Earlier this summer, at the e-G8 Conference in Paris, Jeff Jarvis implored French President Nicholas Sarkozy to “do no harm” to the Internet. But Jarvis isn’t alone in wanting government to stay out of Internet affairs. Take, for example, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Commissioner Robert McDowell who believes that the “Internet is the greatest deregulatory success story of all time” and thus, like Jarvis, uses the directive of “doing no harm” in determining government legislation.
I interviewed McDowell earlier this week at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum where he appeared in conversation with fellow FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. In addition to spectrum policy, innovation and privacy, we addressed that thorny question of whether the FCC should be shut down – a scenario that didn’t seem to bother the apparently imperturbable Commissioner. Is it just me, or does McDowell really look like George Clooney?
Robert M. McDowell was first appointed to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2006. When he was reappointed to the Commission on June 2, 2009, Commissioner McDowell became the first Republican to be appointed to an independent agency by President Barack Obama. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on June 25, 2009. Commissioner McDowell brings to the FCC approximately sixteen years of private sector experience in...
Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur, Andrew founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet music company. He is currently the...
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