Can Howard Stern now relax?
You can’t blame Howard Stern, Janet Jackson and other targets of official bluenosedom for toasting the departure of Michael Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chair who led a crusade against raunch and ribaldry on the air. They may be right. For all Powell’s talk about limited government, the 41-year-old Republican arguably resuscitated a vague “indecency” standard for the sake of political expediency. Other critics point to the “broadcast flag” ruling, which bans the sale of certain computer hardware starting in mid-2005, as another shameful chapter in the history of the FCC. But Powell’s legacy is more complicated than either copyright or censorship. In particular, he deserves credit for erecting a historic set of protections for network providers and voice over Internet Protocol companies. These protections have immunized those companies from the more rapacious demands of state regulators and the two Democratic FCC commissioners. Powell presided over the FCC during the tu
