This is a Progressive Blogger Union entry.

Kevin Martin is replacing Michael Powell as the head of the FCC, raising the question of what is likely to change. It's a little early to tell, yet, but there are four major topics before him: indecency, deregulation, digital television, and voice over IP (VOIP), and one can at least look at his previous stances on these issues.

Working by topic, he appears to be more willing to crack down on "indecency" on the airwaves, and wants to make violations (and thus fines) "per-utterance":

• Response to the Parents Television Council about the use of the F-word
• Statement on Entercom violations

I don't really see anything wrong with this; public airwaves are certainly no longer the only venue for commercial speech, the enforcement excludes late evening hours, and there's now a rising economy around "shock jocks" and pay-per-view porn on private cable and satellite networks. There's been a lot of controversy about this, and it has been noted that the PTC has been pretty much the only driving force behind the indecency outrages (and is rather extreme in its views), but I think it's healthy for the country overall that a certain amount of courtesy and taste be enforced in public areas So far the FCC has shown reasonable judgement, so my only concern is whether Kevin Martin intends to broaden the definition as well as increase enforcement. I note that he dissented in part on the rulings that a variety of popular TV shows, such as the Simpsons and Friends, were indecent, but since I can't find the actual record of this on the FCC website, I'm not certain whether he's objecting to things other than the mild examples given in the AP article.

Deregulation is something of a complex issue. Both he and Powell officially favor deregulation. In 2003 Powell attempted to permit companies to own multiple TV stations and newspapers in a single market. This was blocked by the courts, though it's going to come up for appeal soon. On the other hand, what Martin and Powell most famously fought over was deregulation of line sharing, with Powell taking the stance that without enforced linesharing, the line owners will quickly kill off all of their potential competitors, and then raise prices. Martin was in favor of very rapid deregulation here, presumably on the industry argument that regulation hinders deployment. Unfortunately, this argument doesn't seem to be borne out by the numbers. If Martin is even more extreme about media deregulation than Powell, this could get a bit ugly.

Digital television is another complex topic, with subtopics including copy restriction, transition time, local broadcasters, and the eventual destruction of analog transmission. Martin has stood against imposing a digital standard in broadcast in 2007, but only because the proposal wasn't uniform and didn't include cable operators. He also who wanted it to be mandatory to carry both their analog-equivalent channels and their high definition digital signals. Although I am speculating from insufficient information at this point, what he actually appears to want is a complete digital conversion. Combining this with the fact that he is both a strong Bush supporter and he appears to support strong digital copy restriction mechanisms that would block fair use, leads to a somewhat scary conclusion: we may be headed into a world where only approved, corporate sources retain the ability to make use of news snippets or other transmissions. The good news appears to be that he is in no great hurry — but only in the sense that he seems to want to do it all at once, later, than in pieces over time. This bears close watching.

Martin's views on VOIP are fairly succinct and fairly sensible: if it's going to connect to a phone number on the other end, telephone rules apply. If it's entirely computer-to-computer, they don't have to.

Overall conclusion? As I said, it's a bit early to tell, but I think I liked Powell better — and I didn't like Powell. It's probably going to be worth keeping a close eye on Kevin Martin.

More insights may be obtained from perusing his FCC statements from 2003, 2004, or 2005.