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?