Yesterday I spoke at PLI's 2006 Communications Law program, an annual event that Jim Goodale has been running for 30 years or more.  Many traditional mindsets were on florid display:

Goodale is worried that online advertising is destroying newspapers, and can't believe that keyword-based advertising is legal. 

Bob Joffe of Cravath, representing cable companies, says there's been plenty of innovation in the form of additional cable channels.  And he's not even pretending that cable companies won't monetize their broadband networks.  Of course they will!  They own them!  (No more of this "it wouldn't be in our best interest to discriminate" stuff.)  Joffe was particularly skilled at the "there's no problem, no need to regulate" argument.

Dick Wiley of Wiley Rein, representing most incumbents, but particularly telcos, says that telcos are anxious to get into video and that that will represent online innovation.  He's claiming that the AT&T/BellSouth merger is being inappropriately held up by network neutrality proponents. 

In response, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge actively took on Joffe and Wiley -- this seems to be an annual sparring match, during which Wiley begins every sentence with "Well, Gigi, as you well know..."

There was a large, well-dressed, and middle-aged crowd in attendance.  Many suits and ties; not so many junior lawyers, as far as I could tell.  After the panel, we all went out to lunch in a very convivial fashion.  I'm glad Goodale invited me, and I had a fine time.

It was an odd morning.  These categories (cable, broadcasting, telephony, mainstream news) seem to be drifting farther and farther away from reality.  Everything is converging at this point.  But yet well-meaning people keep getting together to talk through these regulatory categories in a serious fashion, in ballrooms with pitchers of water and white tablecloths and microphones.  No laptops in evidence.

Very odd.