Free Press

Sprint and T-Mobile have begun preliminary talks to work toward a merger. The deal, if approved, would join the third- and fourth-largest US wireless companies, which together would serve 132 million subscribers.

Free Press' Craig Aaron said, “While we need more competition in the mobile-internet market, it's undeniable that these moves have given people more choice and fairer prices. That never would have happened had the Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s T-Mobile takeover or signaled to Sprint a willingness to approve a merger like this one in 2014. The competition between Sprint and T-Mobile is particularly important for lower-income families, many of whom rely on mobile as their only home-internet connection. If Sprint and T-Mobile merge, prices will spike and the digital divide will widen. The legal standard for approving giant mergers like this is not whether Wall Street likes it. Communications mergers must enhance competition and serve the public interest. This deal would do just the opposite: It would destroy competition and harm the public in numerous irreversible ways. So unless Ajit Pai wants his tenure at the FCC to go down as the worst for consumers in the agency’s 83-year history, the chairman should speak out and show us he’s willing to do more than rubber-stamp any harmful deal that crosses his desk.”

Free Press and a coalition of media-rights groups petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to stay its ruling reinstating an obsolete television-ownership rule. The rule in question, called the “UHF discount,” allows broadcasters to exceed the national ownership cap by discounting the actual population coverage of their UHF broadcast stations for purposes of calculating their stations’ reach.

The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai voted in April to put this rule back on the books to pave the way for runaway broadcast-industry consolidation, like the Sinclair-Tribune merger that was announced earlier this week. These conglomerates hope to exploit the discount to leap over the 39 percent national audience-reach cap Congress put in place. In their petition to the agency, Common Cause, Free Press, Media Alliance, Media Mobilizing Project, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc. explain that this is a dangerous outcome stemming from a bad agency decision. The UHF discount is a technically obsolete loophole that allows the FCC to underestimate the true reach of broadcast companies. It’s technically obsolete because while UHF stations once had weaker signals, today stations broadcasting on these channels actually have better signals thanks to the Digital TV transition that occurred a decade ago. As the groups’ filing makes clear, “Reinstatement of the UHF discount opens the door for rapid and massive consolidation despite a congressional directive that there should be a limit on the scope of national ownership.”

[Commentary] In addition to the US, Canada was also all abuzz with Network Neutrality news last week, and for the completely opposite reason: Our communications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), released a landmark decision that planted a flag for Net Neutrality, bolstering the future of online innovation, competition and affordable choice and allowing residents to meaningfully participate in today’s digital society.

There are two key takeaways from this decision that should give Net Neutrality advocates and internet users in the United States some hope: First, public input was crucial to this victory.Over 55,000 people made their views known to the Commission in one way or another, and the CRTC took note. Second, persistence pays off. This fight isn’t a sprint or a marathon. It’s more like an obstacle course where you emerge exhausted and covered in mud — but know the effort was worth it. There’s always another battle to struggle through, but each one still takes you forward, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.

[Cynthia Khoo is a Toronto-based lawyer working on internet policy and digital rights, including acting as external counsel to OpenMedia.]

April 29 marked the end of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, I wrote about how Free Press would approach this era: “This isn’t a time to tinker around the edges. There is no compromise or engagement strategy that can meet these serious threats. The only option is resistance.” We launched our 100 Days of Disruption campaign the day Trump was inaugurated. Thousands of you did something daily as part of this effort to resist Trumpism (which goes beyond the man to all those enabling him or exploiting this political moment).

ogether we’ve fought back, stood up for communities under attack, experimented with new forms of activism and built new alliances across the resistance. As we enter the next 100 days, the need to resist is no less urgent. And the attacks in Free Press’ corner of the world — at the intersection of media, technology and democracy — have only intensified. In the weeks ahead, you’ll see us resisting and refocusing on the issues and in the areas where we can make the greatest difference and our allies need us the most.

While unveiling his plan to dismantle network neutrality and defang the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Ajit Pai spent a good chunk of April 26’s speech defaming Free Press. Instead of making the case for his new policies, Chairman Pai recycled some out-of-context quotes to red-bait one of our co-founders and dismiss our decade-plus efforts to safeguard the open internet.

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for Chairman Pai’s policies and his fondness for falsehoods. And we’ve long sparred with him in the press and corrected his lies. But we’ve gotten some questions about what Chairman Pai said. So I thought I’d clear up the record.

Note: This is an updated version of an older post. Due to the Trump Administration's recent attacks on network neutrality, we felt it was important to resurface these important examples of what happens when cable and phone companies are left to their own devices. For years a lineup of phone- and cable-industry spokespeople has called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” The principle that protects free speech and innovation online is irrelevant, they claim, as blocking has never, ever happened. And if it did, they add, market forces would compel internet service providers to correct course and reopen their networks.

In reality, many providers both in the United States and abroad have violated the principles of net neutrality — and they plan to continue doing so in the future. This history of abuse revealed a problem that the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality protections solved. Those rules are now under threat from Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, who is determined to hand over control of the internet to massive internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s playbook to curb free speech and silence dissenting voices goes far beyond his Twitter rants and his verbal attacks on the press. The president’s appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, unveiled his plan to kill network neutrality at a closed-door FreedomWorks-sponsored event.

It’s appropriate that Chairman Pai made this announcement at a gathering sponsored by a telecom-funded organization that played a key role in elevating the racist Tea Party movement. His plan will allow powerful corporations to silence the voices of everyday people — especially people of color — who struggle to be heard. But these are surroundings Chairman Pai is comfortable in. He’s a former Verizon lawyer and a former Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a hero to White nationalists. And now Pai will carry out Trump’s agenda to silence dissenting voices.

Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron joined a press conference with Sens Ed Markey (D–MA), Richard Blumenthal (D–CT) and Ron Wyden (D–OR), as well as Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, to talk about the Trump Federal Communications Commission’s threats to network neutrality.

In his remarks, Aaron said, "In Ajit Pai’s fantasy world, all will be fine if the companies double-pinky-swear not to interfere with online pathways and portals — despite their long history of doing just that. His justification for launching this attack on internet users is the utterly false and repeatedly debunked claim that the FCC rules are dampening investment to build out and improve networks. Do not believe Pai’s alternative facts. The reality is that in the two years since the FCC's 2015 vote, we’ve actually seen an explosion in over-the-top video competition as well as a dramatic increase in next-generation broadband network deployment. Aggregate investments by publicly traded ISPs are up by more than 5 percent since the order came down....The public won’t be fooled by Chairman Pai’s laughable plan or the empty promises of telecom executives. The free and open internet is just too important to our ability to communicate, to organize and to innovate — and we will fight with everything we’ve got against those trying to take it away."

On April 20, the Federal Communications Commission voted to reinstate an obsolete loophole called the UHF discount that will allow broadcast conglomerates to exceed congressionally mandated national TV audience coverage limits. April 21, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest television station conglomerate, announced a $240 million deal to buy 14 television stations owned by Bonten Media Group.

Sinclair is also reported to be in negotiations to buy stations owned by Tribune Media Co., a move that would put Sinclair 30 percentage points over the national broadcast ownership cap, if not for the FCC’s move reinstating the UHF discount. The vote came following press reports by Bloomberg News that Chairman Pai had conducted meetings with Sinclair executives days after the Nov. 8 presidential election. Chairman Pai was subsequently tapped by the Trump administration to lead the agency that oversees broadcast ownership limits. Free Press CEO and President Craig Aaron said, “This is a scandal. Sinclair has been boosting Trump and wooing Pai for months — and it’s paying off in the form of the looser limits Sinclair has long sought on how many TV stations the company can own. Sinclair has a track record of taking over stations, gutting news departments and airing conservative propaganda produced far from the local community."

On April 20, several activists “RickRolled” the Federal Communications Commission’s open meeting to protest FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plans to undermine network neutrality. Singing and dancing along to a recording of the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up," the activists disrupted the agency’s monthly meeting and were escorted from FCC headquarters. “We’re never gonna give up fighting for our online rights,” said Free Press Field Director Mary Alice Crim. “Today’s protest was a reminder to Chairman Pai and his boss Donald Trump that people everywhere love the internet. We will do anything and everything to oppose his efforts to destroy the open internet. More than 4 million took a stand for Net Neutrality in 2015, and we aren’t going to take this sitting down today.”