Will bureaucrats turn the Net into TV? Note from FCC

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

A note from an acquaintance formerly at the FCC. --Declan


---------- Forwarded message ----------

Having spedt my years at the FCC doing pre-repeal Fairness Doctrine and
Sec. 315 equal time matters, I think [deleted-dm]'s concerns, tho'
justified politically [because most adminsitrations will leave no good
technology unhobbled] are without substantial legal basis.

The hook for the Fairness Doctrine obligation imposed on broadcasters as a
corollary to their statutory 'public interest' obligations was as a
licensee of scarce broadcast spectrum--a discrete frequency awarded on a
putatively compettive basis. 

Those key elements[scarcity/license/obligation] are--for now--lacking in
the on-line environment.  And while no doubt this or another
Administration, or wiley Congressional staffer could gin up a plausable
nexus between the web and interstate commerce, sufficiient to sustain a
new public interest obligation, I think we're two or three generations of
bandwith scarcity away from that becoming a compelling element of a
cyber-resource allocation scheme. 

Without that overarching allocation-based [license] compulsion (to force
even facial compliance with an obligation, so that enforcement would
become essential to compliance, thus creating a need for thousands of Web
police to review commercial licensees sites and traffic--[what a
nightmare] -) -the liklihood of developing a meaningful scheme of public
interest obligation would be a an overdebated and overhyped PC exercise,
quickly becoming comic--and then dangerous.