Articles by Adam Thierer 
Senior Fellow in Technology & Innovation at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
I’m keeping tabs on who filed “major” comments (more than a 10-15 pages) in the Federal Communications Commission’s “Future of Media” proceeding (GN Docket No. 10-25). As I noted last week, The Progress & Freedom Foundation submitted almost 80 pages of comments (single-spaced!) in the matter, so it’s something I care deeply about and will be tracking closely going forward.
Incidentally, the general consensus of those who filed (especially if you count “minor” comments) is fairly overwhelming:
Bring on Big Government! Seriously, I only found a handful of comments that object strenuously to government meddling in media markets or that raised concerns about the potential for the State’s increasing involvement in the journalism profession. Even many of the affected industries appear to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome here. Most of them just play up the good things they are doing but barely utter a peep about the dangers of federal encroachment into the affairs of the Press.
Anyway, for those of you who care to track the gradual federalization of media and journalism, I think what you see below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the major filings submitted thus far in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding. I’ll try to add more as I find them. You might also want to track what was filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshops on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age.” Finally, if you care to learn more of this issue, I’m hosting an event on the morning of May 20th to discuss these issues in more detail.
Continue reading →
The FCC is toying with reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. If the agency rolls back the regulatory clock in this fashion, it will be a huge step backwards for innovation, investment, and quality in this field. How is it that everyone suddenly has collective amnesia about the past that Title II gave us? Doesn’t anyone remember getting their fingers pinched in black rotary dial phones of the Title II regulatory era? I do. Here’s what else that regulatory era gave us: Stagnant markets. Limited choice. Lackluster innovation. What else would you expect when you have price controls, rate-of-return proceedings, state PUC meddling, protected markets, etc. And despite all this revisionist history about Title II “protecting consumers,” the past it gave us was viciously anti-consumer and pro-regulated entity.
Is that the future you want for the Internet and the digital economy? That’s what’s at stake in this fight.
Just say NO to a Rotary Dial Internet!
The Progress & Freedom Foundation today filed comments in the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) “Future of Media” proceeding. Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I urged the FCC to “reject Chicken Little-esque calls for extreme media ‘reform’ solutions,” and counseled policymakers to move cautiously so that media reform can be “organic and bottom-up, not driven by heavy-handed, top-down industrial policies for the press.”
Our 79-page filing covers a wide range of ideas being examined by Washington policymakers to help struggling media outlets and unemployed journalists, or to expand public media / “public interest” content and regulation. Among the major issues explored in our filing:
- First Amendment concerns implicated by government subsidies;
- The pitfalls of imposing new “public interest” obligations on media operators;
- How advertising restrictions could harm the provision of media and news;
- Taxes, fees and other regulations to be avoided;
- The limited role in reform that public media subsidies can play; and
- Positive steps government could take.
We note that as “With many operators struggling to cope with intensifying competition, digitization, declining advertising budgets, and fragmenting audiences, some pundits and policymakers are wondering what the ‘future of media’ entails. The answer: Nobody knows.” While this uncertainty has put concerned policymakers at the ready to “help” the press, we warn that: “There is great danger in rash government intervention.” Instead, policymakers should be “careful to not inhibit potentially advantageous marketplace developments, even if some are highly disruptive.” Marketplace meddling, or government attempts to tinker with private media business models in the hopes that something new and better can be created, are misguided. Moreover, “Our constitutional traditions warn against it, history suggests it would be unwise, and practical impediments render such meddling largely unworkable, anyway.”
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Today, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, released its long-awaited online privacy bill discussion draft, requiring that users opt-in to certain types of online data collection. Berin Szoka and I issued the following statement in response:
By mandating a hodge-podge of restrictive regulatory defaults, policymakers could unintentionally devastate the “free” Internet as we know it. Because the Digital Economy is fueled by advertising and data collection, a “privacy industrial policy” for the Internet would diminish consumer choice in ad-supported content and services, raise prices, quash digital innovation, and hurt online speech platforms enjoyed by Internet users worldwide.
Before imposing prophylactic regulation, policymakers should first identify specific consumer harm that requires government intervention. They should next ask whether there are less restrictive alternatives to regulation, such as enhancing enforcement of existing laws, bolstering limitations on government access to online data, education efforts about online privacy, and promoting the development and uptake of technological empowerment solutions that allow users to manage their own privacy preferences.
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Thought you all might be interested in this upcoming PFF event on “Can Government Help Save the Press?” It will take place on Thursday, May 20, 2010 from 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. in the International Gateway Room, Mezzanine Level of the Ronald Reagan Building on 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W. here in DC. This event will consider the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding (comments are due this Friday) and debate what role the government should play (if any) in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public media” or “public interest” content. [You can find all our essays about this here.]
The event will feature a keynote address by
Ellen P. Goodman of the FCC’s Future of Media team. Ellen is one of the sharpest minds in the media policy universe today, and a real asset to the FCC team. She is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the FCC, a Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Social Media, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications. She is also a Professor at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, specializing in information law and policy. She has spoken before a wide range of audiences around the world on media policy issues, has consulted with the U.S. government on communications policy, and served as an advisor to President Obama’s presidential campaign and transition team.
After Ellen Goodman brings us up to speed with where the FCC’s Future of Media process stands, we’ll hear from a diverse panel of experts that I am still busy assembling. But so far it includes
Charlie Firestone of the Aspen Institute, who will be on hand to discuss the work he’s been doing with the Knight Commission on this front. I’ve also invited a rep from the Newspaper Association of America to come and talk about the diversity of new media monetization models that they have been aggregating. (Check out the appendix of their outstanding FTC filing last Nov.) And Kurt Wimmer of Covington & Burling, who represents broadcasters among others, will talk about the need for regulatory flexibility / forbearance, especially on ownership issues. Again, more panelists to come. But please sign up now!
PFF today released the fifth installment in our ongoing series on “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.” This series of papers explores various tax and regulatory proposals that would have government play an expanded role in supporting the press, journalism, or other media content. In the latest essay, Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I discuss proposals for direct subsidies for failing media outlets and out-of-work journalists.
We argue taxpayer support for failing outlets and unemployed journalists implicates significant First Amendment concerns. On the whole, subsidies can make “journalists and media operators more dependent upon the State; compromise press independence and diminish public trust in the free press; and result in government discrimination in the politically inescapable dilemma of determining eligibility for subsidies.” Such an agenda would also entail huge cost to taxpayers—initially about $35 billion per year according to advocates—and would represent “a massive wealth transfer from one class of speakers to another…”
We warn that calls for seemingly beneficent bailouts “to save” the media and journalism may actually be driven by those who have something more nefarious in mind: a “post-corporate” world shorn of media capitalists, and “such radicalism must be rejected if we hope to sustain a truly free press and uphold America’s proud tradition of keeping a high and tight wall of separation between Press and State.”
The ideas within these and other essays in the series will be worked into a major PFF filing in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proceeding on the “Future of Media” on May 7. The paper may be viewed online here and I’ve attached it down below in a Scribd reader.
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On Friday, May 7th from 9:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. at the National Press Club, The Progress & Freedom Foundation will hold a panel discussion entitled, “What Should the Next Communications Act Look Like?” This event will consider the implications of the recent Comcast v. FCC court decision, the FCC’s pending “Net Neutrality” Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, as well as other developments which have lead many experts, officials, policymakers and a diverse array of companies to call on Congress to update the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Leading industry veterans will make their case for change, and explain how their proposals can be implemented. Our expect panel will include:
- Thomas J. Tauke, Executive Vice President – Public Affairs, Policy and Communications, Verizon Communications
- Peter Pitsch, Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Communications Policy, Intel
- Walter McCormick, President & CEO, United States Telecom Association
- Ray Gifford, Partner, Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer, LLP
- Michael Calabrese, Vice President, New America Foundation
- Barbara Esbin, Senior Fellow, The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Please
RSVP here is you plan to join us on May 7th for this event. Again, it will take place from 9:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. at the National Press Club (Holeman Lounge, 13th Floor, 529 14th Street NW). Hope to see you there.
In this latest PFF TechCast, Berin Szoka and I discuss the two latest installments in our ongoing “Wrong Way to Reinvent Media” series. These two recent installments dealt with “media vouchers” and expanded postal subsidies as methods of assisting struggling media enterprises or promoting more hard news. In this 7-minute podcast, PFF’s press director Mike Wendy chats with us about these proposals and we argue that they both raise a variety of practical and principled concerns that weigh against their adoption by policymakers.
MP3 file: PFF TechCast #3 – Media Vouchers & Postal Subsidies (4/27/2010)
The Supreme Court announced today that it will review a California law regulating the sale of violently-themed video games to minors. The case is Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants and I have written about it here before. This will be the first major First Amendment case regarding video game speech rights heard by our nation’s highest court. This afternoon, I issued the following press statement about the case and its importance:
“I hope the Supreme Court is taking this case to affirm the free speech rights of game creators and users, and not to overturn ten years of solid, sensible lower court decisions granting video games the same First Amendment protections as books, film, music and other forms of entertainment. Government regulation of game content is unnecessary because parents have been empowered with sophisticated video game parental controls and a highly descriptive ratings system that is widely recognized and easy to use. Lawmakers should focus their efforts on making sure parents are better aware of existing tools and ratings instead of trying to censor game content in such a plainly unconstitutional fashion. Let’s hope the Supreme Court affirms that educational approach and Ninth Circuit’s decision at the same time.”
Several reporters have already asked me if its a bad sign that the Court took the case at all and wondered if this meant that there are 5 votes for overturning the lower court decision. It’s impossible to read the tea leaves on things like this, but I would generally agree that it’s not a good sign. But I just don’t understand how the Supreme Court could uphold a law like this in light of all their recent Internet jurisprudence (CDA, COPA, etc) which held against the government when various “harm to minors” statutes were tested and found to be unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court goes the opposite direction here, it will mean that our “First Amendment jurisprudential Twilight Zone” will become even more confusing and contorted. Let’s hope that’s not the case.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
List of Major Comments in FCC “Future of Media” Proceeding
by Adam Thierer on May 10, 2010 · 8 comments
I’m keeping tabs on who filed “major” comments (more than a 10-15 pages) in the Federal Communications Commission’s “Future of Media” proceeding (GN Docket No. 10-25). As I noted last week, The Progress & Freedom Foundation submitted almost 80 pages of comments (single-spaced!) in the matter, so it’s something I care deeply about and will be tracking closely going forward.
Incidentally, the general consensus of those who filed (especially if you count “minor” comments) is fairly overwhelming: Bring on Big Government! Seriously, I only found a handful of comments that object strenuously to government meddling in media markets or that raised concerns about the potential for the State’s increasing involvement in the journalism profession. Even many of the affected industries appear to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome here. Most of them just play up the good things they are doing but barely utter a peep about the dangers of federal encroachment into the affairs of the Press.
Anyway, for those of you who care to track the gradual federalization of media and journalism, I think what you see below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the major filings submitted thus far in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding. I’ll try to add more as I find them. You might also want to track what was filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshops on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age.” Finally, if you care to learn more of this issue, I’m hosting an event on the morning of May 20th to discuss these issues in more detail.
Continue reading →