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.
[...]
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http://www.newsweek.com/2008/12/22/reboot-the-fcc.html