Now we're hearing from Public Knowledge and the Center for Digital Democracy. They're talking about the domination of telco companies, the difficulties in keeping the internet free and open, the need to bridge the digital divide, to insure community/non-profit access. If the previous was about content and culture, this seems about access and infrastructure.

The legal battles are fundimental:

• Will we have the right to recieve and distribute whatever TCP/IP packets we want, or will this be controlled by the company which controls your last mile? Comcast wants to block independent media distribution which competes with on-demand service.
• Will we have the right to make Fair Use of digital cultural projects? Right now it's technically illegal to make a series of clips from a bunch of DVDs and play them for a class. "God forbid if you put it on the internet."
• Will we be able to freely innovate? The FCC wants to force technology creators who make products which create video (and audio) to get approval from them. It's totalitarian if you think about it, but it's true.
• Will we have the right to choose how we access the world of information? The telcos want to prevent communities and municipalities from providing internet access more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Sometimes the political alliances which address these issues are unexpected. A lot of the time republicans are our allies on these issues; it touches on the conservative values of freedom and free markets.

Building it up on the local level is important -- getting people at the table with their cable companies, building municipal broadband -- but it's important to take the fight national, because congress could pre-empt it all.

The converstion moving now to strategies, the importance of telling stories comes up. My own observation is that success in this arena is going to require building a national narrative that is more compelling and powerful than the campaign contributions of the telcos and industry lobbies like the MPAA and RIAA. It's there. We have the moral high ground in this struggle, but in order to mobilize this we will need to consciously construct a message.

As I'm typing this, other people are saying the same things. I'm no smarter than anyone else here, which is nice.

The conversation is turning now to action and participation; tactical maneuvers. The need to turn stories into legal affidavits for court cases. Art is talking about the need to be informed, but what can we do to go beyond "informed?"