Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
Michael Powell is, admittedly, an avid consumer of the latest electronic gadgets.
At the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday, he ran down a laundry list of gadgets exchanged by family members over the holidays. Still, Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a crowd that such advances are creating regulatory challenges.
The goal of most of the items on display at the massive convention are designed to make just about all content comply with the will of the consumer. To achieve that goal, single products are handling multiple services -- voice, data and video. Each of those services, however, is handled differently by regulatory agencies, such as the FCC.
Powell predicted that ultimately, in order to meet the content demands of the flood of new products, companies such as cable giant Comcast and telecommunications giant SBC Communications would lose their natural ties to a particular industry.
"It's all data," Powell said. "Let's let the consumer decide how to use it."
The problem is that cable companies and telecommunications companies currently are governed by unique sets of regulations. In addition, broadband companies operate in a relatively unregulated environment.
Powell said the blurring of the lines between those industries has prompted a powerplay among Washington lobbyists.
It's symptomatic of a "culture that sees regulation now only as protecting the consumer ... but as a way of picking and choosing who gets to do new things," Powell said. "I loathe that role, and it can't survive, with technology progressing, even if you believed in it."
He said efforts to seek regulatory roadblocks for products that would benefit the public will be met with skepticism.
"If the consumer is getting another choice, you had better have a dang good reason for me to stop that," Powell said. "Let's let the consumers decide who wins or who loses."
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, brought up examples that include broadcast radio industry executives seeking to block satellite radio companies from posting local traffic and weather reports and recording industry protests to digital music manipulation with devices such as MP3 players.
"There is no shortage of people who walk through the doors of the FCC that want us to save them, protect them or hobble their competitors so they can beat them," Powell said. "Welcome to Washington."
Powell said one area that would receive aggressive action at the FCC would be the destructive use of technology, such as viruses, spam and other illegal tactics that threaten a society that is increasingly dependent on information access and flow.
"For those things you do think you should enforce, you should be very courageous, aggressive and ruthless in handling that," he said.
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