senate commerce committee – Page 2

Stevens Bill Analysis Part I — The Good Parts (Unlicensed Spectrum and Program Access)

Harold May 2, 2006 - 5:53 pm February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

Senator Stevens (R-AK), Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has introduced a massive telecom bill. The ten sections of the Communications, Consumer Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (helpfully broken down into separately named acts) covers a variety of material from subsidies for troops calling home to Return of the Broadcast Flag. As a consequence, I’ve broken up my analysis into a bunch of different postings.

Below, I talk about the two good things in the Stevens Bill, “The Wireless Innovation (WIN) Act of 2006,” (Title VI of the stevens Bill) and the “Sports Freedom Act of 2006” (Title IV Subtitle A).

In Part II, I will hit the really awful stuff on municipal broadband, network neutrality and broadcast flag.

This skips a bunch on local franchising, PEG, universal service, interoperability of emergency equipment, telephone rates for military personnel deployed abroad. I may come back to these if I can, but other folks, such as Saveaccess.org are doing a good job covering these issues and I also need to do my day job.

Tales of the Sausage Factory: Clear Channel Settlement Signals Indecency Running Out Of Steam

Harold June 10, 2004 - 1:46 pm February 24, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

The FCC and Clear Channel reached a settlement on all pending indecency proceedings involving Clear Channel. You can read a copy of the Consent Decree and the statements of the various Commissioners here. As usual, I’m more interested in what it means. To me, this says “the Bush Administration wants indecency to go away as an issue.” Surprised?

Tales of the Sausage Factory: Indecent bandwagon rolls on

Harold March 9, 2004 - 4:57 pm February 24, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Well the House and Senate have been busy little, ahem, beavers on the indecency front. The surprise is the provisions on media ownership. Will they survive a House vote over the opposition of the Republican leadership? Will Bush veto indecency regulation to save his buddies in big media? Stay tuned to Survivor: Washington.