Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Michael Powell's Contradicting Claims- Powell calls for legislative rethink

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 03:27:30 -0400

Michael Powell's Contradicting Claims

Contributed by Mike Masnick on Wednesday, July 14 2004 @ 12:36am

We've talked in the past about the need to totally rethink spectrum
allocation policy at the FCC, or possibly to rethink the FCC itself. So,
it's good to see FCC chairman Michael Powell state that "Right now,
we're in a terrible position where a company's regulatory treatment is
more a matter of from whence they came rather than what they're really
doing now." By saying this, he's suggesting he recognizes that squeezing
new technologies into old regulations is a recipe for disaster.
Unfortunately, his statements before he got to tech policy completely
contradict this. He talks about the need to bring indecency laws that
now cover broadcast TV to make sure they cover cable TV as well. Leaving
aside the question of why an agency whose mission is to focus on
spectrum allocation should be involved in any sort of question on
indecency, isn't this exactly what he said he didn't want to do with
technology policy? He's trying to squeeze new technology (cable TV) into
old regulations (indecency regulations for over-the-air broadcast TV).

============================================================================

Powell calls for legislative rethink

By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-5268577.html

Story last modified July 13, 2004, 10:25 PM PDT

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Top international tennis players were facing off at
Stanford University on Tuesday for the Bank of the West Classic, but for
a world-class display of volleying, you needed to be next door when FCC
Chairman Michael Powell was relayed a question from Howard Stern.

Powell, making an appearance at the Innovation Summit, produced by media
company Always On Network and conducted at Stanford, smartly backhanded
with a nonanswer about whether the Federal Communications Commission
would do anything about naughty bits uttered by Oprah Winfrey. But he
kept the ball in the air on a rhetorical streak that eventually turned
back to one of his favorite topics: the impossibility of enforcing
ancient media rules in a drastically changed communications environment.

In this particular case, it's the enforcement of decency rules handed
down in 1962, when television signals were a scarce commodity that
needed to be protected for the public good. Those rules still apply to
broadcast channels today, even though 80 percent of U.S. homes get their
TV from cable or satellite systems that also offer hundred of channels
that are relatively uncensored.

"I think this country has a bigger question it doesn't want to deal
with," Powell said. "The notion that the First Amendment changes when
you change channels is odd. It's more than odd--it's dangerous."

A leveling of the treatment broadcast and cable channels receive would
require significant changes in the law, however, and that's unlikely to
happen anytime soon, Powell said. "There really has been a dramatic rise
in the American public complaining about" indecency, he said. "If
Congress is sensitive to anything, it's to that kind...of heightened
concern."

Taking an even broader view, Powell said whole classes of federal
communications policies need to be rethought. Existing laws are largely
meant to regulate single-purpose networks, such as phone lines and
broadcast. With voice, video and other traffic merging on broadband,
cable and other networks, that perspective doesn't work anymore, Powell
said.

"Right now, we're in a terrible position where a company's regulatory
treatment is more a matter of from whence they came rather than what
they're really doing now," he said.

New policies will have to look more at underlying technology than
applications, Powell said, because applications will continue to evolve
and multiply.

Still, rushing into wholesale rewriting of communications policy could
be even worse than the status quo, Powell warned. "It's a brave new
world, and it's important for us to get it right," he said. "I'm
extremely passionate in my belief that getting this right under-girds
whether the United States is as great a country in the 21st century as
it was in the 20th."

On brighter notes, Powell hailed the Wi-Fi boom as an entirely unplanned
offshoot of federal decisions not to bother with certain chunks of the
public airwaves, in this case the 800 band.

"The government threw out that unlicensed bandwidth because they thought
it was garbage; they though it was the domain of baby monitors,
microwave ovens and little remote-control cars," he said. The Wi-Fi boom
"is teaching the government a lot about what you can do with a chunk of
spectrum where we aren't the arbiter of what can be done."

Don't expect such an unfettered environment for the nascent Internet
phone industry, however. An array of forces are likely to push various
levels of regulation on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) traffic,
Powell warned, particularly state governments worried about losing taxes
from traditional phone traffic. "It's the Internet sales tax debate
times a thousand," Powell warned.

http://news.com.com/Powell%20calls%20for%20legislative%20rethink/2100-1033_3-5268577.html?tag=techdirt

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