Revision of PDF2007 Podcast : Net Neutrality is a civil rights issue from 22 May 2007 - 1:11pm

Last saturday I facilitated a session at the Personal Democracy Unconference, which took place at Pace University's downtown NYC campus.

To those who don't know what means unconference, the concept is an interesting take on the old formula. People come in with a topic or set of topics they'd like to talk about. All the topics are placed written on a piece of paper and placed on the wall, next to an empty schedule grid. Once the organizers give it a go, facilitators place on their preferred time slot and/or negotiate with other facilitators the timing of their session.

The session I facilitated was titled, Reframing Net Neutrality as a Civil Rights Issues. I honestly wasn't expecting more than a few people but was amazed when about a dozen strong came to the corner where I was set up. Nancy Scola, Aldon Hines, Cheryl Contee, Ruby Sinreich, Ed Cone, Heather Holdridge and so many other amazing people came to discuss this important issue that has been amazingly bogged down by too much geek speak.

What's at the core of Net Neutrality? There's people who can put this better than me, but at the heart of the debate is the issue that internet providers should have the right to distinguish all sorts of bandwidth usage in order to better manage their resources and provide better service. The concern is that companies like YouTube may literally clog the internets and it's tubes.

The problem with this discussion is manifold, most of it in the technology front. What has been absent from the debate between network engineers and assorted geeks is the potential impact bandwidth or traffic discrimination may have on the rights of US citizens to use freely the net. In other words, not much has been done to clarify how our civil liberties offline will be kept intact online --without cable or telecoms availing themselves of their rights to trade secrets to infringe on Americans rights to free speech, free assembly, due process or the right to privacy online.

So what you will hear is the raw and unedited capture of this conversation. We didn't come out with too many answers to the question, "how do you reframe it?" But we all agreed it was one of the most satifying discussions about the intersections between technology, politics, culture and the law that any of us had had in a long time.

Hope you enjoy it too.

UPDATE!
There seems to be some issues streaming the audio. Right click it to download the whole MP3.

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