Internet: Free Press held an event to envision re-regulation

[internetnews] Internet policy folks who style themselves as progressives have high hopes that the new administration will reverse some of the deregulatory policies that have left the media and telecom industries operate under their own devices.

Here at the Newseum, where the media-reform group Free Press held its annual "Changing Media" conference, the speakers -- an almost exclusively left-leaning bunch -- were replete with criticism of policies they said had led to egregious market failures.

"We are at the end of the era of deregulation," said Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University and chairman of Free Press. "The ideas that powered the deregulation movement have essentially run their course."

Supporters of a more vigorous regulatory regime criticize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for allowing cable and telecom companies to secure what they describe as a duopoly in the broadband service market, a policy framework that ran counter to the spirit of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Envisioning a Re-Regulated Internet
see also Free Press Summit