Reason: What do you think you're going to be remembered for at the FCC?
Powell: I always hate legacy questions. We set out with a simple vision. If you go to the first major speech I ever gave on the eve of becoming chairman, we called it digital migration. We said the communication industry is turning completely over to a new paradigm, and that paradigm is enormously positive for the American economy and the American consumers. The goal of the commission is to completely turn it from an institution looking backward at disputes over the past, to keep it focused on the future and the broadband platforms and the services that are going to run over them. The vision is to get this country to migrate from its essentially 100-year-old analog infrastructure to one that is like the Internet: an infrastructure that's digital, bit-capable, Internet Protocol�based.
Reason: How does increased content regulation play into that?
Powell: I think it will be increasingly difficult to argue for content-premised legislation for broadcasters only.
Reason: Does that mean Congress is going to extend content regulation further into cable or other traditionally nonregulated areas, or does it mean they give up trying to regulate broadcasting?
Powell: Well, what Congress chooses to do is anyone's guess. But I would say this: There's an enormous sledgehammer on the other side: the First Amendment and the way the courts view it. Every day the Internet becomes an increasingly effective tool for democracy and political organization. The irony is we're most attacked on broadcasting by organizations who use the Internet to make themselves effective.
Reason: So you're saying a group like MoveOn--
Powell: --dot org--
Reason: --wants the FCC to regulate broadcasts more even as the platform for their power is unregulated?
Powell: Well, I think that's a factual truth. I think it's interesting. We've seen John Kerry raise his millions over the weekend using the Internet. We've seen the phenomenon of Howard Dean. We see targeted advertising. The tools that I have embraced, and were the core of the choices we made in the media ownership proceeding, are being utilized in this election, which is the most critical moment of democracy. Maybe we were right but were too soon. I have no doubt that my children are going to be in a world that's much more about Internet distribution than broadcast television.
This is the same Supreme Court that struck down all the communication decency attempts on the Internet. This is the same Court that wouldn't let you regulate cable. You're getting this divided regime that ultimately is going to become arbitrary and indefensible. If my TV has a broadband pipe to it and has two-way interactivity and I'm picking NetFlix programs and downloading to my TiVo, is it a TV or is it the Internet? I think it's going to look a lot more like the Internet than it's ever going to look like a television. So one day some court is going to say, "This doesn't work." If Congress gets there first, I would admire them for their foresight, but if they don't, I think that the day will come where, as a constitutional matter, such divisions are not sustainable.
Reason: How would you define your politics?
Powell: I consider myself moderate, slightly right of center. It depends on the issue. I'm a big believer in individual entrepreneurship and innovation. I think American capitalism is the finest economic system ever invented. It has crushed-- not beaten, crushed--every alternative deployed in the history of the world, and we should be proud of it instead of embarrassed by it.
The market has delivered more value to poor Americans and raised standards of living around the world more than any system I know, and I just wish we would stop having to reargue the value of the American marketplace. I wish we could stop having to convince people every 10 years that enterprise and opportunity and innovation are not bad things.
I'm a Reagan-era child. When I was in college, Reagan was the reinvigorating force in American life.
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