It has been a year since Ed Markey pushed this:
Now it’s time to see where we are today.
Well, for one thing, Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (My Senator from West Virginia) last week established a subcommittee on Communications & Technology, which would have a transparant, neutral net as its goal. Best of all, he made Sen. John Kerry (D – MA) the Chairman. Kerry has no love for the attemptsby Comcast, AT&T and other corporate media giants in taking over the Internet.
This from Broadcasting & Cable:
Kerry is on the record as critical of the demise of the FCC’s fairness doctrine, calling that demise one of the “most profound changes in the balance of the media,” in a 2007 radio interview, adding that conservatives have been able to “squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views. I think it has been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public dialog.”
He also has been critical of media consolidation and pushed the FCC to allow unlicensed devices in TV white spaces, something broadcasters fought hard against.
Kerry teamed with then-Senator Barack Obama to try and block the FCC’s relaxation of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban.
Kerry is also a fan of codifying network neutrality principles, something cable and phone networks would prefer evolved along with their industry.
We’ll all be watching to see what happens.