John Soderling unpacks his boot at the Valley River Inn in Eugene after arriving from San Francisco, California in his 1957 Austin Healy 100-6; he drove up the Coast Highway to Eugene for the 4oth Annual West Coast Austin Healy Rendezvous. Photo by: Evan Sernoffsky

By: Jason Williams

The West Coast Austin Healy Rendezvous has found its way to Eugene for 2010; the cars can be seen doing tours throughout the Willamette Valley with a car show scheduled for tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Norma Pfeiffer Park in Coburg.

The annual rendezvous is in its 40th year with 125 cars registered for the event. “This is the largest gathering we have had in sometime,” says event coordinator Charlie Frazer. “Some drivers have come from as far away as 4000 miles to get here. Eugene provides us with a good central location and lots to do.”

Members of the Rendezvous come from as far away as Miami, Florida and as close as Eugene. Michael Dewilde drove his Healy down from Vancouver, British Columbia, “It was wet when we left and it got hotter and warmer as we got farther south, just what we hoped for.”

Planned events for the car club include the car show tomorrow, a winery tour, a covered bridge tour, and a tour to the Thompson Grain Mill in Shedd.

Lindsey Kalaiwaa catches up with World Cup action on ESPN.com during the lunch hour at the University of Oregon's Erb Memorial Union.

This post was originally written by me for Reporting 1 at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. You can also read it on the blog for that class here.

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup well underway in Cape Town, South Africa the entire world is rejoicing and grimacing(mostly over the sound of the vuvuzela) together at last, including college students here at the University of Oregon even though it means getting up before the sunshine because of the 9 hour time difference.

UO Senior Ryan Bordeaux has kept up with the games throughout the day mostly via live streaming video on ESPN3.com, “My laptop sits by the side of my bed, my alarm goes off (at 4 A.M.) and I turn on the game.”

Getting up early isn’t for all people though, “I know it’s happening, I haven’t been watching though,” says Lyle Ming on his way to his afternoon summer class.

However, one thing for sure is the fact that Americans are finally catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to being fans of soccer. The recent match between the United States and Slovenia broke the ratings records for ESPN and became the most watched Soccer telecast ever for the network.

While Bordeaux and Ming are two extremes, it is the Internet fan that stands out when looking at the growth in popularity of the World Cup in the United States. These fans are the ones that have kept up to date via the Internet, Twitter.com has been subject to outages because of high rates of tweets on the games and a Google search for “World Cup Web Traffic” reveals several articles about the spike in Internet traffic since the games have begun.

The World Cup has been a once every four-year worldwide event since 1930, with the first matches being kicked up in Uruguay (the home country was also the champion). The United States hosted the tournament for the first and only time in 1994, which acted as a catalyst for the rise in popularity for soccer in America, when World Cup attendance records were set due to the larger stadiums in the U.S.

You can keep up with World Cup fever online by doing a Twitter.com search #WorldCup or with live video and replays via ESPN.com/worldcup.

Paul Wright, lead singer and guitarist for Rootdown, takes a photo on his iPhone during a concert at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. The band will post the photo to their facebook page and allow fans to "tag" or label themselves in the image.

“Musicians need the Internet like oxygen, you can’t really do anything now without it,” says Casey Rae-Hunter, Communications Director for the Future of Music Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The Internet has become a tool of innovation for musicians over the past decade. With digital music sales growing from just 20 Million dollars in 2003 to 4.2 Billion dollars in 2009, musicians have been able to deliver their music to your ears at a lower cost than ever before and independent musicians especially are able to deliver content right next to their biggest influences and biggest competitors.

Much of this growth has been spurred on from the little known and truly vague set of voluntary principles known as Network Neutrality, the idea that Internet users should be able to access any web content and applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet Service Provider (ISP).

These principles have been voluntary since their inception by the Federal Communication Commission in 2005 as part of a broadband deployment policy statement. In October of 2009, under new leadership appointed by President Barack Obama, the FCC proposed a set of rules that would make the voluntary guidelines law. This new set of rules establishes the Internet as not just a tool but a piece of the American infrastructure.

The Internet, born to be open and free for all users, is a tightly controlled network of wires and servers owned by a small handful of companies – Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint just to name a few. These companies have made it their mission to provide access to a vast amount of information, from basics like email to more complex streaming high definition television shows and even more complex bit-torrent files, many of which contain illegal content.

Content is where the music industry has been the most involved. According the International Foundation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) overall music market has actually decreased by negative 30% while overall albums sold has risen nearly 940%.

But these figures represent the major recording industry and they are using them to argue that the new rules would open the floodgates for piracy, the act of illegally downloading music siding with ISP’s as opponents to the rules since the ISP’s are the gatekeepers that control and have the ability to censor content.

What the figures do not represent is the legions of independent musicians that because of Network Neutrality have flourished without the need to sign contracts with a major recording label, but instead doing much of the footwork themselves or through the help of an agent.

Examples of these new business models can be found all over the Internet. Rootdown is a band from Corvallis, Oregon that has seen success from their ability to connect with fans and sell their music the same way they would if they were on a major label thanks to many free or cheap services that allow them to do so.

“We will tweet out ‘two tickets under the name Charles Barkley,’ sometimes before shows for anyone that wants to come to a show for free,” says Rootdown bassist Jackson Michelson.

Twitter.com is just one of many places where the band has built their fan base. Just starting out the band decided that instead of selling their first album they would give it away for free. They were able to launch a website and a free MySpace page to promote the album and within just a few months were able to build a list of over 15,000 email addresses.

The band has come to rely on services like Facebook, Twitter, iTunes and many more online tools to build their business in a way that has brought them airplay on national radio stations and brought thousands of people to concerts all across the United States.

Rootdown has used the Internet to level the playing field, it has become their “oxygen,” and a big reason for this is because the Internet as it is right now is free and open.

These models encourage a relationship with fans  to connect with artists through social networking. Network Neutrality has allowed for this innovation to happen. But according to FMC and organizations like Free Press it could all come to an end.

“Without these principles we would be sent into the dark-ages,” says Rae-Hunter. “If Internet Service Providers are allowed to charge what they want and send people to whatever websites they want, the user may never realize it, but independent content providers would be devastated.”

The Internet is becoming a strong competitor in the content delivery market. It is slowly replacing cable television with services like Hulu and Fancast bringing on demand television content in High Definition and rapidly replacing how we get our music with music discover sites like Pandora and Last.Fm.

User-ship in the United States encompasses 74% of the population, and those are only users with high-speed or broadband access. Those numbers are only sure to grow too, with the recent delivery of a National Broadband Plan to Congress by the FCC meant to speed up and spread broadband Internet to those that do and don’t have access.

These principles are at risk though; the Telecommunications industry is quietly pouring millions of dollars into Washington to waiver their opinion that the rules are unnecessary.

“Tell me exactly what it means and what problem we’re solving that requires an act of government,” says Comcast CEO Brian Roberts during an interview with Jon Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit, an internet conference held annually in San Francisco, CA. “The idea that we’re not going to have an open Internet is just not realistic.”

The rules don’t make everyone happy though. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, is fighting to change the Network Neutrality rules to not include what they are calling “a loophole for copyright enforcement.”

This is seen as a loophole because it give a green light to ISP’s, allowing them the ability to slow down or cut-off traffic based on its content, not making network neutrality completely neutral. But for musicians and artists that are represented by FMC, this “loophole”  is there protection against those that would seek to illegally share their intellectual property.

Network Neutrality is an issue that is still in development as rules and laws are passed in Washington. But what will never come into question is the fact that the Internet has provided a way for musicians to become the artists that they want to be, no longer is there a need to lose the rights to your music for the sake of making a living.

Free stuff rocks!

That is exactly the reaction that Paul Wright and his band Rootdown were hoping to get when they decided to give out their first album out for free via digital download on their website in 2007. It is a strategy that has been popularized by bands like Radiohead and Coldplay, but the difference is Rootdown is an independent band that could barely afford to make the album they were giving away for free.

The thousands of dollars in cost of giving away those albums has proven to be a positive for Wright and the band, which is benefiting three years later, by selling out shows throughout the West Coast and is launching their first headlining tour across Northwest college campuses this Spring.

In an industry that has recently been slowed by piracy and lower sales, down 30% since 2004, Rootdown is seeing success by staying local and independent.

Wright has been in the industry as a signed solo artist for the better half of a decade. His songs are still being played throughout the Christian radio market. Signed in 2001 to Gotee Records, Wright’s has used his time as a solo-artist to develop perspective that works for him now as the lead for an independent band.

“Being independent allows you to control your music. You can produce what you want and how you want it to connect with your fans. Really much of the money to be made is in doing live shows, so if you can get people to those shows that is how you make money,” says Wright.

Giving away that first EP album gave the band a mailing list that of 15,000 people, a solid fan base for a band that is just starting. Throughout the past few years they have also been able to get radio airplay and spread their music throughout the web — something that they have managed tightly.

Web and music technology has changed the face of the music industry as a whole. Social Networking and Music Discovery services allow artists to have their music played in the same playlist as their biggest influences, for Rootdown and Wright these means being in the same playlist as Bob Marley and Sublime.

Wright checks his personal and the bandsTwitter and Facebook accounts constantly with his iPhone. “Being connected makes you so much more likeable,” says Wright. He believes that it is much more likely a fan will come to a show if a friend has invited them.

Those relationships mean a lot in an industry that has seen its fair share of big stars that seem almost untouchable. The Internet has been a big reason these guys are able to make music. Without it Wright might be working at instead of writing about his favorite burrito joint, “Burrito Boy.”

Communications Director at the Future of Music Coalition (FMC). “The Internet has changed all of that, now you can have your independent music right next to the major label stuff in the iTunes store.”

“My music is huge in Norway right now,” says Rae-Hunter, a musician in addition to his duties as communications director at FMC.

The Internet is a place that allows artists to sell and share their music through the world and break into markets that five years ago would have been unimaginable. The FMC wants to be sure it stays that way, by supporting those that are just scraping by.

The future of music has never been in a more exciting place than right now. The past ten years have brought us new ways to discover artists through social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, and free streaming radio services like Pandora Radio and Last.Fm that bring commercial free music to your iPhone or computer.

All of these discoveries have brought changes to how revenue streams are produced. No longer can an artist solely make money by producing albums and having their songs and videos played on MTV and the radio.

Ten years ago a group of musicians, artists, as well as legal and technological experts recognized all these new forms of digitized revenue. The group also noticed how much artist could benefit, artist that at the time were struggling to even be heard. These needs to educate and empower artists lead to the founding of the Future of Music Coalition; a think-tank of individuals that educates, researches, and fights for musicians and artists in public policy decisions that are made in Washington, D.C.

The FMC has been giving a voice to many who have seemingly not had a voice. The music industry has seen incredible consolidation over the past ten years with now only six conglomerations owning a vast majority of the media outlets in the United States.

As the Internet continues to grow FMC continues to fight. With the rise of the Internet, illegal file sharing through technology known as peer-2-peer technology has risen drastically. Piracy has eaten into revenue streams and has dug into the pockets of the industry.

However FMC is currently making its voice and its supporters voices heard as new rules are drafted by the Federal Communications Commissionconcerning the Internet. That voice is in support of what is being called Network Neutrality, a free and open Internet that does not allow Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) the ability to discriminate traffic that they see as more or less important.

The FMC isn’t fighting for a completely open Internet though. They still want the rules to apply only to lawful content, protecting the intellectual property of the creators. The ISP’s would rather these rules didn’t exist at all and are using the idea that Network Neutrality would allow rampant piracy to object to the rule-making process.

In 2007 FMC started their “Rock the Net” campaign, bringing awareness to consumers and artists about the need to protect their right to use the Internet. The campaign has brought bands from across the nation together and even has sent delegates to Capitol Hill to lobby for support for an open and free platform on the Internet.