Broadcast Regulation

Broadcasting Law is the first comparative study of radio and television, discussing law in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. It also contains a chapter on European Community legislation in this area. Timely in view of the continuing debate about the renewal of the BBC Charter, the future of the independent sector following the establishment of new franchises, and the growing activity among broadcasters eager to take advantage of the technological innovations now affecting broadcasting. The work explores a common European approach to broadcasting regulation which contrasts sharply with the free market position in the United States.

This comprehensive study examines the case of AM stereo and subsequent technologies to demonstrate the FCC's evolution from stern to reluctant regulator. It also discusses emerging technologies, such as digital audio broadcasting, and their impact on the evolution of broadcast regulation. In the 1980s the FCC deregulated TV and radio, electing to set only technical operating parameters and allowing legal operation of any system that meets those minimal standards. Huff argues that this approach is likely to influence regulatory approaches to other new developments in broadcast technologies.

Lively's in-depth study of communications law clarifies the basic principles that comprise the law and provides a thorough survey of "the press" as it was originally outlined in the Constitution and how its profile has changed due to the sophisticated nature of today's media. Lively reviews the concepts that formed the groundwork for the law, examines the history of the regulation of the communications industry, evaluates the guidelines that have developed regarding the content of accessible information, and discerns trends in ownership of information sources.

This book evaluates whether various theories of free expression expand opportunities for individual free expression. In order for free expression to truly exist, there have to exist forums, both in theory and practice, in which individuals have an opportunity to express themselves. This book examines the legal history of the forums in which Americans have expressed themselves: the traditional public forum, nontraditional public forums, and the broadcast spectrum. The book includes a proposal for the government provision of broadcast access channels.

This book provides the most comprehensive and contemporary coverage available of communications law, a subject characterized by rapidly expanding and changing horizons. Broader in focus than any other book on the topic, Modern Communications Law considers the media's nature and context, structural governance of the communications industry, and content issues. The author provides an exhaustive study of telephone communications, as well as print, broadcasting, and new media including cable. The book is designed particularly for pertinent law school courses and will also be a key source for legal practitioners, media industry professionals, and government regulators and policymakers.

When the U.S. Congress created the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, what we now call cyberspace was just "ether." Broadcasting had only begun to carry tinny human voices and music across the fields and prairies, while Sunday afternoon phone calls to Aunt Mabel snaked through wires below, courtesy of an army of operators who switched each circuit by hand. It didn't take long, though, for the wires and airwaves to fill up with untrammeled chatter, so much so that by 1934 after complaints by the Navy that ship to shore communications had become hopelessly chaotic, and under the unproved but widely held belief that the broadcast spectrum was a finite natural resource all federal authority over electronic communications was forged into a new, powerful Federal Communications Commission. The amount of information traversing the airwaves has increased a million fold since 1927, but has the FCC changed along with the technology? The answer, according to Peter W. Huber, in Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm, is an emphatic No. In this well researched, lively, even witty polemic, Huber recounts the history of telecommunications over the last century to argue that the FCC "should have been extinguished years ago." With scarcity of communications channels no longer an issue, and the virtual elimination of distinctions between carriage and broadcast,the Commission's anachronistic laws have no basis for existence, and have in fact impeded growth and progress to the tune of billions of lost dollars. Today, the "telecosm," that complex universe of invisible communications traffic, has expanded, supplanted, and subdivided itself many times over with each new technological breakthrough. Cable television, direct broadcast satellite, cell phones, the V chip, Caller ID, personal computers, and the Internet have transformed the world. Huber argues that large bureaucratic entities like the FCC fail to adjust to such rapidly changing technologies because they see their mission as maintaining the status quo, and that instead of preserving the rights of common citizens they actually favor rich monopolies. Addressing charged points of conflict such as free speech vs. censorship, privacy vs. right to know, and market vs. controlled pricing, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace energetically proposes that sensible national telecommunications policies evolve through common law--the accretion of decisions arrived at in specific cases where basic principles such as private property and fair business practice are challenged and upheld--and not through the top down, government imposition of inflexible regulatory mandates created in the vacuum of uninformed, theoretical disussion. Given the heated climate on Capitol Hill surrounding debate over ways to reduce federal spending, Peter Huber's arguments are timely, urgent, and meticulously documented. Law and Disorder in Cyberspace is not only informative and entertaining, but will be one of those rare books that will influences public policy before the end of this decade.

The need for a comprehensive, annotated reference to the Communications Act of 1934 has been dramatically demonstrated in legal and government circles, but the legislative histories currently available contain only selected excerpts from the legislative documents, which are themselves prohibitively difficult to obtain. In this exhaustive reference, compiled by the former General Counsel and, later, Executive Director of the FCC, readers finally have access to the complete text of the Communications Act of 1934 as well as its underlying legislative components, including texts of Congressional hearings and debates, the Senate and House Committee reports, an index to the legislative materials and a wide range of other source material. Carefully annotated, the book includes a series of incisive articles on the historical, legal, and political aspects of the Act by such major figures in the communications field as Professor Glen O. Robinson, Kenneth A. Cox, William J. Byrnes, J. Roger Wollenberg, and Professor Ronald A. Cass. The most extensive collection of documents on the Communications Act ever published, this book will become an essential source for lawyers, judges, government agencies, Congressional staffs, and students and scholars of law and communications. This commemorative volume is produced through the cooperative efforts of the Golden Jubilee Commission on Telecommunications and the Federal Communications Bar Association.