Title I FCC Authority Over Broadband Preferred by Baker
The FCC should continue to treat broadband as an information service and not put it under common-carrier regulation, as the agency studies options should it lose a court case over its authority (CD Jan 21 p1), Commissioner Meredith Baker said. It would be “a step backwards” for the FCC to handle broadband under its Title II authority instead of Title I, as it has been, she said Thursday at a Media Institute lunch in Washington. Baker said she hopes any net neutrality rules allow content protection, so media companies can protect against infringement online. Media including newspapers are grappling with declines in their conventional ad revenue, she noted. (See separate report in this issue.)
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“There are some Title II evangelists, yes,” Baker said in a question-and-answer session. As Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday, commission staffers “are certainly looking at all options,” she added. “I think we've made an awful lot of progress to bring them under Title I, and I think it would be a step backwards to take them to Title II.”
Commissioner Michael Copps was critical of previous classification decisions. “The path this commission went down on classification in recent years was clearly a road we should not have taken,” he told us. “Now the question is, can we do what needs to be done without revisiting those earlier decisions? I don’t have a final answer, but at this point we have no business taking options off the table.” Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell declined to discuss their opinions about classification.
Genachowski said the FCC has ample authority over broadband under the Communications Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is expected to throw out the commission’s ruling against Comcast’s network management, and the decision may undercut Title I authority over the subject (CD Jan 11 p1). Genachowski declined through a spokeswoman to elaborate Thursday.
FCC “open Internet rules” ought to “deal directly with measures to curb illegal content online,” Baker said in a speech at the lunch. “As journalists experiment with how best to seek compensation online, media companies will need the tools necessary to protect against piracy and enforce their copyright.” That’s an “area where the government, not necessarily the FCC, can help,” she said. “If our news is going digital, we need to ensure that all Americans can get connected,” Baker said.