Slashdot Mirror
Reason Interviews Michael Powell
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."
Wow, he is all over the place, one sentence he loves the first amendment, the next he is saying [paraphrased] "well, enforcing indecency laws are different, it was the will of the people, there is legislation!".
To Michael:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Distributed proteome folding @ WorldCommunityGrid.org
Team Slashdot - Members:#1 Run Time:#1 Points:#1 Results:#1
The article's nice. He sounds like a smart, reasonable guy, who's not in any way interested in being an Orwellian nightmare come to life. He's just doing his job. He's just enforcing the law.
His actions speak to me far more loudly than his words. His actions tell me he's interested in enforcing certain aspects of the law in a manner which suits those who put him where he is today.
Just like his daddy does. It seems, sadly, to be a Powell family legacy that they're perfectly willing go along with orders of very dubious morality. Even if those orders are legally correct.
Sad to see good men knuckle under to the evil ones in charge of them.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
He is known for saying one thing that he thinks you want to hear, then doing the opposite that he had intended to do all along.
See Martin Niemöller
You know what?
These FCC people are pretty persuasive. This guy clearly talks a good "uncensored airwaves" talk, but their actions are clearly not in line with this. While I applaud his apparently more liberal stance, we need to be careful not to get totally suckered by his rhetoric. I'll believe the FCC are being more open-minded when the TV, radio et al start reflecting it.
apterous.org
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
From Star Trek TNG 4x21 - The Drumhead
Picard: You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.
Picard: We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again.
Worf: I believed her. I helped her. I did not see what she was.
Picard: Mr Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot.Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.
Worf: I think, after yesterday, people will not be so ready to trust her.
Picard: Maybe. But she, or someone like her, will always be with us, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish, spreading fear in the name of righteousness.
Vigilance, Mr Worf, that is the price we have to continually pay.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I used to really respect his dad and would have loved to see him as president. OTOH I had great disdain for michael powell when I first saw the direction things were heading and the way the right seemed to embrace him.
Then his daddy went in front of the UN and lied through his teeth rather than stand his ground and resign. Because he was so widely respected that act alone could have raised enough stink to both prevent us entering this stupid war so soon and possibly even have prevented the re-election of the potted plant in the white house.
In the same time I've seen powell jr take a principled stand toe to toe with both sides of the aisle. Lots of people screamed about the broadcaster deregulation, fact is if the corporations make broadcast such a wasteland that's just more beer for this "new media" thing. If they lock up their signals behind encryption so people get frustrated just trying to use their tvs the way they're used to they'll find alternatives. In every action where he's taken the most vocal stand I've agreed in principle 100%. I don't like the crackdowns re: censorship, but you can thank talk radio and a housefull of pandering politicians for that nonsense. On matters where it came down to actual leadership, michael has shown twice the cojones of retired soldier daddy.
So there's the irony. I've lost all respect for dad, but likewise would throw my otherwise very old school liberal vote for jr. in a heartbeat if he proved even reasonably knowledgable on presidential matters. I doubt he'll run, but I'd love to see it. I'd love to be able to help put a geek in the whitehouse.
So, did you actually read the article, where he came off as way more intelligent than the thin lines that you're portraying him through, or are you coming out with the tired "OMG OMG HATE REPUBLICANS" argument again? I may not like some (actually, most) of the stuff he's done, but I do have a little more respect for him after actually taking the time to see that he's candid about his views and has honest, principled reasons for his feelings. And no, I'm not Republican, nor do I subscribe to their newsletter, so please don't play that card.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
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
First he tries to allow for big corporations to own EVEN MORE of the media. Look at Clear Channel and the virtual monopoly they have in the radio market.
Then he (and all of his cronies) push the DTV standard down our throats so they can sell off the spectrum to the highest bidder, at the same time mandating DRM technology with the broadcast flag.
Then, he arbitrarly decides to enforce (for the first time in a while) some "decency" bullshit with the Super Bowl and all the rest of that stuff, making Europeans chuckle that we are so prudish, "it's for the children"
They don't seem to care much about broadband over power lines cutting into HAM frequencies, or allocating emergency frequencies close to 800 MHz dangerously close to some cellphones.
I think the FCC is a mess. This is something that Congress has shunted it's responsibility on. It's much easier to pass a regulation when you only need to bribe 3 people (on the board) instead of the 300 or so for a majority in Congress.
In short, Michael Pwoell is a corporate shrill, using the "morality" game to distract from his true agenda, corporate power consolidation.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
In October Michael Powell was on a call-in radio show. Stern called, here's what transpired...
http://www.jimgilliam.com/audio/2004-1-26_stern_po well.mp3 - MP3 of Stern vs. Powell
Transcript from Buzz Machine - http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_10_26.htm l
Stern: Ronn, hi.
Owens: Is this who I think it is?
Stern: Yeah, and I want to say hi to the commissioner and a friend of mine told me the commissioner said he was going to be on the show....
The commissioner has fined me millions of dollars for things I have said and consistently avoids me and avoids me and I wonder how long he will stay on the phone with me.
Owens: Go ahead and ask your questions.
Stern: Hi, Michael, how are you?
Powell: Hi, Howard, how are you?
Stern: Does it make you nervous to talk to me?
Powell: It does not....
Stern: All right, so well, I've got about ten zillion questions for you because you honestly are an enigma to me.
The first question being: How did you get your job? It is apparent to most of us in broadcasting that your father got you your job. And you kind of sit there:
You're the judge, you're the arbiter, you're the one who tells us what we can and can't say on the air and yet I really don't think you're qualified to be the head of the commission. Do you deny that your father got you this job?
Powell: Well, I would deny it exceedingly. You can look at my resume if you want, Howard. I'm not ashamed of it and I think it justifies my existence. I was chief of staff of the antitrust division, I'm an attorney, I was a clerk on the court of the United States I was a private attorney I have the same credentials that virtually anyone who sits in my position does and I think it's a little unfair that just because I happen to have a famous father and other public officials don't that you make the assumption that is the basis on which I sit in my position.
Owens: Caller already asked this question so move on....
Stern: So out of all the people that sit on the commission, you were moved to the head of the class. I don't buy your explanation but OK.
You know, the thing that amazes me about you is, you continually fine me but you're afraid to go to court with me and I'll explain myself if you give me a second:
Fine after fine came and we tried to go to court with you to find out about obscenity and what your line was and whether our show was indecent, which I don't think it is. And you do something really sneaky behind the scenes. You continue to block Viacom from buying new stations until we pay those fines.
You are afraid to go court. You are afraid to get a ruling time and time again.
When will you allow this to go to court and stop practicing your form of racketeering that you do by making stations pay up or you hold up their license renewal?
Powell: First of all, that's flatly false.
Stern: It's not false. It's true.
Powell: I'm afraid it is. There's no reason why Viacom or any other company who feels that they have been wrongly fined can't sue us in court. We have no basis whatsoever to prevent them from going to court.
Stern: You're lying. I've lived through your fines, Michael. And Mel Karmazin came to me one day and said, Howard, we're gonna have to pay up some sort of cockamame (sp?) bunch of fines that we don't we're wrong because we can't get our paperwork done. We are finding it increasingly difficult to boy radio stations. I know you're not telling the truth. And I question why you are selected to be one who is the FCC commissioner....
I'm going to Sirius satellite radio....
Owens: That's the question I was going to ask. Now he's going to go to satellite. One of the things that I read is that there are people who said cable TV, satellite rad
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
without regard of the greater public good.
What does that mean exactly? People trash Wal-Mart all the time because they sell non-American-made stuff and extort their suppliers, but they provide generally good merchandise at cheap prices. So do they serve the public good or not?
Microsoft has helped lure many a non-techie into the tech world, stoking broad markets that many software engineers and support people make their living on. Do they serve the public good?
And what about radio/TV? People (At least those without Tivo) complain about commercials and the corporations that sponsor them, but by and large, you have enjoyed years of essentially cheap/free entertainment. Isn't that in the public interest?
So what do you define as doing things for the public good? As far as I'm concerned, people vote every day with their dollars. They can use that vote more effectively than voting for any politician.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Your comment shows a basic lack of understanding of the responsibilities of freedom and even what the concept of freedom entails.
All "freedoms" include responsibility for associated consequences.
Public standards of decency, while difficult to define ("I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it."), most certainly are the prerogative of the society.
They screaming the words "anthrax" in an American airport as loudly as you can, repeatedly and see how long your "freedom of speech" lasts.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction applies not just to basic physics experiments but also to everything else in life.
Society does not give YOU freedom from consequences. When your actions harm others, you will be held accountable. Sometimes that is immediate, sometimes it has less visible repurcussions but you will receive the consequences if every action you take.
"Freedom of speech" does not mean others are forced to be exposed to such speech nor that the speaker will be free of responsibility.
Homework assignments (since you seem to be living in a world of first week Civics 101):
1) What would have been the result of you exposing yourself in public in 1777 America?
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.
3) Explain and demonstrate a preponderance of American court decisions in which individuals are granted complete and total absence of repurcussion from actions deemed offensive when using community-owned resources.
4) In the case your are unable to properly answer assignment #3, demonstrate through the presentation of historic documents that "freedom of speech" in late 1770s America guaranteed lack of repurcussion from any and all public speech.
See writing and printing.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
And many of us think a few words, including "ass", should be kept of the public's airwaves. It's a sad state when decency has to be legislated. Do what you want with cable, satellite, and theaters, but allow me some peace of mind to know young kids aren't deluged with vulgar language before they're old enough to understand the rudiments of various social situations and the right/wrong contexts in which these words might be used if desired. Too many people don't realize the importance of this until they start having kids of their own, then they're keenly aware of parental advisories and game/movie ratings.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
As far as I can see the FCC's push to penalize "indecency" on the airwaves has two motivations. It pleases right wing X-tians, who are too fucking stupid to change the channel on their TV or radio or turn the thing off, and it transfers money out of the pockets of broadcasters and into the coffers of the FCC.
You're missing something here. It's also encouraging the obsolescence of broadcast TV and radio, which the FCC regulates, in favor of cable/satellite TV and radio, which it doesn't.
What better, and more politically palatable, way to deregulate than to obsolete regulated industries?
There's a method to the madness here.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Take and American glamour periodical paper. What is that you don't see? Tits. Now take any glamour paper from Europe. What do you see? Tits. So that's the difference. And now, do Americans _really_ see fewer tits than Europeans? I wouldn't put in on paper...
Well, I'm definitely setting myself up for an intellectual beating by posting this in front of so many smart people, but let's see what happens anyway. I submit to you that the entire concept of a "greater good" is a logical fallacy. There is an "individual good," which exists. But logically, there is no "greater good;" it's an abstraction and has no real existence.
Anything that's real, that is, anything that is not just an abstraction or intellectual construct, has a defineable limit between it and the rest of the world. The monitor you're reading this on, by virtue of the definition of "monitor," has a boundary that delineates it from the rest of the world. You know objectively and certainly where that monitor ends and the rest of the world begins.
"The Greater Good" has no such objective definition. Exactly who is this "Greater" who is experiencing the "Good" you speak of? The majority of Americans? The majority of humans? White people? Black people? The composition of this "Greater" changes with every situation. It's no more definable than the concept of "warmth." Prove to me objectively where "warmth" ends and "heat" begins. You can't, and that makes it arbitrary.
When you base law upon the "Greater Good" you base it upon something that's arbitrary, upon the shifting sand of an intellectual construct. If you do that, what makes your laws better than any other arbitray system?
"Individual Good," however, does pass at least one test for a real, objective, existent "thing." It has a defineable boundary. My individual good, my individual rights, end where yours begins. We may argue about where my rights end, just as we may argue about where the monitor ends and the computer begins (at which end of the cable?). But we both agree that such a boundary exists and that it's defineable.
I would be suspicious of anyone passing regulations for the "greater good," and so were the founders of this country. They recognized that the only "good" and the only "liberty" that is not subject to a whimsical redefinition by society is that of the individual. Our politicians and schools push the idea of the "greater good," but I think they unwittingly do us a disservice.
User Training for Busy Programmers
Society does not give YOU freedom from consequences. When your actions harm others, you will be held accountable.
yeah. let me know when someone in the Bush administration is held accountable for exposing an undercover CIA agent working on nuclear proliferation, as a means of "punishing" Joe Wilson for speaking out against the Administration's policies.
Oops! there's another exception to the First Amendment. You're *not* free to reveal identities of undercover CIA agents. But as a conveeeenient side effect of First Amendment, Robert Novak doesn't have to reveal his source "within the Bush Administration".
"Freedom of speech" does not mean others are forced to be exposed to such speech nor that the speaker will be free of responsibility
It's called an off-switch.
Explain and demonstrate a preponderance of American court decisions in which individuals are granted complete and total absence of repurcussion from actions deemed offensive when using community-owned resources
Activist Judges.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So the general public likes things that you don't. What exactly do you expect Powell to do about that?
The general public likes whatever they're told to like by Clear Channel and the recording industry.
That's what the debate is about. It's hard to like music that you never hear.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
Your second point (re: MS) is a classic fallacy... Oh great, I've always loved the classics. I hate all the neo-fallacy stuff you see everywheres these days.
Ahem. My point, generally, was just to express that corporations provide jobs, goods, and services, so they do serve the public interest. What is less clear is "which public" they serve.
With respect to the mass media: they provide entertainment for the masses and leave it up to the masses to decide if they wish to pay for it by purchasing products from their sponsors. This is about as public-friendly of a business model as can be constructed without giving it away for free. We can argue quality all day, but look at ratings of the public TV stations versus commericial ones. As I said in my original post - people vote with their dollars.
"The market will police itself" has a lot of classic problems. As does poorly conceived tax incentives, regulations and bureaucratic (sp?) tampering (see patent law for example).
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
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.)
You are overlooking, seemingly quite deliberately, the fact that they enumerated all modes of expression known at the time. The extension to new modes of expression as they are created are implied.
I really despise people that read the bill of rights as being the sole definition of our rights, instead of what it was intended to be - a non-exclusive statement of rights that they felt important at the time to make sure were clearly delineated, so as to prevent extravagant re-interpretations (such as has happened many times since) of the enumerated government powers into some all-inclusive powers. Just look at some of the powers the feds have assumed in the name of interstate commerce.
Do you interpret the interstate control rights in the limited manner intended, or do you support the expansive interpretation?
Why do we allow expansions beyond reason for clearly enumerated powers (which were intended to be sharply limited), yet try to apply the most restrictive interpretations to the bill of rights (which were intended to be a non-exclusive set of examples of civil rights)?
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Unbeknownst to many, the greatest attack on free speech under Bush wasn't related to terrorism or "homeland security," or even nipplegate, but the CFR bill which outright bans many forms of political speech before an election.
While I'm not knowledgeable enough on the specifics of the CFR bill, something along those lines is desperately needed in the US. The problem is that, in the name of "free speech", we are allowing corporations to buy votes.
For CFR, I'd suggest making it illegal for corporations to donate funds or services to candidates, and that all major media services would have to allow all relevant sides of an issue equal access (define this in such a way that it applies to ABC/CBS/CNN/FOX/NYT/CC/etc and not to SciFi channel or your local non-major papers. Similarly, they have to provide equal access to Bush and Kerry, and maybe Nader if he (or someone else) is an equally serious contender or issue-holder).
Yes, this requires someone to "decide" which person or corporation falls under which rule, which is subjective and open to abuse, but with proper oversight and openness, it's possible. Without such reform, however, it puts democracy into the hands of the wealthy and out of the hands of the people where it belongs.
Hence civil lawsuits and slander/libel laws on the books. Note that, while you are held responsible for what you say, you are not actually prevented from saying it.
"("I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it.")"
The Supreme Court only says things like that because it has ruled that pornography isn't speech, whcih is why those "decency" laws you mention are allowed to stand. Something nobody talks much about is that what the Court is also saying is "I can't define speech but I know it when I see it."
"They screaming the words "anthrax" in an American airport as loudly as you can, repeatedly and see how long your "freedom of speech" lasts."
You will be charged for the effects of the action (inciting a riot, etc.) but not for the action itself (saying the word "anthrax.")
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction applies not just to basic physics experiments but also to everything else in life."
If it was always equal and opposite, there'd be no need for the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
"Sometimes that is immediate, sometimes it has less visible repurcussions"
There is no "more visible/less visible," there is only "can/cannot be proven in court." If the supposedly harmful effects of an action cannot be demonstrated, then what is the justification of ignoring the whole "shall make no law" bit?
"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."
It doesn't matterRights in the United States are, by default, retained by the people. The Ninth Amendment tells us that simply because electromagnetic broadcasts are not specifically mentioned in the First Amendment does not mean that Congress automatically has the power to regulate them as it sees fit. The Tenth Amendment tells us that Congress can only do what it is explicitly allowed to do by the Constitution. Personal rights are implicit and it's the government's rights that need to be explicit.
"using community-owned resources."
Explain how exactly the electromagnetic spectrum is a "community-owned resource," especially when you need private property (namely, a receiver) to access it.
"in late 1770s America"
Doesn't matter. The United States Constitution is a living document and as such both its content and its application changes with time. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion, since, as Thomas Jefferson himself pointed out as he tried to silence Federalist detractors, the First Amendment by itself does not prevent state governments from "abridging the freedom of speech."
When your actions harm others, you will be held accountable.
That's the point: no harm was and will be ever done by someone through swearing (or being nude, another ridiculous taboo in US television).
You got it: Definition of propaganda: opinion you don't like.
Definition of biased news: news where people don't have your exact opinions, or where they report stories you don't wnat reported.
Definition of rhetoric: speech you don't like.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.