[fccboston08] FCC hearing: Commissioner Adelstein
Jonathan Adelstein is the other Dem commissioner. (He also plays harmonica. I’ve seen him do it. He takes lessons from Howard Levy.)
He says that they’re taking video testimony today, and they ought to send it back to HQ via BitTorrent to see how it does. Scattered laughs.
After giving the obligatory reference to his time at Harvard, he goes back to the American Revolution. Just as the Constitution established freedoms, we need an Internet Bill of Rights to secure the freedom of citizens on the Internet. “The beauty of the Internet is that nobody is in charge and everybody is in charge.” (It’s cool to hear three senior gov’t folks in a row get it so right.)
He quotes TBL about the importance of an open Net. He too brings up the issue of consolidation. We’re going to see more competition in wireless, he says, but broadband is 93% controlled by the major providers. He says that at least he and Copps got AT&T to agree to support net neutrality as a condition of consolidation. (This was satisfying if only because after years of saying the net neutrality has no definition, AT&T defined it clearly in a couple of sentences.)
He says he comes here with an open mind, which, frankly, I find a little disappointing ;)
He closes by again exhorting us to create an Internet Bill of Rights. [I know! Let’s do it together on a wiki!]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
