Spectrum of Greed

Larry Lessig (pardon my familiarity, I am just a lazy typist) made a controversial statement that the FCC was corrupt beyond salvaging, and should be shut down.  If that weren’t outrageous enough, Larry then suggests, “In their place, Congress should create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: ‘minimal intervention to maximize innovation.’ The iEPA’s core purpose would be to protect innovation from its two historical enemies-excessive government favors, and excessive private monopoly power.” Original Newsweek article.

Being an uncontrollable idealist/optimist/hopefulist, Larry has further conspired with others to create an organization (Change Congress) with the sole purpose of removing corruption from our government (gasp!)

Now, realists, pragmatists, and others that have a real problem with change have made suggestions that perhaps Larry is a bit over the top on this one, and that in fact, if we look closely, the FCC in it’s own adorable, incompetent way has some endearing qualities that we should not be so brash as to throw out.  They go on to suggest that such an innovation focused entity as Larry suggests, with such a radically different central focus, could in fact be a step backward for us.  The direction that they champion is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to simply change the water, and perhaps put a bit of soap in this time.

I am unabashedly siding with Larry on this one.  While I appreciate the analogies and clever analysis that was done on wetmachine to provide the other side of the coin for the FCC, I have to say that Larry’s argument on DNA of an organization does trump all.  Larry states that the central defining tenent of an organization, it’s DNA, or charter, is critical to it’s success.  The argument that the FCC does some worthwhile things and that much of their work is about the mundane trivia of enforcement as opposed to the strategic enablement of our economy is actually the point I would use to completely bury the FCC in it’s present incarnation.  It IS too focused on the mundane, the operational necessities, and is barely functional in the strategic guidance of our wireless and broadband economy.