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Justine Bateman, 'Drunk College Students' Team Up to Save the Internet
This week's Senate Committee Hearing on the Future of the Internet featured notable speakers on both sides of the net neutrality debate including Stanford Prof. Lawrence Lessig, FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin, Patric Verrone, President of the WGA-West, and Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition.
And Justine Bateman, aka Jason's sister, aka Mallory Keaton.
What is Ms. Bateman's interest and/or expertise in the Net Neutrality debate? "I have acted in
many projects, from TV’s 'Family Ties’ to more recently, 'Desperate Housewives,' and
I am a founding partner of FM78.tv, a new on-line media venture," she explained in a statement (.pdf) before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology.
FM78.tv, is a joke of a site with horribly pixelated images and the classy banner pictured above. You'd think the joke was on Bateman if she didn't mention it herself -- three times before a full senate committee.
This was the best Hollywood could do? Was Alex P. Keaton not available?
Bateman's testimony included statistics relevant to the pro-neutrality argument: more people are creating more content; revenues from online content is rising; the Internet is propelled by our freedoms. But her personal take on things are a bit flighty -- her 1,000-word testimony includes allusions to ducks that used to swim in her pool and the Tower of Babel ("[t]he fear was that 'now nothing they propose to do will be
withheld from them.' [Gen 11:4]").
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You can watch Bateman's testimony at 1:51:15 into this video (Real player only).
Jef Pearlman attended the hearing and took extensive notes on the Public Knowledge blog including this capsule regarding Internet and the writers' strike:
Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West, talked extensively about the history of media consolidation and about how last year the guild "used the Internet to win the Internet" during the writer's strike. [1:46:10] Because the corporations that employed the writers were the same that controlled traditional media, the Internet was the only real way to get the message out - and in the end, they succeeded.
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