| > Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated That's not going to help at all with online media as that's only broadcast licenses which to my knowledge only affects operators of a broadcast TV, Audio Radio (as in AM/FM/SSB/etc), or other radio station - meaning the internet, cable, and satellite (not sure how satellite broadcast licensing works) are unaffected by this. Also it only affects the holder - ie DishTV - not the channels themselves that DishTV is transmitting And I have no idea how you adapt this for the internet - broadcast licenses were relatively hard to get, relatively expensive to operate, and generally unavailable to most people, edit: and had limited availability. With the internet anyone can make a blog for free in 5 minutes. EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. To my knowledge the FCC cannot enforce this for cable/internet - I think that would have to be the FTC. But I really doubt this be found to not violate the 1st amendment with the internet. EDIT 2: > The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the doctrine. It looks like the supreme court at the time ruled that because of the limited number of broadcast stations it made sense for the FCC to regulate it in this manor. Because of the lack of scarcity of resources for the internet, I highly doubt the FTC would be allowed to do the same. |
> To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it.
Amateur Radio Extra here. I have a tiny bit of insight into this.
Back in WW1, the radio spectrum became the property of the US military and the DoD actually "leases" spectrum to the federal government through the FCC.
The Fairness Doctrine was a handshake agreement with the political parties of the day and enforced by FCC policy. The FCC is the regulatory body for airwaves.
So the spectrum is a public good in the sense that it is 100% owned by the US military for military purposes and it only grants radio spectrum to the rest of the FCC that it doesn't care about. You can actually go to prison for using radio spectrum that you're not allowed to use (I have never actually heard of it happening...but it is theoretically possible).
Edit: I should also add, that 1st amendment rights DO NOT APPLY on the airwaves. The FCC has 100% control of regulating what you can and cannot say or do on them.