Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Reason Interviews Michael Powell

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-exposed-nipple dept.

Phlinn writes "In the Reason interview with Michael Powell, it is possible to develop a clearer understanding of the FCC's recent actions. It would appear that despite recent actions, he's not the pro censorship icon many people think. Beware of actions based on a "greater good" however."

6 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Flip-flop by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Informative

    He's not a congressman, brain-train.

    He doesn't make laws, he regulates, as instructed by his mandate.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  2. What a bunch of nonsense by Xabraxas · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yeah. It's quite consistent, actually. The indecency laws, first of all, are statutes. The people of the United States, through legislation, have made indecent speech between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. over only one medium, broadcasting, unlawful. They have invested in this commission authority to enforce that law. The commission does it in response to the complaints from the public. Many people have tried to argue that we should be like the FBI on indecency and be affirmative, that we should go out and listen to television and radio. We don't do that. We wait for the American people to complain, and then we act on complaints. What has happened in the period you've identified is indecency complaints have skyrocketed.

    What a load of bull. Check the statistics. Something like 99% of the complaints are from the same group who spend all day watching TV just to complain about "indecency" based on their own standard. The FCC only gets something like 200-300 "real" complaints a year. The sudden increase is soley due to this one group. I personally don't want one narrow minded group deciding what is best for me.

    One of the biggest firestorms was over this national cap [on what percentage of the national television audience a single owner can reach], whether it was 35 percent [the former cap], 45 percent as we suggested, or 39 percent, which Congress picked. Going to 45 percent means maybe one to two more stations per network in the United States. That's all that means. So a broadcast network is only allowed to reach with its product 45 percent of America.

    But why can cable reach 100 percent? Satellite television can reach 100 percent. The Internet reaches 100-plus, if you want to go outside the U.S.

    That's a ridiculous argument. The major difference here is that while it's true that you can have 100% internet saturation, so does everyone else! You can't really cut anyone out. It's a similar situation with the other services he mentions. The broadcast spectrum is limited.

    --
    Time makes more converts than reason
  3. Re:LIVE! Stern vs. Powell by Joey+Patterson · · Score: 0, Informative

    Your MP3 link doesn't work, but this one does. http://www.jimgilliam.com/audio/2004-10-26_stern_p owell.mp3

  4. Re:Flip-flop - not at all by lawpoop · · Score: 2, Informative
    "2) Explain how your selected excerpt from the Bill of Rights could possibly have included a definition of speech which meant anything other than sound made from human lips absent of any recording of transmission technologies as none existed in the 1770s."

    See writing and printing.

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
  5. Re:Something I have been wondering about.... by Kiryat+Malachi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Geez.

    You mean something like WCBN,WFMU, or WLUW? (OK, so FMU is in New York and LUW is in Chicago, but you get the point - college/indie stations can and do stream worldwide).

    Let's say the government took back the airwaves and disbanded the FCC, and gave those airwaves to ISPs to provide wireless service (which is harder than it sounds, it's not like spectrum is unavailable for such things, and the spectrum for AM is totally unsuited to it anyway, while FM spectrum is non-optimal for the purpose, being relatively low-bandwidth). Let's say I then, being pissed off my FM radio no longer dragged anything in, built a 50,000W FM transmitter and started blasting punk rock out over those ISPs piddly point-to-point transmitters. Who would prevent me from doing that? The FCC... oh, wait, the FCC was disbanded!

    The FCC still serves a purpose; regulating access to spectrum. Whether they're doing a good job of it is arguable, but getting rid of them entirely won't solve a damn thing. I'm sick of open spectrum zealots who don't know shit about RF and refuse to acknowledge the very real, very *math-based* problems with their proposals (like, for example, the capacity theorem saying AM bandwidth won't carry enough information to make it worth as much as your shriveled dick without using absurd signal-noise power ratios for mobile point to point stations). Learn some RF and info theory math, then come back and say "Let's open up the spectrum and everything will be dandy!" Look at how much 'free market' principles have fucked over the use of spectrum, and tell me an unregulated spectrum would be an improvement.

    --

    ---
    Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
    (I read with sigs off.)
  6. Re:LIVE! Stern vs. Powell by A+Bugg · · Score: 4, Informative

    The way the FCC keeps companies from suing them is that if you do go to court against the FCC you can't aquire any more radio stations or tv stations because you still have outstanding fines, which are the fines that are being contested and until the case is settled you effectively can't expand so it's really not worth it for companies to fight, it's more advantageous for them to just pay the fine.

    A Bugg