The McDonough School of Business’s Center for Business and Public Policy hosted a breakfast discussion at the National Press Club (529 14th St., NW Washington, DC). The event, titled “Rewriting the Communications Act: An Introductory Event,” was the first discussion in a series hosted through the center’s Evolution of Regulation and Innovation Project.
Carolyn Brandon, senior industry and innovation fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, moderated a discussion, which featuring panelists such as:
- Larry Downes, project director, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy’s Project on the Evolution of Regulation and Innovation;
- John W. Mayo, professor of business, economics, and public policy, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and executive director, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy;
- Peter Rysavy, president and founder, Rysavy Research; and
- Glenn Woroch, adjunct professor, University of California, Berkeley, and senior policy scholar, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.
This panel addressed the technological, economic, political, and policy-related contexts of the current congressional efforts, identify common ground among parties that will be affected by a rewrite, explore areas of significant uncertainty, and elucidate the policy drivers that will shape the work ahead.
The Communications Act of 1934 is a federal law signed into law by by FDR, that replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It also transferred regulation of interstate telephone services from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the FCC.
Recently, top Republicans have been pitching the idea of going to work on an a plan to overhaul legislation that could change the way the government regulates the Internet, television and telephone industries, but the whole plan could collapse amid buttheading across party lines as the topic of net neutrality continues to gain steam in the media.