Report: Genachowski resigning as FCC chairman Friday
The Democratic chairman is stepping down, according to the Wall Street Journal, just as a Republican commissioner is departing, preserving an administration-friendly majority on the commission.
The Democratic chairman is stepping down, according to the Wall Street Journal, just as a Republican commissioner is departing, preserving an administration-friendly majority on the commission.
B&C has the latest — and one of the best — in a wave of interviews marking the first month of Julius Genachowski’s tenure as chairman of t…
President Barack Obama can’t get health care reform passed before the August recess but it looks like he will have one accomplishment: a ful…
FCC commissioner Michael Copps will keep the chairman’s seat warm while the Obama administration prepares for a transition to a new leader f…
Listening to the FCC hearing today, which was called in response to Comcast throttling BitTorrent traffic on its network, it seemed like Chairman Kevin Martin may be rethinking his laissez-faire stance on Network Neutrality. Martin said that network management practices should be “open and transparent” to the end user and that the FCC would be “willing and able” to intercede in cases of abuse.
Comcast CEO Executive VP David Cohen, who argued that the company wasn’t blocking anyone’s content, but was merely trying to manage its network during times of peak traffic, didn’t come off too well. In the wake of the event, it seems that some form of Net Neutrality legislation or regulation to halt discrimination (to use the terms bandied about during the hearing) would be in the future for ISPs. Whether it goes as far as an Internet Bill of Rights that gives users the “unalienable right to liberty on the Internet,” as proposed by Democratic Commissioner Jay Alderstein, or some form of case-by-case adjudication of discrimination claims, as offered by Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps, is uncertain.
Given the anticompetitive nature of Comcast throttling traffic from a potential video competitor, Martin — who in the past has been loathe to go beyond the FCC’s current policy pushing open networks — and other Republican lawmakers seemed galvanized to act. Indeed, an attack on the free markets might be too much for the FCC to ignore.
Known for his dogged, if quixotic, battles against what he considers excessive media consolidation, FCC member Michael Copps has formally re…