Friday, June 15, 2007 was a very special day for community in Chicago and for Chicago community media. The Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop convened a Community Media Summit with the launch of the Benton Media Scan - What's Going on in Community Media a report by Fred Johnson of the University of Massachusetts, Boston with Karen Menichelli, Benton Foundation.

Julia Stasch, Chair of Mayor Daley's Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide released it's official report at the summit - the Chicago Report on Digital Excellence.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Oct. 18 2006. A community panel organized by Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society and the Broadband Institute of California urged greater public participation in planning broadband networks that are being commissioned by local governments around the country. The panel also asserted that truly equal access to municipal broadband can only be achieved by providing underserved groups -- seniors, low-income, rural residents, the disabled, and non-English speakers -- a free or discounted tier of service with the same speed, privacy, and security available to households that pay full price.

Internet and Media policy are one and the same. We're witness to a convergence of platforms and the emergence of Internet ubiquity.

Our laws regulating media and communications are out of date. New paradigms have emerged and we're only beginning to see what is possible with communications technology of the past decade.

But in that admission that our laws are "out of date" we must distinguish between the fictions of technical exigency and the broad civic values that should establish the frame of the law.

The arguments of business and technical exigency rest upon particular investments and in interpretations of the technologically possible and they do not serve the business community at large. They establish systems of self-reference and produce the illusion of verification. They are extremely time-bound, and tend to constrain innovation and reconfiguration, establishing barriers to market entry and healthy competition.

As most of you are aware, the COPE Act (HR 5252) emerged from committee without the hoped for Network Neutrality language proposed by Rep. Markey.

I highly recommend that you review materials at Save Access, and take the actions requested on their top node, today. Please also reach out through your networks, asking others to take action. Unless the legislation is significantly modified, fundamental Internet principles such as Anti-Discrimination or Network Neutrality will be cast aside. Community Access networks are likewise at stake. Local governments, where the public has the greatest hope for accountability will no longer be able assure full service coverage in their communities. Read up on the materials at Save Access Readings and other sources such as the Benton Foundation, Common Cause or Save the Internet Coalition.

I can report back from quite a succesful summit put together by our very own Sascha Meinrath of CUWiN. This was the second such summit convened by Sascha. I dutifully served as requested on two panel sessions that we gladly opened to a general discussion in short order. I spoke more from a frame of community networking than anything else, as my time is mostly spent considering these issue in Illinois context, and organizing with others in Illinois to promote community networking principles and dialogue around them. I was pleased to have others in the community networking and technology sectors present to deepen the points I was most committed to, especially the Ohio gang: Bill Callahan and Angela Stuber. As my experience at the conference was fairly narrow I'd rather open it up to the several other AFCN folk to offer their comments, and for Sascha to summarize his own summit, along with links and references to how you can partake of the proceedings after the fact….