So far in the communications law class I'm teaching this term, we've read materials about indecency regulation, the digital television transition, and media concentration.
For today's class on media concentration, one of the students posted the following comment:
Okay, I give up. By now, FCC regulatory authority is such a shell game I can't keep it straight.
All of these stories have been pretty thick. Indecency regulation is premised on protecting kids (not scarcity), but doesn't cover cable and appears to extend to fleeting expletives that can be heard on any street corner. The DTV transition is more like a soap opera than a policy initiative. And the media concentration story has the FCC stuck between the D.C. Circuit and Congress and three million angry letter-writers. Luckily for us, the satellite radio industry has decided to merge in careful synchronization with our syllabus.
It's a good time to be studying this material. It's dramatic stuff. Just wait until we get to the E911, CALEA, and net neutrality stories. Perhaps we should put on a class play.
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Comments
Re: Communications class
Good morning Susan:
I'm a longtime reader of your blog and write a blog of my own, mostly concerned about tech/internet topics. Are there any plans to make your course materials available online? I would dearly love to gobble it up, since I can't be present in person to audit! Thanks for the wonderful blog, Constance Reader Productio Ad Absurdam Re: Re: Communications class
Hello -- this is terrible, but the course really isn't available online at the moment. I switched machines and no longer have web publishing capability here (and I've just been too busy to get the academic license that I need). What we're doing is reading the category-killer casebook by Benjamin, Lichtman, Shelanski & Weiser and doing a lot of talking. Next year I hope to have things much more online, but I haven't succeeded with that this year. apologies. Susan
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