FSF's May Calls For 'Digital Age' Communications Act Revamp
Congress should revamp the Communications Act to account for the “Digital Age,” doing away with the siloing of different industries at the FCC and replacing the public interest standard, wrote Free State Foundation President Randolph May in an op-ed Friday for Real Clear Markets. The FCC’s separation of industries into different bureaus -- which May called “the stovepipe regulatory framework” -- is “woefully outdated,” he said. “These regulatory stovepipes don't make sense in today's digital environment characterized by relentless technological innovation and marketplace convergence” and “impede efforts to allow comparable services to compete with each other without unfair advantages conferred by outdated regulatory distinctions.”
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A new Communications Act should also do away with the public interest standard in favor of a “market-oriented competition-based standard.” The act should create a “rebuttable presumption that, absent convincing evidence of harm to consumers or competition due to a demonstrable market failure, the FCC may not impose regulations restricting private market operations,” May said. “The outdated Communications Act of 1934, most recently amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, should be substantially revised to ‘Make Communications Law Relevant Again.’"