FCC Commissioner’s Scare Tactics Reach New Low

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Thursday, August 14, 2008 by The Huffington Post
FCC Commissioner’s Scare Tactics Reach New Low

by Josh Silver and Josh Stearns



Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell increasingly sounds like a man stranded on a desert island, willing to say anything to get a ride back to shore.

Yesterday, Commissioner McDowell stooped to a new low in a talk with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. He was invited to discuss the FCC’s recent decision to punish Comcast for blocking users from sharing legal content on the Internet.

Comcast was caught red-handed secretly discriminating against innovative technologies used for high-definition online TV, using the same censorship technology the Chinese government uses to block free speech. This discriminatory behavior represents a blatant and outrageous violation of free speech.

Based on this clear-cut case against Comcast, a bipartisan majority of the FCC issued a guilty verdict. Commissioner McDowell, however, dissented, using almost every inaccurate argument made by Comcast to defend his decision.

Yesterday, the increasingly isolated McDowell decided once again to put the facts aside.

Law and Order

In both his speech and the interview that followed McDowell tried to tie the FCC’s Comcast decision to the Fairness Doctrine (which at one time regulated equal airtime for diverse perspectives in broadcast media).

He suggested that any FCC decision that supports Net Neutrality — the idea that the Internet must be free and open — is somehow tantamount to government regulation of content. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/14/10983/

[KharmaTrain]

1. Why Elections Matter...Reason 29404

Fortunately this scumbag is in the minority in this case...and here's a hope he becomes part of a new permanent majority next year with Michael Copps as the new FCC Chairman.

Real Net Neutrality, reregulation of the public airwaves and the opportunity to build a new and better "media" through fairer competition.