AIM Faculty News: Free Press

When not teaching the Information Architecture course for AIM, Neal Bastek serves as Web Director for Free Press, where he oversees websites and assists with outreach campaigns and online communications. Free Press, a national, non-partisan organization, working to reform the media, promotes diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications.

In mid-May, Neal said, "Our organization effectively started the network neutrality debate three years ago and stopped the redrafting of the Telecommunications Act in 2006, because of our opposition to a bill without strong net neutrality provisions for the Internet. It is very likely that a stand-alone net neutrality bill will be introduced in the senate in the next few weeks."

Review the Free Press campaign around the net neutrality issue: http://savetheinternet.com/

Neal also said that Free Press was "somewhat successful" in securing broadband deployment monies in the recent stimulus plan for Internet deployment, particularly in rural and other underserved communities. They continue to work to ensure that net neutrality and other openness provisions are attached to the subsidies.

In another campaign, Free Press is pushing for a national broadband strategy in two ways, designed to put this issue front and center: an ongoing national campaign to secure public input for the strategy: http://www.internetforeveryone.org/, and a policy summit hosted on May 14 in Washington, D.C., http://www.freepress.net/summit. Free Press plans to post transcripts as well as audio and video footage of the summit for public viewing on their website.

POSTED: May 19, 2009
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