Why the FCC should die

Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago, but advances in technology since then have eliminated whatever arguments remained. Central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it's not working for us. The FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good.

Consider some examples of bureaucratic malfeasance that the FCC, with the complicity of the U.S. Congress, has committed. The FCC rejected long-distance telephone service competition in 1968, banned Americans from buying their own non-Bell telephones in 1956, dragged its feet in the 1970s when considering whether video telephones would be allowed and did not grant modern cellular telephone licenses until 1981--about four decades after Bell Labs invented the technology. Along the way, the FCC has preserved monopolistic practices that would have otherwise been illegal under antitrust law.

Declan (of PoliTech) makes the case for deregulating the airwaves. He's got some excellent points. The FCC has certainly done more harm than good, and it's imposition of "speech codes" have been responsible for suppressing our right of free speech for years. And no, I'm not talking just about the Janet Jackson incident, or even the "seven dirty words" that you can't say on the air... there's a lot more to it than that.

The FCC, for example, is hell on small, independent ("unlicensed") broadcasters. Try to run a small radio station just for fun, without getting permission, and they will be all over you. They're all over the commercial interests, too, chasing those profitable fines:

Clear Channel Communications Inc. (CCU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the biggest owner of U.S. radio stations, on Wednesday admitted to airing indecent material and will pay a record $1.75 million penalty to settle all existing complaints.

The company, which has run afoul of indecency limits several times for the antics of disc jockeys, also agreed to take steps to prevent further such incidents, including formalizing its zero tolerance policy and training employees.

The Federal Communications Commission had already proposed almost $800,000 in fines against the radio giant and was investigating more than a dozen other incidents. It also had several other complaints against the company's stations but the settlement wipes the slate clean.

"We didn't agree that all the complaints were legally indecent, but some clearly crossed the line and for those we have taken full responsibility," Andrew Levin, Clear Channel's chief legal officer, said in a statement.

What we have here is called a "chilling effect".