Broadcast Rules Are an ‘Anachronism’
ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was featured by Communications Daily in a story covering his Truth on the Market blog post on the FCC’s outdated broadcast-ownership rules.
The regulatory structure that governs broadcasting “is an anachronism” and wouldn’t exist if it were a new technology introduced today, wrote Eric Fruits, a senior scholar for the International Center for Law & Economics, in a post Thursday for Truth on the Market. An emerging technology today wouldn’t be subject to rules like retransmission consent, ownership caps and the public interest standard, he said. “The idea that a panel of three to five presidentially appointed FCC commissioners in Washington can better determine the ‘public interest’ than the public itself — through its viewing choices in a competitive market — is a relic of progressive-era central planning,” Fruits said. “In reality, the vague standard invites regulatory capture and rent seeking, where politically connected groups lobby the FCC to define the public interest in ways that benefit them, rather than the public at-large.”
Read the full story here.