America needs a new communications law fit for the Digital Age. More than twenty years have passed since the last major revision to the Communications Act. Since then, the communications marketplace has been dramatically reshaped by increasing competition and technological convergence centered around Internet-based voice, video, and data services. Yet innovation and investment in high-speed broadband networks are constrained by regulatory restrictions that often date back to the 1930s, or even earlier.
The need for a modernized law is all the more pronounced given the Federal Communications Commission’s historical reluctance to remove outdated regulatory restrictions. In the past, the FCC often has sought to regulate new digital communications services in competitive markets without clear statutory justification or sufficient economic analysis. Delay in adopting a modernized Communications Act runs an increasing risk of chilling innovation and investment, impeding market competition, and harming consumer welfare.
A vibrant future for digital communications services and the Internet requires reform that is pro-innovation, pro-free market, pro-consumer, and consistent with the rule of law. Based on those guiding principles, #CommActUpdate – A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age offers a roadmap for a comprehensive update of federal communications law. The book is comprised of six scholarly responses submitted by the Free State Foundation to an earlier congressional process considering an overhaul of the Communications Act, along with a Preface and lengthy up-to-date Introduction providing a wealth of background information and context. The book prescribes specific reforms for areas such as broadband policy and Internet oversight, competition policy, network interconnection, spectrum management, universal service, and video services regulation.
Randolph J. May is founder and President of The Free State Foundation. He has published more than two hundred articles and essays on communications, administrative, and constitutional law topics. Mr. May received his B.A. from Duke University and his law degree from Duke Law School.
Seth L. Cooper is a Senior Fellow at The Free State Foundation. Mr. Cooper is the co-author of The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property and a communications policy expert. Mr. Cooper earned his B.A. from Pacific Lutheran University and received his J.D. from Seattle University School of Law.
