Newsweek: Lawrence Lessig: Reboot the FCC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: December 23, 2008 6:08:51 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Newsweek: Lawrence Lessig: Reboot the FCC

[Note:  This item comes from friend Randy Burge.  DLH]

From: Randy Burge <burge () proactive to>
Date: December 23, 2008 1:50:15 PM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Newsweek: Lawrence Lessig: Reboot the FCC

Reboot the FCC
We'll stifle the Skypes and YouTubes of the future if we don't  
demolish the regulators that oversee our digital pipelines.

By Lawrence Lessig | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 23, 2008

<http://www.newsweek.com/id/176809>

Economic growth requires innovation. Trouble is, Washington is  
practically designed to resist it. Built into the DNA of the most  
important agencies created to protect innovation, is an almost  
irresistible urge to protect the most powerful instead.

The FCC is a perfect example. Born in the 1930s, at a time when the  
utmost importance was put on stability, the agency has become the  
focal point for almost every important innovation in technology. It is  
the presumptive protector of the Internet, and the continued regulator  
of radio, TV and satellite communications. In the next decades, it  
could well become the default regulator for every new communications  
technology, including, and especially, fantastic new ways to use  
wireless technologies, which today carry television, radio, internet,  
and cellular phone signals through the air, and which may soon provide  
high-speed internet access on-the-go, something that Google cofounder  
Larry Page calls "wifi on steroids."

If history is our guide, these new technologies are at risk, and with  
them, everything they make possible. With so much in its reach, the  
FCC has become the target of enormous campaigns for influence. Its  
commissioners are meant to be "expert" and "independent," but they've  
never really been expert, and are now openly embracing the political  
role they play. Commissioners issue press releases touting their own  
personal policies. And lobbyists spend years getting close to members  
of this junior varsity Congress. Think about the storm around former  
FCC Chairman Michael Powell's decision to relax media ownership rules,  
giving a green light to the concentration of newspapers and television  
stations into fewer and fewer hands. This is policy by committee,  
influenced by money and power, and with no one, not even the  
President, responsible for its failures.


The solution here is not tinkering. You can't fix DNA. You have to  
bury it. President Obama should get Congress to shut down the FCC and  
similar vestigial regulators, which put stability and special  
interests above the public good. In their place, Congress should  
create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection  
Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: "minimal  
intervention to maximize innovation." The iEPA's core purpose would be  
to protect innovation from its two historical enemies—excessive  
government favors, and excessive private monopoly power.

Since the birth of the Republic, the U.S. government has been in the  
business of handing out "exclusive rights" (a.k.a., monopolies) in  
order to "promote progress" or enable new markets of communication.  
Patents and copyrights accomplish the first goal; giving away slices  
of the airwaves serves the second. No one doubts that these monopolies  
are sometimes necessary to stimulate innovation. Hollywood could not  
survive without a copyright system; privately funded drug development  
won't happen without patents. But if history has taught us anything,  
it is that special interests—the Disneys and Pfizers of the world—have  
become very good at clambering for more and more monopoly rights.  
Copyrights last almost a century now, and patents regulate "anything  
under the sun that is made by man," as the Supreme Court has put it.  
This is the story of endless bloat, with each round of new monopolies  
met with a gluttonous demand for more.

The problem is that the government has never given a thought to when  
these monopolies help, and when they're merely handouts to companies  
with high-powered lobbyists. The iEPA's first task would thus be to  
reverse the unrestrained growth of these monopolies. For example, much  
of the wireless spectrum has been auctioned off to telecom monopolies,  
on the assumption that only by granting a monopoly could companies be  
encouraged to undertake the expensive task of building a network of  
cell towers or broadcasting stations. The iEPA would test this  
assumption, and essentially ask the question: do these monopolies do  
more harm than good? With a strong agency head, and a staff absolutely  
barred from industry ties, the iEPA could avoid the culture of  
favoritism that's come to define the FCC. And if it became credible in  
its monopoly-checking role, the agency could eventually apply this  
expertise to the area of patents and copyrights, guiding Congress's  
policymaking in these special-interest hornet nests.

<snip>

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