this translates into paying $500,000 extra in postage yearly and in perpetuity (or until the next postal increase comes along).

As Teresa Stark put it in Disseminate Information, Protect Democracy, "While it is understandable that Time Warner would relish the idea of making it more difficult for new competitors, there is no reason to think that it is in the interest of the American people or the market economy.

Ironically, about two years ago a coalition of organizations and netactivists created DearAOL.com after the media giant tried to impose an email “stamp” system for bulk emailers like MoveOn.org or bloggers with weekly newsletters produced by blogs like YearlyKos, BradBlog or Afronetizen. Yes, they actually tried to play post office with AOL's email service.

And it was thinking about this bit of irony that it hit me : TimeWarner has been one of the biggest enemies of the free internet (aka, net neutrality) not just so they can be free to charge whatever they want for all aspects of publishing, privacy, creativity and freedom on the internet. It's part of a larger business vision in which all publishing, recording and broadcasting in the United States is control by a handful of large (and therefore manageable) media conglomerates.

This was extremely palpable to me when researching TimeWarner's corporate tactics for this project. I first stumbled upon this 2003 article at The Register, AOL Time Warner takes grip of net radio. It was with that artcile as background, that I then read Kevin Fayles' Will the RIAA kill net radio?. The following passage hit me like a hammer :

SoundExchange, for its part, doesn't see what all the fuss is about. Webcasters have been saying that royalties will push them out of business since 2002, according to a SoundExchange spokesperson. Plus, Simson argues, the webcasters wanted the system involving the CRB, and now they have to live with the results, even if they don't like them.

But a basic question remains: Why would SoundExchange and the RIAA want to kill a source of revenue in these lean times, especially one that has the potential and the market to keep growing into the future?

The answer is complicated. One solution is that RIAA doesn't want to kill the webcasting industry, it just wants to force webcasters into licensing deals whereby it can offer them lower royalties in exchange for the end of broadcasts in mp3 format. The RIAA would love nothing more than to infect all content everywhere with DRM, and this represents a convenient means towards that end.

Another suggestion is that the RIAA does in fact want to cull the small and non-profit webcasters that offer more diverse and esoteric content, while preserving the larger, more easily-controlled players. The fact that Simson justifies the royalty increase by trotting out a sample station that rakes it in with a $20 CPM shows that he's primarily concerned with these bigger, richer stations.

From SoundExchange's perspective, cultivating a smaller number of mainstream webcasters will cut down on administrative costs, since it means fewer songs to keep track of and fewer artists to pay out to. From the RIAA's point of view, keeping listener interest in more varied musical forms and artists to a minimum will allow it to focus on the bland, mass-produced artists that have been its members' bread and butter for the past decade.

The salt on the wound? SoundExchange is a digital broadcasting management organization first established through the RIAA by TimeWarner and Sony but later spun-off as a non-profit protecting the profits of .... TimeWarner, Sony and a number of "smaller" music companies (just so, you know, they can show the world they are fair and balanced).

I understand on a personal level Kevin Fayle's above description of the logic behind TimeWarner's penchant for going against no-name publishers and bloggers not as a theory but because it has happened to me thanks to the DMCA, a piece of copyright excressence that was draft by the RIAA and which has TimeWarner as one of its largest funders. And each time they have come for me it has not been for infringing TimeWarner's copyright. No. That's the easy excuse they throw on their cease and desist letters. They have attacked me because I used either one of their logos or content in articles critical of their corporate tactics and their penchant for dismissing the Fair Use clause. Which is why I believe the DMCA and trademark laws are not used to protect copyright but to kill the freedom of speech that is not in favor of their company and the freedom of the press they don't own.

So this postal rate increase is not happening in a vaccum. Online or off, freedom of the press and therefore freedom of expression are under attack by companies like TimeWarner who see this freedom as a threat to their profits.

It is exactly why TimeWarner wants to get rid of net neutrality.

The Nation's financial predicament with the TimeWarner drafted postal hike is a foreshadow of things to come if the big media company and it's cronies get away with charging itemized fees for each click, each pageview, each moment of activity on the net. To them my blogging and your reading it are lost opportunities to charge us for the privilege unrestricted access to the internet by users of either AOL or TimeWarner's Road Runner internet access service.

There are many other big media companies out there doing the same, but TimeWarner-AOL is in the enviable position (along with Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp) to have it’s corporate tentacles in all publishing platforms --from print to TV to radio to internet to digital media. Their reach is incredible, their business strategy is proving to be extensive and their lobbying money thoroughly expansive.

Yet, what is at the heart of this post is how The Nation’s TimeWarner induced $500,000 deficit crystallized for me how thoroughly wrong net activists have been articulating the net neutrality meme. I think a lot of people have been focusing on either the technology (in the same way big media has gone about with copyright of digital media) or on the business end (in the much the same way big media has gone about with bulk mail and bulk email postage).

Net neutrality activists have been focusing on technicalities that most people don't identify with --packets and bits. On the other hand, a postage increase of half-a-million dollar is something everybody who has had to buy a stamp idenfies with. The same goes with an internet bill looking more like an itemized phone bill --along with its price increases.

I believe this bulk mail rate increase is a fantastic opportunity for political bloggers to bring two seemingly disimilar issues --postage and net neutrality-- into the sharper focus of the dangers of media monopolies.

We are the new independent publishers. We are the new small media companies. If we don't act now, we are looking down the barrel of a pay-per-use of our constitutional rights online and off. What's next? Haliburton drafting war plans for the Pentagon, PFizer drafting drug approval guidelines for the FDA and VeriSign writing themselves out of any privacy protection laws?

I don't have to convince the cynics we are already there.

So what can you do?

1. Blog or diary about this and make sure you come back to this post and leave me a link --I have requested The Nation to link back to all the blogs that join in on this blogswarm.

2. Use the send link at the bottom of this post and send it to every blogger you think will be interested in writing about this issue and tell them to leave us a link.

3. Click on the buttons to DIGG, DELICIOUS, REDDIT and submit this post. I don't have the link to netscape, but please feel free to submit it to it to Netscape's Politics section.

Whatever you do, make sure you let me know here what you've done so I add you to the list of supporting bloggers and readers.

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