1. Netflix ISP rankings show Verizon and Comcast speeds falling (Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOm)
2. Feb. 11 Is ‘The Day We Fight Back’ against NSA surveillance (Alexis Kleinman / Huffington Post)
3. Old media outlets collude with politicians to punish media startups (David Sirota / PandoDaily)
4. Hulu signs CBS deal to bring 2,600 new episodes to Hulu Plus (Nick Summers / The Next Web)
5. Apple loses latest bid to block e-books antitrust monitor (Nate Raymond & Joseph Ax / Reuters)
#3 is of major interest. Commenting is difficult on that site so I’ll say it here: While access is vital, old media also are in collusion with politicians on two things that make a difference regarding money, without which no media engine runs, new or old – (1) legal notices (it’s a crime that they are still largely tethered, for outrageous sums, to “newspapers” that have fewer readers than other sources which could and should be running them instead) and (2) tax rates (here in WA, print operations pay a fraction of the taxes online-only operations pay – and our market-leading news publication shares a tax classification with advertising agencies and gambling operations; I wouldn’t mind paying that higher rate as long as the environmentally-unfriendlier physical-product-producing news orgs paid it too!) – Tracy