Recently, Creative Voices joined the Benton Foundation in urging the FCC to adopt a visionary blueprint for a National Broadband Plan, modeled on our report, AN ACTION PLAN FOR AMERICA: Using Technology and Innovation to Address Our Nation’s Critical Challenges. The ACTION PLAN proposes that President Barack Obama take immediate action to connect the nation to broadband, which will unleash billions of dollars in economic development, create over a million jobs, enhance America’s global competitiveness, deliver superior health care and education, reduce energy consumption and environmental degradation, improve public safety and homeland security, and reinvigorate democracy. (More»)

CV Applauds FCC Decision to Sanction Comcast and Promote Open Internet for All
Creative Voices applauds today’s FCC decision to protect and promote an open Internet where consumers have the freedom to access the lawful Internet content of their choice and use the lawful applications of their choice. The FCC decision today marked an important victory in the battle over whether consumers will have the freedom to enjoy the full Internet, or whether they will they be restricted to visiting sites approved by – or in business with – the cable, telephone, or media conglomerate “gatekeeper” that provides broadband Internet access.

Because extreme media consolidation and concentration have eliminated so many independent voices and visions from America’s mainstream media, a growing number of creative artists now share their video, music, and creative visions directly with their audience over the Internet. Today’s FCC decision protects these artists from discrimination by broadband providers, promoting more independent and diverse voices in our media. (More»)

Does Big Media's One-Two Punch Knock Out the Internet?
The recent opening of Hulu.com and the MPAA's vehement denunciation of net neutrality are intimately related, a double-barreled shot aimed at the heart of the open Internet. With its back-to-back denunciation of Net Neutrality and its launch of Hulu as its anointed site for streaming TV, films, and video, Big Media's goal is nothing less than to turn today's wide open Internet into a closed system more akin to cable television. The likely result: as we've documented in cable, independent and diverse voices and their content will be inexorably marginalized or silenced.

To prevent this Big Media alliance with Big Cable/Telco from cornering and controlling the Internet, it is time for the government to implement reasonable network neutrality oversight that protects consumers and content creators, and preserves the open Internet we enjoy today. (More»)

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We look forward to returning to the Second Circuit, at the Supreme Court's invitation, to now try the question of whether the FCC's decision to censor Fox Television for these fleeting expletives violated the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. (More»)

CV Applauds Overturning of FCC's Janet Jackson Fine
Creative Voices applauds today’s ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals that the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency decision and $550,000 fine against CBS in the Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime case were “arbitrary and capricious,” and therefore unlawful. As both the Third Circuit in this case and the Second Circuit in last year’s Fox v. FCC case (Cher and Nicole Ritchie “fleeting expletives”) found, overly broad FCC decisions on what constitutes “indecency” that arbitrarily overturn decades of Commission precedent put creative, challenging, controversial, non-homogenized broadcast television programming at risk. In many cases, the programs censored are the very programs that parents want their children to watch. (More»)

CV Files Brief Seeking Reversal of FCC NYPD Blue Fine
Creative Voices asked the Second Circuit to do what it did last year in Fox v. FCC: reverse yet another arbitrary and capricious FCC indecency decision that puts creative, challenging, controversial, non-homogenized broadcast television programming at risk.

As the Court found in reversing the FCC’s decision in Fox, the Commission’s enforcement of its indecency rules has been vague, arbitrary, insufficiently attuned to the context and quality of the program, and bears no relation to “contemporary community standards,” as the Commission’s own rules require. The FCC’s decision in NYPD Blue suffers from the same flaws and the court should reverse it as well. (More»)

All Americans will benefit from fast, reliable, affordable, universal and open broadband access to the Internet. Our Report, The Case for Universal Broadband in America: Now! tells why. (More»)

BIG CHILL: How the FCC's Indecency Decisions Stifle Free Expression, Threaten Quality Television, and Harm America's Children
The title says it all. Creative Voices filed these non-legalistic, highly readable comments with the FCC in the networks' appeal of several indecency decisions. Take a look. (More»)

Creative Voices' Comments to FCC in 2006 Media Ownership Proceeding
Misguided FCC media ownership policies harm competition, diversity of viewpoints, and localism – the Commission’s key policy goals in regulating media ownership – and prevent the American public from receiving better broadcast television, the Center for Creative Voices in Media told the Commission in comments filed today. Read the Comments and our Press Release. (More»)