This blog is the home of an independent project started and maintained by David Weinberger. It documents the FCC’s Broadband Strategy initiative that is fulfilling a Congressional mandate to come up with a national broadband strategy by February 17, 2010.

This is an independent project. No one is being paid anything for it, except for the producer and editor of the videos, Sean Fitzroy, whose very modest fees were partially covered by the Supernova Conference. (Supernova paid for the first four episodes; that’s why you see some references to Supernova in the banners, etc.) The FCC has no official involvement in this except (and this is an important exception) they have agreed to make appropriate people available for video interviews, and they shoot the video of that person’s side of the interview at the FCC headquarters. I edit and post the videos. (Well, Sean does.) The FCC does not review the content and has no say over the content. (Nevertheless, the access the FCC is providing inevitably does affect me.)

All of the videos are in the public domain. You do not need to ask permission to use them, mash them up, etc.

How this got started

I met Blair Levin, the initiative’s director, and offered to help in any way I can because I very much want to see the open Internet made as near to universally accessible as possible. A few weeks later, Blair called and suggested that I do a weekly video. I liked the idea, looked around for an organization that would help pay the production costs, and said yes.

My politics

My aim in this series is to ask the questions the public (and an educated public) would want asked. Inevitably, my own political commitments will enter in. That most basic commitment is: I love the Internet. I want it to remain as open to ideas and innovation as possible. I want it spread as far and wide as it can go. I support Net neutrality — not allowing those who carry the bits to decide which bits have priority — although I am not entirely dogmatic or doctrinaire about it. I personally would like to see a structural separation between those who provide access to the Internet and those who provide content and services over the Internet.

I consider myself to be fairly pragmatic about these issues and prefer making common cause to denouncing those with whom I disagree.

Supernova

The Supernova conference is put on by Kevin Werbach, a professor at Wharton and an ex-FCC guy. The conference is one of the rare places that the different sides in the political debate get together. Supernova’s sponsorship of this project consisted of them paying the first four episodes’ fees of the person who puts the videos together – Sean Fitzroy – and hosting a page about the project. They also promote the project by linking to it from their site. They have no editorial input into the process.

Moi moi moi

For more about me, see my personal blog’s disclosure page.