Last month Matthew Lasar dug up info on this mysterious Julius Genachowski whose name starting circulating as a candidate for Obama’s FCC Chairman. Late Monday night the news broke that Genachowski is slated to be Obama’s nominee for the job. As Matthew noted in his Ars Technica article yesterday, the public interest community is responding positively to this news, primarily based upon Genachowski’s work on Obama’s “Technology and Innovation” plan. Given that candidate Obama was specific in his support for Network Neutrality, the hope inspired by Genchowski’s likely nomination appears to be more well founded than any other news on the Net Neutrality front in the last year.
However, much is still unknown about Genachowski’s views on media issues, like ownership concentration and indecency enforcement. He was an assistant to Clinton-appointed FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in the 1990s, and we might learn a little bit about Genachowski by looking at his former boss’ tenure at the Commission. With regard to media ownership, Hundt opposed lifting the nationwide radio ownership cap. The lifting of the cap–which brought on the Clear Channel era–happened with the passing of the Telecomm Act of 1996 by Congress, signed by President Clinton, and was not decided by the Hundt FCC. Hundt was also a proponent of children’s programming requirements, while also pushing for indecency fines against the likes of Howard Stern.
We’re sure to learn more about Genachowski’s views on a whole panoply of communication issues when he goes up for confirmation by the Senate. Here’s hoping that his apparently progressive outlook on Net Neutrality is combined with the willingness to put the brakes on the Bush FCC’s full-speed gallop on loosening media ownership limits. I must admit that ensuring a free and open internet, along with enacting policies to stimulate high-speed broadband build-out really should be the top priority for media and telecomm, above all.
With the lessons learned from the 1996 Telecomm Act and the ill-considered experiment of taking away common carrier status from internet (therefore creating the need for Net Neutrality) there exists a blueprint for creating a much more vibrant, diverse and free media ecology.
Tags: Barak Obama, broadband, FCC Federal Communications Commission, internet, internet freedom, Julius Genachowski, media consolidation, media ownership, net neutrality / free the internet!, network neutrality, obama, Reed Hundt, Telecomm Act
examining the mainstream, media ownership & consolidation, net neutrality / free the internet! | Paul | 
January 14, 2009 9:33 pm | 
Comments (1)
The Benton Foundation has compiled an excellent wrap-up of testimony and press coverage of yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on network neutrality.
I didn’t even know it was happening, until I saw Free Press’ tweets this morning. They’re live-twittering it right now if you want to follow along:
Martin: Failure to disclose network management practices or tolls would be unreasonable. Actual practice of discrimination may or may not be
Dorgan is questioning Martin, trying to make a point that nondiscrimination regulation wouldn’t be heavy-handed, intensive or onerous. 7 minutes ago from web
Martin is recapping testimony FCC has received re:Comcast from previous hearings. He paints a pretty negative picture of Comcast’s practices 11 minutes ago from web
Martin concerned with ISP disclosure/transparency, and making sure consumer expectations are appropriate to the service purchased… 14 minutes ago from web
First witness is FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, fresh off the Stanford hearing, saying FCC has responsibility and authority to address problems. 16 minutes ago from web
Stevens: It’s “unfortunate” that Net Neutrality debate has become drawn out along political lines. 19 minutes ago from web
Sen. Ted “tubes” Stevens: Ne Neutrality is a solution “in search of justification” 20 minutes ago from web
For those more A/V inclined, there’s a live stream, too.
I was able to listen to a pretty good portion of the testimony at yesterday’s FCC hearing on broadband network management at Stanford University. My overall impression is that the public interest in a free, open internet got a pretty fair hearing, overall, with even some of the more “free market” economists having to admit market failure and problems with Comcast’s blocking BitTorrent, even if they still don’t like net neutrality (or at least not the term “network neutrality).
Two interesting moments for me were when Michele Combs from the Christian Coalition testified that Comcast was blocking torrents distributing the King James bible, and hearing from Robb Topolski, the software quality engineer who first identified and rooted out Comcast’s blocking technique. Highlights from some of the expert testimony air on today’s radioshow, already online, including an excerpt from Topolski.
As I mentioned yesterday, there were several people using Twitter from the audience in Stanford, posting quick updates on the action. I found this play-by-play really valuable, since I didn’t have the luxury to pay constant attention to the hearing webcast.
One of the persons twittering from the hearing, simX, posted a compilation of tweets, along with a great summary of the hearing.
SavetheInternet.com has a short summary with links to some of the written testimony.
The FCC has archived the audio from the hearing, along with captions [Real Audio].
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