A note from an acquaintance formerly at the FCC. --Declan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Having spedt my years at the FCC doing pre-repeal Fairness Doctrine and Sec. 315 equal time matters, I think [deleted-dm]'s concerns, tho' justified politically [because most adminsitrations will leave no good technology unhobbled] are without substantial legal basis. The hook for the Fairness Doctrine obligation imposed on broadcasters as a corollary to their statutory 'public interest' obligations was as a licensee of scarce broadcast spectrum--a discrete frequency awarded on a putatively compettive basis. Those key elements[scarcity/license/obligation] are--for now--lacking in the on-line environment. And while no doubt this or another Administration, or wiley Congressional staffer could gin up a plausable nexus between the web and interstate commerce, sufficiient to sustain a new public interest obligation, I think we're two or three generations of bandwith scarcity away from that becoming a compelling element of a cyber-resource allocation scheme. Without that overarching allocation-based [license] compulsion (to force even facial compliance with an obligation, so that enforcement would become essential to compliance, thus creating a need for thousands of Web police to review commercial licensees sites and traffic--[what a nightmare] -) -the liklihood of developing a meaningful scheme of public interest obligation would be a an overdebated and overhyped PC exercise, quickly becoming comic--and then dangerous.