Communications Policy and Law Seminar

Electronic communications services — telephone, radio, TV, Internet — and the industries that provide those services have been heavily shaped by the law in the form of legislation, regulatory rulings, antitrust actions, and court decisions. At times, communications law has evolved incrementally through FCC and court decisions, and at other times changes in technology, economics, public opinion, and politics have required a significant redirection of overall communications policy. This course will examine some of the most important events in which changes in technology, economics, public opinion, and politics have produced major changes in communications policy and how that impacted the course of the industry and the services available to consumers. The focus will be on the major policy changes that have brought us to the present and what that means for current policy issues such as the FCC's proposed transition to digital TV, intellectual property protection, and pending legislative proposals for changing the Telecommunications Policy Act of 1996 to better promote competition in communications services.