Media

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced August 10th that a 21-day comment period has opened for the public to submit comments regarding ICANN's proposed policy for approving new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) on the Internet.

Most progressives already know that the nation's media is in the hands of the few, the rich, the white, and the male. We know that local control of the airwaves and newspapers is as rare as a "fair and balanced" Fox news report, and as tenuous as Cheney's stuttering heart. We know that to create any lasting and systemic social change - out with the old, in with the bold - we must take back the media that we've lost.

Most people have never heard of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, but the number who have may be about to grow significantly.

A "David and Goliath" battle is being waged in Washington over zip codes and the names of companies offering high-speed Internet access. A non-profit organization is seeking access to records that detail the companies that offer broadband access in every zip code to include in a public database of media services. But the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with the backing of telephone and cable companies, is keeping consumers lost by not releasing an accurate map of broadband Internet deployment in the United States.

Five days before journalists converged in Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, another independent media publication fell. After thirteen years of producing cutting-edge content, Punk Planet announced that "the final issue… is in the post." With so many additional independent outlets dipping their toes in financial mires, nervous journalists traveling to Detroit last weekend were looking to each other for answers.

Throughout the process of increasing voter and citizen participation and electoral democracy, the Venezuelan opposition and their allies in the U.S. press have told us that authoritarianism was just around the corner. They now say it has arrived.