The jury is out, at least to David Isenberg and Susan Crawford, on the new FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Isenberg says be very scared. Crawford calls it faith-based policymaking. If there is any comfort, it is the predictability that the ruling party's words are meaningless theater and the opposite of actual policy.

Powell struggled with this, naively believing in pure principles. But Martin clearly is in step with the program. He doesn't grant consumer freedoms, only entitlements. And even to the concept of entitlements he spews qualifications based on the overriding claims of content owners, law enforcement and goverment, and network providers. In summary consumers have no rights and take a back seat to virtually everyone else. Now that's the Republican party we've come to know.

I am scared too. This is not small government conservatism, but uncompetitive elitism. As Isenberg has shown and been proved correct in the Rise of the Stupid Network and the Internet, it's bad economics and technical policy. It's especially bad for innovation and small industries like P2P.

Marc Freedman
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, the leading multiple network P2P file sharing software
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